- Pregnancy
- Baby & Toddler
- Parents
- Getting Pregnant
- Baby Names
- Product Reviews
-
Registry
- Community
-
More
Want a personalized experience?
Download the free app
2nd Trimester
How do you handle a chronically late family member?
My 27 year old bro is late to everything...we're talking 1 hr+. He has health issues and lives with my parents (who enable the h*ll out of him b/c he has health issues). But I am kind of done making excuses for him on this (and some other things), b/c it's time to grow up. I don't feel like we're doing him any favors by letting him get away with this. I have decided that if he needs a ride to something, I will leave without him if he's not on time. But since I don't give him many rides, this consequence is sort of pointless!
Today, DH was helping him move something with the use of our truck, and he had to wait an hour while my brother took a shower and leisurely got ready. My parents have no ability to get his a$$ in gear, obviously since he's still at home. But I feel like I need to establish boundaries for DH and myself. DH won't say anything, and I don't blame him as I would be hesitant to call out my in laws like that. I feel like I need to have a conversation with my bro, but he has a habit of cutting you off if you confront him about things. Since he is sick, the whole family fears him cutting any one of us off...but I don't think that's a fair alternative and it's sort of a leveraging tool that needs to lose some of its power. I need some words of wisdom and maybe some creative strategies...to get my point across!!
This discussion has been closed.
Re: How do you handle a chronically late family member?
You are going to have to leave him behind. Your H was way too accomodating waiting for your brother while he leisurely got ready, your H should've left him since he wasn't ready at the time proposed. But as long as no one else puts their foot down, your borther is going to keep on doing what he does.
That helps a little but when it comes to something like today's situation, that wouldn't work with him. He just waits til you show up to get ready.
Also I should mention that though DH is really tweaked by any kind of lateness, I am actually pretty laid back about it. I wouldn't really mind 10 minutes. But I do mind an hour.
Chronic late-ness is one of my BIGGEST PET PEEVES. It is a huge huge sign of selfishness and lack of caring for others. Essentially you are telling the person you are meeting that their time is less valuable than yours.
I'm not sure a conversation is the answer because it might seem like nagging. I think the answer is to establish natural consequences. If you are meeting him somewhere, tell him that you have limited time because of xyz and if he is more than 20 minutes late - leave. If he is borrowing something of yours and you set up a time - stick to it. If he isn't ready or is late - don't let him borrow it.
You teach people how to treat you (that is one Dr.Philism that I like) and your family has taught your brother that he can do as he pleases with zero consequences. You need to re-teach him that he is now an adult and that you expect him to respect your time and schedule. If he doesn't, he no longer will be put on the schedule.
Actions speak louder than words.
Like pp said, I adjust the time as needed. I give one person a hour earlier start time, and I also give my ILs a 30 min later start time since they are always way too early.
LO#1 - 19 cycles, 3 IUIs, 1 m/c, gonal-f, ganirelix, ovidrel, progesterone
Totally worth the wait!
Getting ready for #2
Back on Met, PCOS diet, prepping for treatments 1/12
Good luck to the wonderful ladies of 3T
Always cheering on my girls Gymnst1013 & MrsJohns
My Chart / Info for Newbies
Chronic late-ness is one of my BIGGEST PET PEEVES. It is a huge huge sign of selfishness and lack of caring for others. Essentially you are telling the person you are meeting that their time is less valuable than yours.
Same here. I absolutely can not stand when people are late all the time. I think it is very inconsiderate rude and selfish. I understandt the occasional lateness (traffic, kids, etc) but when it happens all the time it just shows the other person does not have a value for your time. I have a friend like this and it has made me lose some respect for her (probably because it shows she isnt respecting me when she shows up an hr late to a dinner). I think the only thing you can do is have a talk with him and make it a huge deal if he is late. Then stand your ground, if he is late then leave without him or disclude him. Eventually, he will learn to watch the clock and give himself enough time to get ready beforehand.
Depending on the situation we either give them an early arrival time or we leave/start without them. For example, my ILs are always late. We told them to be at the church for wedding pictures 30 minutes before we needed them there and if they weren't there on time, there would be NO family pictures because we did all those pictures before the ceremony and we were not doing them after if they were late.
Another example, my SIL never gets ready on time. She is always getting in the shower when she's supposed to be someplace. So, like for Christmas Eve service last year when we went as a family, DH and I left and arrived at church on time. The rest of the family was 30 minutes late because they waited for his sister. DH and I find that unacceptable, so we left.
This is me exactly. If they don't I'm late for everything family wise, but I'm on time (or early) for all dr's appointments, interviews, etc!
I have to deal with this all the time because my fiance is the late one! If we have to be somewhere, I call him 30 minutes before he needs to be home to get ready to let him know. I have started telling him we need to be there before we actually do, that way we make it to places on time.
With your brother, maybe calling him 15-30 minutes before you know you are going to help him to make sure he is ready. And I would ask him bluntly "Are you ready? I only have XX amount of time to do this." That way you aren't stuck there waiting on him and can do some other things until he is ready, and he knows that you don't have all the time in the would unlike him. I understand it is a complete pain to wait on other people, but sometimes they don't realize what a pain it is. I think an hour to take a shower for a guy is a little excessive...If that were me I would have waited 20 minutes and left LOL.
Ugh. My mom is always late and so is one of my friends.
I have to give both of them an earlier time. If something starts at 4, I'll tell them 3:30. My friend always blames her lateness on her 2 year old, but she's even late when her daughter is with her dad.
It's really, really annoying.
I know exactly what you are talking about and like PPs I find it SO disrespectful. I believe in some grace time and setting a boundary, but then life has to go on. So, let's say dinner is set for 6. We'll plan to just relax and eat apps until 6:30 (grace time) but after that, we are eating and the late person just has to deal with cold food, scavenging, etc. In terms of the truck thing, there are a couple of options...
-Arrive and say, "We need to get this thing started in the next 15 minutes for me to make my other commitments today. " At 10-15 min, knock on the door and say that you have 5 minutes until you have to go. Then, 5 minutes later LEAVE.
or
-Call before hand and say and do the same things as above, just even give more lead time.
Essentially, I try to do three steps: verbally set the boundary, give a warning, follow through with the natural consequence.
More Green For Less Green
If someone tends to be just a little late I tell them an earlier start time but if they are really late all the time I just stop inviting them. If you are doing him a favor and he's late this is not your problem. Leave and don't come back. I would just tell him that until he can show some respect for others time you won't be helping him. Just becasue he's sick doesn't mean he can disrespect everyone. I had a friend who was always late to things and he asked if I didn't mind calling him to remind him a few hours before the event and I didn't mind at all. It seems to help him and he hasn't been more than an few mins late the last few years. Maybe you could do something like that for your brother.
I am a recovering chronically late person. A large reason why I have always been a late person is that my perception of time is skewed. I don't have an accurate judgment of how quickly time passes. DH has been with me for 10 years and can attest to this. He has also done the 30-min-early thing with me and it works really well. I almost always just laugh at it and appreciate that he did it because I'd rather have the joke be on me and be on time than be late yet again.
I say I am recovering because I have learned to build large buffers of time into my preparations. I.e., if I have a meeting at 10am and it's at our office 1.5 hrs away, I wake up at 6:30 and shoot to leave the house at 8 (and almost always find myself pulling out of the driveway at 8:25 but, hey, at least I'm on time!). If I have a doctor's appointment 10 min. away, I plan to leave 20 min. early and find myself leaving 10 min. early anyway. I just have a really broken time-estimator but I'm finally learning to work around it.
My boss is another perpetually late person with a very poor perception of time. However, he is much more difficult to change because he doesn't believe my buffers. He thinks they're too generous but doesn't realize that all of the little details he doesn't think about (packing up the car, taking that last phone call, parking the car, getting to the meeting) needs to be allowed for. He is always 15-30 min. late for meetings even when I've put buffers on his calendar and he has agreed with them at the time. It's really annoying and over the years has wasted hundreds and hundreds of hours of our employees' and staff members' time.
My best suggestions are, as the others have said, to tell him to be somewhere an hour before he needs to be there, and to start without him after allowing him about 15 min. grace time from the real start time. Once he starts missing out on things over and over again, he will probably get really pissed off but hopefully finally start trying.
You might also kindly try to explain to him how to work backward from a goal time. Show him that, if he needs to be at your house at 5, he needs to leave at 4:30, which means he needs to start getting ready at 3:45...or something like that. Call him at 3:45 and tell him to start getting ready. If he's still late that point, then you start without him. My husband will often text me at 6 to start packing up for the day so that we can be somewhere by 6:30. It really helps.