Hello Tee and Anita, thank you so much for making the time to help me. Tee, after reading your first post, I decided to change tack and befriend him, less of fatherly stuff. Seemed to work. He started engaging with me and has started coming and spending time with his mother and me, however little, but that’s a big change. Even bigger is that he has agreed to drive with me to a beach resort for New Years (he has so far avoided driving much claiming that he feels car sick). When I first ask his help on driving, he said that just the thought made him queasy. When I pointed out that he was running away from his fears and he needed to confront it sometime, he agreed with me and said OK. Great. He also signed up for the gym. Its a long road ahead, but my wife and I are enthused. Since I took your advice of empathy, I also seemed to have distressed and feeling better. Will plough on. A heartfelt thanks again from a grateful father. Do keep your advice and encouragement coming, that’s important for me. God bless you all!

Hello Anita, my apologies for not responding earlier, dealing with an aggressive skin allergy that has laid me low for a few weeks, hopefully I am getting better. I think you are bang on – he does have low self esteem and all the other issues you mentioned. Though I can’t figure out why because right from his childhood his mom quite her job to be with the children and I eased up at 40 to be available to my kids and have supported them throughout. But it is what it is. I did try to empathetic approach for a while. may have been too short though. As to treating him like a child, we are Indians – we never seem to grow old as far as our parents are concerned LOL! But I get your message loud and clear and will try to change my attitude to this issue. But I have one more question to ask of you: whenever the topic veers to anything to do with him, he immediately becomes aggressive, shouts may be to shut us up. How do I get him to open up considering he refuses to even sit and talk with me?