My husband and i only have one child, our son Jeremy who is 18

Growing up he was kind of a wild child. He always made the biggest messes and was sort of a nightmare to deal with all on my own, since my husband was usually working, I was a SAHM for his entire childhood and worked out some punishments that corrected his behaviour well, but at the time my husband was against them.

For example, on Christmas eve we went to my grandmas house for a family gathering and my son who was four at the time refused to take off his shoes to go inside so I told him shoes are for outside and made him stay outside. The door was glass so I could see him through it, but he started crying very loudly and my husband rushed out from the kitchen and got made at me for “traumatizing him”. That was the first instance where he intervened with my parenting and I got mad at him for undermining my punishment.

As my son grew up he stopped making as much trouble and turned into a nice, well mannered boy who never really argued with me until he turned eleven. I blame his friends at the time, since he started at a new school, but my husband says it’s because I was enforcing the same rules he had as a child onto a pre-teen, which I understand, but it’s not like I was treating him like a toddler. He had a 8:30 bedtime, no screens beside 2 hrs of tv (i was against it) and he had to make sure his room was clean, his laundry was done, the common areas were tidy, ect. Another one of his chores was bringing in the firewood, which created a lot of problems because once he turned 11 he started refusing to help because he wanted gloves and my husband to help him, but I shut him down and said that if he isn’t capable of handling this responsibility then he can’t handle the dog he wanted for christmas.

My son focused really hard in school but kept me mostly out of the loop. I didn’t even know he was on the soccer team until my husband and him came home from his first game celebrating because they won, which really hurt my feelings that i couldn’t be there so I sent him to his room and told him he couldn’t go to the dinner to celebrate with his teammates, which he flipped out about. Anyways, he ended up sneaking out that night to meet with his friends and I caught him. I got my husband to take the door off of his room and said he could have it back when he was 18. My son turned 18 two days ago and i’ve been coming up with every excuse I can to prolong my husband putting the door back up.

It’s been three full years and surly he’s used to it by now, so I don’t really understand why he’s pushing so hard to get it put back on. Also, he began making plans and leaving the house without permission and when i got mad at him, he argued that since he was 18 and legally an adult, he doesn’t need my permission for anything anymore. I told him he still sleeps in my house so, yes, he needs my permission for everything. Of course he started an argument after I said this and my husband finally intervened and told me I was a controlling bitch. I was shocked. I went back to my room and cried for hours because he hadn’t ever spoken to me like that before and it broke my heart to know that my husband thought of me that way, when I was just trying to correct my sons poor behaviour.

My son as always been manipulative when it comes to his dad, but it hurts to know my own husband believes a child over me. What do i do? How do i get my husband to realize that giving his door back is rewarding the behaviour and encouraging the disrespect?