NAH. Your community college offer is totally reasonable, but you need to understand the position your son is in. All his life, he's been told that college is the end all be all, that if you don't graduate college, you will never succeed.

In his mind, community college is a place for druggies and burnouts. If he goes there, he's admitting to the world that he's a failure. If he goes to a trade school, he's essentially telling the world that he's too stupid to succeed in college, and is a failure.

I know this is what he's thinking, because your son sounds exactly like me. He made one mistake, and that sent him spiraling into a pit of anxiety and despair, and likely gave him a case of depression. The same thing happened to me, and it took me years of therapy to undo that much mental damage.

Before he goes back to school, encourage him to get a job, get him to see that college isn't the only way to be happy and succeed in life. Good luck to you.