If they want to get welfare, why are you ashamed
I'm ashamed because they wouldn't be in this situation if they showed what I consider to be common sense and maturity. I'm ashamed that these people are my parents.
One, if last year you had to ask your kid, who's struggling to pay for college himself, for a couple grand to bail you out of some serious debts, then you should probably cut back on some spending. Instead, I find that they had bought a new car and a tv which I later found out cost them 3 grand for the tv alone.
Two, if your kid was good enough to be able to get national merit scholarships and all you had to do was sign some papers for him and mail it off, then you should probably do so, because any scholarship earned is less money you have to pay into his college education. The excuse "I didn't have time" doesn't bring back the thousands of dollars lost because the parent was to freakin' lazy to write their signature and walk to the mailbox. On the bright side, kid learned valuable lesson here not to trust parent to help with college and to learn to forge parent's signature for any future scholarship applications.
Three, if you know that your job isn't secure, don't try to buy a brand new house which costs over a quarter of a million dollars especially if you already have a perfectly good house paid off already.
Four, if you're not making a million dollars a year, stop spending money like you are. I don't expect my parents to help me pay for college, but I do expect them to at least save enough to take care of themselves instead of depending on me to be their retirement plan. It doesn't take too much thinking to cut back on unnecessary expenses. Do you really need that new tv, furniture, multiple cell phone plans, etc?
Five, if you're not going to help out your kid, at least don't do anything to hinder them either. If a student loan paper comes in the mail, how about not waiting until it's overdue or something before telling the kid who's three states away working to pay for college himself. If he asks you to forward some important piece of mail to him, do so instead of saying you'll do it and never actually doing it. Stamp costs 34 cents, gas for kid to drive to get one piece of mail is much more expensive and time consuming than walking to the mailbox.
Six, however much kid has in savings and how much he makes is none of your dang business, because kid doesn't trust you not to try to rip him off once you possess such information.
I could go on here, but I'm getting tired of talking in the third person.