TL;DR -- more or less since my eldest has moved out to go to college, my son has been acting out, being verbally abusive and physically violent to my husband, myself and my daughter. We have tried just about everything, but we don't know what else we can do to get him back to how he was before. He won't open up to us and refuses to see a therapist.
My son is only 15 years old, but my husband and I feel like we have lost total control over him. He just won't listen to us. It baffles my husband (50m), my oldest daughter (20f) and just about everyone I confide in about this, because he was always a good kid and an exemplary student. Both the teachers and the other kids at school loved him. In the past year though he has been going to school only occasionally (he would lie about skipping his classes in our faces). Naturally, his grades have been suffering, too. We talked to a teacher and the school’s principal and together with them we agreed that we would be keeping track of his homework and assignments, encouraging him and trying to inspire him for particular assignments. He would simply tell us he did turn in his assignments – only for us later hear that he didn’t, or that he turned in an incomplete (or entirely copied) work.
Besides this, he also seems to have turned away from us. A silly example, maybe, but before he used to be thrilled to participate in our family game nights. Now, he won't do that either. Outside of going to school (if he so chooses) and hanging out with his friends (if he isn’t grounded, and even then there are times he blatantly ignores us) he hardly leaves his room. I tried to talk to him about his sudden shift in behavior for the first time about six months ago together with my husband. He told us he "doesn't want us or anyone else to tell him what to do", because "he knows that himself“.
Now, the fact that he prefers to be on his own in his room as a teenager, sometimes skips a class, doesn’t clean up his room, and smokes cigarettes from time to time (as I admittedly found out from looking through a shoebox he keeps under his bed), I can write off as puberty starting to rear its ugly head, but it’s the way he acts at the slightest inconvenience (like being asked to clean up after himself, or us suggesting he puts his phone away while we’re eating dinner together) that have my husband and I worried about the path he is taking. As I said, he has always been well-behaved, but now he has been downright abusive. Mostly with my husband and I, both physically and verbally, but also concerningly so with our eldest, when she comes to visit. Now, our eldest and our youngest always got on well. They were pretty close, or at least until my eldest moved away to study. It is odd: when they were constantly together (which would ordinarily make for tension in most families) things were fine, now that she visits only twice a week he seems to be unable to be around her. And that's … putting it lightly. Knowing my daughter is a VERY sensitive person, he genuinely seems to do his best to make her upset. It’s like he is always trying to trouble her, belittle her. He goes from saying she looks like “cr*p” and that she acts like a “wh*re” and well understands what she’s "asking for" when she wears a skirt, to telling her she’s good for nothing, too dumb to get a degree and probably should just settle down and – I quote – pop out a few babies. He says these strange, derogatory things to my husband and to me, too. Not just when we shut down the wifi, for example, or ground him... it has become a daily occurrence.
Then there's the physical part. First of all, I would like to say that my son is nearly 6"2 at 15 years old. He has been physically violent towards my husband, myself and my daughter and has tried to intimidate us using his height. It has twice gotten to the point of physical fighting with my husband where we had to call the police. I have been grabbed by him several times and pulled across the room like some rag doll. My daughter probably has had to endure the most – she’s had plates thrown at her head more than once, and he has attempted to choke her -- he said he was just fooling around while they were play-wrestling like when they were little, she says they were not and was taunting her before “attacking her”. The worst by far is that he has put out a cigarette on her forearm – again, he was “just playing”. She barely comes around anymore because he will usually hurt her then make a joke out of it – and her not coming around only makes him more angry, frustrated and violent. My husband and I have been wondering if he resents her for moving away to go to college, but we discussed it with him prior to her moving out and at that time he showed no signs of being upset or anything like that.
We’ve reached out to teachers, a therapist (he went to two appointments, then refused to go), a psychiatric hospital, social workers, police. At this point, what do we do? We want to be a good advocate to our son and get him through whatever seems to be the problem, but how do we get through to him? All my husband and I want for him is the best, but we can’t keep on being like punching bags to him.
Submitted August 10, 2022 at 12:00PM by Key_Page_8465 https://ift.tt/HXg2hTf
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