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just about had it

sugarcookie's picture

i'm relatively new hear, been reading for a while but not really posting, so a little background: i've been married for 1 1/2 years, with DH for 4 1/2. SD12 and SS9 and i have always gotten along really well, i love those kids to death.

SS9 is very far behind academically. he is at about a mid to high first grade reading level and is in third grade. BM finally got it and now i help him with his homework on weekends and two nights a week. english is not her first language (or DH's), so it is more successful if i help him. things were going well all year until about a month ago. getting him to read with me or do his homework it like trying to move a mountain on my own! he doesn't try, is mouthy, horrible attitude and then when we yell or he gets spanked, all hell breaks loose! if i was my neighbors i would have called the cops already, at least once. we don't hit him, he just gets some pretty tough whacks on the behind and some yelling and good god, you'd think we had a gun to his nos!i can't take it anymore. tonight was horrible. my DH was still working, but i decided to work with SS anyway. i had previously said i would not work with him alone anymore due to the dramatic claims he can sometimes make. i warned him in the car on the way over that if an argument started, he would go to his room, i would not help him with his homework, and he would have to go to homework club at school (punishment for not doing homework).i used my phone to record our working and he freaked out. he didn't like. i told him too bad. if you try to accuse me of anything then i have SD12 and the recording. after an hour with nothing accomplished, i called DH and told him i was done. he was home 15 minutes later and again read him the riot act.

what is going on with him??? how did he go from such a sweet kid to such a pain in the ass?

Comments

Auteur's picture

Ok SS9 is the "baby" of the family for BM. And has he been making progress up until the last month? Sounds like he has.

This may come as a shocker, but some BMs actually don't like it when their children do well in school. They may give lip service to it, especially in front of teachers and school admins, but secretly they'd rather see their children reverting back to infancy.

The BM may see that SS9 is making progress in school with YOU helping and may be getting jealous over it. We've had MANY posts on this site where the BM has actually said, when it came to custody that they'd rather have their own children FAIL school with them, than EXCEL and be in their dad's custody.

She may be seeing the progress and then suddenly discouraging SS to do the work, or actually in some cases PUNISHING skid for doing well in school similar to the way they PUNISH skids for liking SM, enjoying time spent with biodad, etc.

sugarcookie's picture

she really pushed him to get more help and improve. i feel that maybe she has kind of given up and let's him slide at home. then he gets with us and we are still pushing and probably pushing more than before.

BM and DH get along pretty well, BM and I actually get along really well too. i don't really feel that it has much to do with whose helping. if he throws the fits with her that he throws with us, she has probably finally said forget it.

a while back he said something about nobody at school liking him. i asked the teacher to talk to him because not long before that he was telling me about all his friends in school. nothing seemed to come of it.

he has ADHD, which i forgot to mention. he isn't on medicine. the one he was on a couple years ago gave him seizures, so BM did stop everything. i don't know if that has anything to do with anything. the concentration it does i'm sure. but probably not the attitude.

we're all just out of ideas.