What would you do?
Sd14 & Ss13 have lived with DH, myself & my two bios for 7 years now. In that 7yrs Ss13 has been the nightmare skid you hear all about on here. If you want specifics I'll be glad to share, but there are so many issues with this skid it would literally take all day plus some to list them all.
Long story short: BM is a loser...I know all SM's say that about BM, but seriously...this woman picks the skids up on her COURT ORDERED VISITATION & takes them straight to her mom or the in-laws while she goes out with her hubs &/or friends, she's had 15+ jobs in 7yrs. She lives with her husband's parents, doesn't have her own vehicle & most importantly relapses into pill addiction about 1 every other year (actually been to hospitals or rehab 4 or 5 times in the last 7yrs).
Sd14 adjusted so well, I had held out hope that Ss13 would eventually come to see the situation with BM for what it really is. Hoping that he would realize he was so much better off just visiting with her, occasionally when she's clean & available to them, & living in a stable home with DH, myself, and the siblings.
Well that's not the case. Ss13 doesn't see anything wrong with her situation & as a matter of fact he wants to go live with her! He is acting out at school & home. Causing utter chaos in our lives. He purposely aggravates the other three children, he manipulates my DH. I inwardly resent him for every bit of it. A wonderful evening at home can turn to the worst night ever, because of 1 kid!
My DH has gotten better over the years at spotting the manipulation & I know as the skid ages my DH will continue to identify manipulation by him. We openly talk about what to do with Ss13, we are just out of ideas. At 14 years old he can decide for himself but without a court-order my DH will never allow Ss13 to go live in that situation. I don't blame him...I would not willingly let one of my children go down that path. Just because it's a parent doesn't change the fact that it's a life of failure. If it were bad influences by friends we would try to stop it, so why not with the NCP???
I'm looking for fresh ideas on how to eye this skid's eyes (without demeaning his BM to him). I thought as he aged he would see it for himself, but he's almost delusional. WHAT WOULD YOU DO? Please don't say disengage, that's not an option with three other children involved & a marriage I am 110% dedicated in.
It appears that you are quite
It appears that you are quite literally at an impasse.
Send him to the dysfunctional home of the BM and risk Ss13 picking up even worse habits than he already has, and plan your next visits around when visiting hours are at the youth detention center he's going to wind up in, or keeping him from going to the BM's altogether, and his resentment towards you ALL festers and grows to be intolerable. Which is worse ? One might say that until he gets what he wants, he's only going to continue to make your lives miserable. Why not give him a true taste of what full time life with his BM would entail ? The sanity and happiness of your family depends on it !
One also might say, that there's strength in numbers in your home. He is surrounded by adults and children who 'get' what acceptable behavior is, and you adhere to it. Perhaps rallying together, and enforcing the boundaries and the expectations as a group, where his failure to comply is met with repercussions by all, would be a direction to take.
Just a question.....and no offence is intended here......has Ss13 been sat down and asked WHY he behaves the way he does ? And if so, what does he say ?
We know he is acting out
We know he is acting out because he wants to go live with BM. His reason for wanting to go live with her...he says "he feels like he fits in better there, he doesn't have to do chores around her house & won't be made to do homework when he gets home from school, he'll be allowed to play recreational sports" etc. All these things are true, he wouldn't me held accountable for anything. We have a set of 4 household chores, each of the 4 children do 1 chore each on rotation Monday-Thursday. If he has homework, we require that he start on it once DH or myself get home from work so as not to have him or ourselves up until 11pm or later finishing homework. We tried letting him play sports, although his behavior nor school performance warranted the privilege, she would let him play regardless --- maybe, then again she might not be able to keep to the practice and game schedule, she only made it to 1 game the entire season we allowed him to play or didn't come to any practices. He has no motivation no goals he is perfectly content with the idea of living off someone else the rest of his life just like she is doing.
DH & I already have an agreement, once the kids finish high school their options are college, get a job and help pay bills at our house (with a 25 year old limit) or move out. So staying with DH & I, not attending school or working and contributing to the household, is not an option for him.
25?
25? :jawdrop:
The age of 25 is ONLY IF THEY
The age of 25 is ONLY IF THEY ARE TRYING TO HELP THEMSELVES...our home will not be the landing pad for sorry, lazy, non-motivated people to mooch off DH & I. The age was established with the two of us keeping in mind it was about that age when we truly started getting our shit together and were able to stand on our own without parental help.
Yes, he is aware of her
Yes, he is aware of her addiction. However, he chooses to believe her over his father in times when we know she is using again but she is telling him she is not, until the in-laws kick her out of their home...then he accepts that she is using and for a while will knock off the bad behavior at school and try a little harder at home. But when she tells him she's clean again, he goes right back to the same old behavior at school and home.
Facts!!!!! They are neither
Facts!!!!! They are neither good nor bad. They are the result of BM's decisions and behaviors. Bare BM's ass with the facts of her behavior. This is not demeaning BM to the Skids. It is clearly communicating the facts of her decisions and behaviors. Your Skids are old enough to hear the facts, know of every arrest, failed drug test, rehab order, CO violation, missed CS payments, etc.... Communicating the facts is protecting the Skid's best interests and arming them with the tools they will need to protect themselves from her crap in the future.
This tactic worked wonders for us in battling the toxic Sperm Clan for much the 17 years that we lived under a Custody/Visitation/Support order. My wife and I met when SS-23 was 15mos old shortly after she established paternity of SS, nailed the Sperm Idiot for CS, and was awarded full physical and legal custody of my SS. We married the week before he turned 2yo.
Initially my bride was much of the mind that you and your DH seem to be. Don’t rock the boat, keep the toxic behaviors of the other bio parent from the kid, if we don’t fight with them they won’t take it out on SS during visitation, don’t say anything about the toxic behaviors of the sperm clan, lather, rinse, repeat……
After a few years I was finally able to communicate that they were taking it out on the kid anyway and it was time for us to step up and defend SS’s best interests from the manipulations of the shallow and polluted end of his gene pool. That is when we started using the facts of their behaviors and decisions to bring the pain and defend SS’s best interests. They hated when we bared their idiot asses in court. They hated it worse when as SS got older and we shared the facts of their toxic behaviors with him in an age appropriate manner and he would call them on their bullshit directly. By his mid teens SS was doing his own research on their crap and we would periodically find him hip deep in the Custody/Visitation/Support records figuring it out for himself when some crap they pulled on visitation did not pass his smell test.
As for your SS’s bullshit teen boy behavior….. belt to the bare ass!!!!! This has been proven over the entire course of human history to be an effective and occasionally last resort method for closing the gap between teen boy brain and teen boy behavior. Give it a try. As a former teen boy myself I can personally attest to the effectiveness of this method. An even more enjoyable disciplinary method is sentences. Tens of thousands of them. All in perfect handwriting, perfect grammar, perfect spelling at a rate of 180/ish per hour for every spare minute he has until they are done. One grammar, spelling, or handwriting error resets the count. When he is not at school, at a family activity, or sport practice or competition, or during normal sleep hours he is writing. Make the sentences fit the infraction so he keeps on message during his hundreds if not thousands of hours of sentence writing.
Good luck .... and have fun! }:)
Thank you for your input.
Thank you for your input. However, we do provide the facts to him. He simply chooses not to see it or not to care. I'm not sure which.
Disciplining for his behavior: "Belt to the bare ass" I absolutely agree & DH has tried. Sentences...he's probably written the equivalent to a 3 book novel series. We've also emptied his room of everything except a bed, pillow & blanket (a great idea from a fellow "StepTalk" member). We've refused to take him to do his favorite hobbies (hunting & fishing) for months at a time. None of these things have worked.
I don't think sending him to BM to "see the truth" is the right thing to do, but I don't have any other ideas to present to my DH.
That's a great idea! Although
That's a great idea! Although I don't think BM will ever follow through with her telling him she will get custody changed, I think this maybe worth a try. To show Ss BM will not go through with it & have an outsider tell him, it's basically never going to happen...until he is legally an adult he is where he needs to be and nothing is going to change by him acting this way ---> Except eventually he may end up in juvenile detention if he doesn't straighten up.
THANK YOU!
Yeah, I like this idea, too.
Yeah, I like this idea, too. Make the courts the "bad guy" he has to rebel against, instead of you two.
You might even try having him write a letter to the judge. Have him write out all the reasons he doesn't want to live with you and convince the judge. Anyone would laugh when they saw the reasons: no chores! no homework! no expectations for behavior! drug mom is more fun than stable parents!
Let him mail the letter himself or even offer to drive him down to the courthouse so he can hand deliver it. I think a little lesson in reality, as Rags says as well as Annith, is probably a good thing. Let him see what the courthouse is like. Let him see that the judge refuses to take an ex-parte communication (if that's what happens). Let him see it's all not just a magical thing that dad can make happen with a Samantha Stevens nose twitch.
Heck, let him write this letter every 6 months. It may become a better way to channel his frenetic energy. In this way you might become his ally in his desperate campaign and the judge the enemy. Perfect. It also might possibly start getting through his thick head that everyone agrees him going to live in Chaos Town is a bad idea. It's not just you two.