I Need Advice
I do not have children of my own so even though I have been around children and helped raise my siblings no one wants to listen to me... that is not the problem though.. my 13 year old stepson has been acting out lately. Normaly nothing to worry about but tonight he was talking about suicide and crying. His dad was in the room and mostly got angry about it. On my side, I felt bad but he lies a lot and I think he is crying out for attention. His mother and dad were never together.. one night stand. He thinks of my husbands ex-wife as his mother. He is bounced between 3 families, ours, his mom and her husband, and the exwife and her husband.... and expectations for each family. Recently the ex-stepmom has had twins and quit spending as much time with him and his biological mother was a surrogate. When his biological mom has him a lot of other people seem to watch him..is it wrong that I think that he needs counseling? Should I really push the issue with his dad?
He definitely needs therapy
He definitely needs therapy and less homes to bounce around to. I have a hard time with SS at two houses, let alone adding a third to this mess.
He is crying out and the adults in his life need to help him, not admonish him.
My feeling is that if a
My feeling is that if a teenager is exhibiting that kind of attention seeking behaviour, they need attention. Pursuade his Dad to agree to councelling for him. Dad obviously doesn't know how to handle this situation if he just got angry and he needs help too. If necessary organise the first appointment yourself so Dad cannot resist through apathy. My SD was also exhibiting a lot of the same attention seeking behaviours, she didn't really want to committ suicide, she was just desperate for people to notice how unhappy she was (she has been in counselling for about 6 weeks and this is also her counsellor's assessment). In divided families it can be really difficult for a teen to talk to anyone about their feelings, there's so many divided loyalties, competition for attention, unspoken tensions between family members and just lack of time for any confidences to emerge. Don't let anyone tell you your instincts aren't valid just because you haven't had children, the longer I've gone on the more I tink that even in the early days before DH and I got married and had children a lot of my instincts about the children were right.