Re: Help with 18 Year Old Boy

Daisey31 wrote:
>
> Ok, here is my story: I have an 18 year old son still in high school.
> He is a senior. At the end of his junior year we helped him buy a
> truck. His father and I put down the down payment and made a deal with
> him. We would pay half the payment until he graduated from high school,
> and then he would assume the whole payment. He would also be
> responsible for all his insurance. It is a brand new 2005 Ford Ranger.
> We got a brand new one so he would start out with safe reliable
> transportation. The reason we got the truck was because he was going to
> be working for the same company as his father. The company was in a
> place you cannot get to without a car from where we live. He could not
> car pool with his father because it is a service situation and his Dad
> frequently does not go to the shop first thing in the morning, if at
> all. My son really wanted this job. It was not a career path we would
> have chosen for him, we would have preferred college, but we supported
> his decision as his own. Three weeks after we purchase the truck he
> asks if he can take his friend around the block. We still had such need
> of giving him permission as he was still learning to drive a stick. We
> allowed him to do an around the block thing. We get a call 10 minutes
> later that he is in a construction site and can't get the truck
> started. He decided to 'off road' it and hit a berm so hard that a
> safety switch disabled the engine. He also hit so hard he severely bent
> the frame. He did $3800 worth of damage. We discussed it with him and
> decided not to put it through the insurance as there were no other
> parties involved. His insurance as already high enough. My Father
> loaned him the money to repair it with the understanding that my son
> would work all summer to pay it off. He would get to keep $50 a payday
> and give the rest to cover his bills and debt. Fast forward 3 weeks. He
> goes out for ice cream and I get a call 15 minutes later. He was making
> a left turn on a green arrow and a car ran the red light and hit him.
> It did $12000 worth of damage to his truck. By the grace of God and
> because of the safety of this truck, my son walks away with a sore back
> for a few days. The insurance covers the whole accident. It takes two
> months to get the truck back. In the mean time my son is driving a
> rental car. He is working and paying down his debt. At times he is a
> *** about it, but he is doing it. When he had his first accident, we
> had an agreement that that could never happen again. That this car was
> not suitable for off-roading and that as long as long as we are the
> people responsible to the lender, he would not ever do something so
> foolish again. He gave us his word. All through this he is working
> essentially for his Dad. He is doing a pretty good job. He had to be
> spoken to about not doing some things completely while unsupervised. He
> was given a verbal warning. In the mean time he has started 12th grade.
> My son is ADD and on Strattera. It is a wonder drug for him. He can
> effortlessly maintain a 3.0 or above average while he is taking it.
> Unbeknownest to me, he decides to quit taking it. His grades go in the
> toilet. He is getting a 1.5 average and skipping classes. Up until this
> point he had had the freedom to go out each evening until about 10:30
> on a school night and 1am on weekends. We took away that freedom and
> told him he would not be allowed out on weekdays until his grades
> improved as well as his attitude. He had become very unpleasant, not
> really a functioning member of our family. He glowered and treated
> everyone in the house rather poorly. He was impossible to get to do his
> chores, and when coerced, did them poorly and with resentment. We told
> him he would have to start paying rent and such if he was going to
> continue to not do his schooling, and not contribute with chores around
> the house. He stated that that was fine with him. Keep in mind that he
> is still paying off my dad, and doesn't really have any money to do
> rent at the moment. Fast forward to the night before Thanksgiving. My
> son was supposed to be home from school. He was required at this point
> to let us know where he was. He deliberately did not answer his phone
> and did not come home. I finally reached him at work where he had opted
> to go instead. I am fine with that, just let me know so that I don't
> worry. We have a big confrontation about not making people worry about
> you. We also talk about being more pleasant to everyone in the house.
> We had also found out that he had taken the truck off roading. He and
> his friends had gotten it stuck for 3 hours the previous weekend and he
> had lied about it. We tell him that the truck is now only for use to
> and from work. Period. He has broken our agreement. It finally boils
> down to me saying that if you can't follow the rules, we can no
> longer live under the same roof. He says that that is fine, he will
> leave then. So off he goes. He moves over to a friends house. He
> actually tries to get us to let him take the truck with him. He
> disappears for 4 days. We see his postings on myspace about his
> drinking and partying. He gets his lip pierced. Finally after 4 days
> with no contact he shows up at our house looking for the keys to his
> truck so he can go to work. At this point he had skipped two days of
> work without even calling in. We had also had the truck washed and
> found $450 worth of damage to the front that he had never told us
> about. His father and I look at him and say, 'dude, you are so
> screwed'. You no longer have a truck, and what's worse, you no
> longer have a job. We put the truck up for sale. I have not seen my son
> since. He has called twice. Once to tell me he had just snowboarded for
> the first time. The other he called to tell his father that he had
> found a job at Sams Club. Our opinion at this time is that he needs to
> support himself for a time and grow up. I am angry that this other
> family who doesn't know us has taken him in and allowed him to
> pretend he is taking care of himself. He had a traffic ticket that he
> had to address my Dec 13th, or they would put out a bench warrant. He
> owed me money, but I told him to use his final check to take care of
> his ticket. He took the money and got a tattoo. He did go to the court
> however and get an extension. So far, since he left, I have had a hands
> off policy. I have only contacted him once with information he needed
> to get a job. My question is this: do I continue not to call him? Do I
> let him find his way back, if in fact he does? Am I risking losing my
> relationship with my son? I did send him an email saying I would
> continue to pay for his Straterra as I consider that a medical
> necessity. He has not bothered to respond. I am deeply concerned about
> his future, but I am also committed to letting him learn from his own
> choices. So what do I do? Do I try to support him, or do I let him do
> it completely alone? It seems to me he has chosen solitude, but I
> don't know if that is based on his belief that we are still angry. I
> think he started running from all his problems and responsibilities and
> he has not yet stopped. To say that this is an incredibly painful time
> for our family, would be an understatement. I don't want the person
> back who moved out of here, but I also don't want to lose any future
> with who I think he will some day become. I love my son deeply, I just
> don't much like him right now. Thanks for your input...
>
> Gina
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You did more or less the right thing, but you cannot expect a legal
adult to allow you to control his social life, that was what broke
it for him, it was an impermissable insult that NO one with half a
mind dares permit to another.

It's fine to take YOUR truck back, you SHOULD HAVE at first blush of
deceit or miscreance with it, but you need to separate your property
from his freedom. His living at home should not be used as some means
to control his activities elsewhere, not after 18. You don't have the
budget to be this society's amateur parental police department. He
should pay his own tickets or GO TO JAIL! When he gets out he should
be able to come home, if he has not been abusing you or the house and
its processes. You failed to remain neutral between him and the world!
In fact, you think you're taking HIS side up till now, and then you
turn on him and try to make the world hurt him WORSE just for SPITE!

Since you confused the two, you forced him to use his only leverage
to oppose you, he set about to make it clear that if you OWNED him
as you pretended to, that he would rather DESTROY himself than to
permit that anymore, after this society's legal age of adulthood.
He stopped his meds, he is drinking, using drugs and taking chances
with his life PRECISELY to make it clear to you WHO OWNS HIS LIFE
NOW! And that's a WASTE that YOU have CAUSED, and didn't NEED to.

You'd have been FAR better off if you simply deprived him of YOUR
property he was abusing, and left it be. If he began destroying
the house, then throw him out! Just make it clear that what you're
doing would be to protect yourselves and your property, and NOT to
interfere with his freedom. IF you had done that, he would not now
feel the need to show you who OWNS him by self-destructiveness. He
could understand you protecting your house and property from him,
and he can forgive that. But intermixing that with an effort to
manipulate him is what he cannot dare permit and respect himself,
you gave him NO OTHER CHOICE but to do what he has done. With teens
it is a crucial matter of self-respect. Were he to allow you to
control him, he would lose all self-respect, all hope for his life,
and he would believe all his friends were calling him a baby boy
behind his back. You made everything he did totally UNAVOIDABLE!

If you had not tried to humiliate him and obeyed proper personal
boundaries, he would not have needed to oppose you with his only
weapon, self-destruction.

Just ask yourself how you'd have treated a border or older family
member you had taken in, and you'll see that your behavior and your
attempts at manipulation were inappropriate. Yes, I know it's very
hard not to be a parent after you've acted that way for decades,
but I'd recommend that no parent EVER act that way ANYWAY, it does
nothing but harm! And it doesn't teach anything! Kids should be
expected to act adult, but that will NEVER work unless you also
grant them the freedom to learn how to decide to! Protect them
from really bad outcomes, and act like you'd act if they were
an adult and screwed up, but don't try to do it INSTEAD of THEM
having to learn to do it!

Treat your kids as fellow housemates, at least the way that you have
to treat your adult friends in order to HAVE ANY AT ALL!! That *IS*,
afterall, what we're teaching them to be, so why not just always
treat them that way?? Stay out of THEIR business, and stop trying
to manipulate and live their life FOR them. Doesn't work!

Or as Dr. Phil would say regarding what you're doing now:
"And how's that workin' for ya?"
Steve
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