Can this day get any better!!! Thru all of this other "stuff" I have now managed to break a tooth in HALF that I was supposed to have a root canal on Friday. Guess the good news is now I don't need the root canal!!! Sure does hurt, though!
Here's what I really need some help with...... HOW do I make my son liable for his actions? "Society and the legal system" makes ME liable, not him. I'm the one that has to take time off from work to go to the school, court, etc. etc. If the court system just gives him a slap on the wrist, he won't have suffered a thing for his actions, nor will he have learned anything. Should he be made to do community service, guess who will have to make sure he gets there, ME! If I make him responsible for getting there, and he doesn't, guess who they come after, ME! He's 15 and thinks he's got the world by the tail. I can no longer control his behaviour or his choices. I have yet to figure out how to get HIS monkey off MY back and on to his.... thoughts?
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* We eventually realize that just as the pains of alcoholism had to come before sobriety, emotional turmoil comes before serenity. *
Doll, I do understand. I have a 15 year old girl who just got kicked out of a rehab. I have her on PINS and the probation department says they are trying to make the parents more responcible for thier children. I cannot control her, and I almost feel like giving up on her. I too drive my girl every place she needs to go and how can I be more responcible than I already am? I pay for all her treatments while she goes off and gets high or does not come home. Hitting is not aloud,but I sure feel like knocking some sence into her stupid little head. I will not give her any money,nor drive her any place other than to her appointments. She steals my money and raises hell around the other kids. I just about hate her right now. I want her in a girl's home until she can control herself,but probation says it will not do any good. So what do we do, let the kids run the streets?
Sorry Ladies, at that age, "making them" doesn't work. You can strive for a degree of cooperation, and then they have to accept the concequences of their actions. If you want them to grow up, you can't be bailing them out. I think the hardest part of being the parent of a teenager is "standing in there". It was no yesterday, it is no today, and it is no tomorrow. They keep testing, I think they thought I had premature alzeimers and couldn't remember what I had said.
Time helps, I am here to tell you you can survive the teenage years, with boys it takes longer than girls, in my experience. Now mine are in there 30's and I am still here. So are they and they are pretty nice people!
So, hang tough, remember to breathe, and it really is too bad that pinching their heads off is not appropriate. It would have felt soooooooooo good!!
Doll, Sorry about the tooth, been there done that. Ouch!
The fifteen year old is your responsibility, and as a parent I always had to do my part. Since he's not old enough to drive, you probably had to drive him around anyway. If the court just gives him a slap on the wrist maybe you could come up with some form of punishment. In my town, the kids always get probation and community service.
My son got in some trouble on a school trip when he was 14, no law involved but he had to pay restitution...so at the time he and I did yard work, mowing and such for people...he mowed all summer and almost every dollar he made went to pay the mess off. Talk about a miserable kid, and there were times he made me miserable...but it seems as though he learned something valuable that summer.And we mowed lawns the next summer and had a good time doing it.He's 19 now and is living on his own, working, paying his own way...and I miss him.
Is your son really a terrible kid , or just a teenager who made a bad choice? I know this is big to you now, but it might not seem that way in a month or year. Still praying, God's will be done.
It is so very hard to get sober and suddenly, there you are, confronted with the responsibility of reconnecting with an angry child that you've only seen thru a blur for the last several years. Who is that stranger? There was so much I had to do to regain their respect. I had to be very careful that I didn't overcompensate for my neglect from the previous years, or let guilt dictate how I responded to their acting out. I mean, after years of watching us, suddenly they're going to trust us and respect us with their feelings? No way. I had to scootch my son in to see a counselor. We did some counseling together. I had him meet other members' kids during AA functions. It took years for me to lose his trust, so it took a few to gain it back again, and expect him to respect me. The biggest part for me, the most difficult, was to really open up, and tell him exactly what was going on with me on any given day. Once we toughed it out those first several months, and I started to "grow up" and be a real mother, (I swear, he spent a few years watching over and raising me---and then I sobered up and took that power from him. didn't go over real well). Back then, it was easier to find the right counselor through the agencies provided in that state. No idea what it's like now. But working together was the only way I got thru it. I really had to take responsibility for how he was, without projecting my frustration back onto him. And allow him to be angry with me. Had he been angrier, and acted out directly on me, I would have gotten him into anger mngt. I wish I had seen it coming with my daughter. She was born with FAS, and is now in prison for twenty plus years for decisions she made. But, her father would not allow me to work with her as I had my son. The end result was an angry child becoming an angry and confused adult. You do whatever it takes, and sometimes raising children is a One Day at a Time thing also. Maybe get him more involved in your recovery? Good luck, chris
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Funny, isn't it, how friends and a Power greater than ourselves can neutralize nightmares?
My view and experience are similar to wren's. I admitted that I had been an alcoholic and dysfunctional mother and how that affected my son's life. I went into recovery. He didn't trust me and I realy understood, and the first year of my recovery was an unstable one. But miracles happened in my life thru recovery, and I shared those with him,,,, we often talk about how we are supposed to give it away,,, and I think the first persons to give it away to, including the amends is to our families. but many of us honestly don't know, because of lack of role modeling ourselves, how to be good parents. This is where the program gives us tools, and where professional counseling comes in. There are parenting programs around, and ones that help parents to relate to teens. I'm not sure if they are available in all areas, but most.
As happens with some people in AA at first, I was so enthusiastic and talked about the things I had learned inAA and in my personal spirituality. People noticed a change, including my son, but just thought I had gone fanatic. but consistency in changing from being an angry and abusive bitch to a more constructive and effective person consistently finally impressed him. But he did have to make some mistakes first, and get consequences. My punishment would have just looked like more abuse. It is so hard for a single mother,,, no backup. Especially with sons. He had to go to counseling, we went together sometimes, but it was his counseling, and he began to turn around after his little jail thingy. Little,,, it was terrible! but those things helped him to learn and challenged him to grow.
My son showed me when he was 2 years old that I couldn't 'make him' do anything. He would just sit down and not move. At that time, though, 'cooperation' was not in my vocabulary.. I did what had been done to me by my parents. It is in AA and in my personal relationship with God,, that I am learning what real Love and cooperation means.
So, first things first, like gammy says... we get into our own recovery,,, and then we have some positive experience, strength and hope to share with our kids.
may God mercifully bless you as He has blessed me,
amanda
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do your best and God does the rest, a step at a time
Gammy, He's really not a bad kid, I've seen worse, he just makes bad choices sometimes, and my biggest fear is if HE doesn't somehow suffer from the choices so far, he'll continue to make them and they'll get bigger and worse.......
Zoomie, What is PINS? Wren, some times I do feel like he's a stranger. Wanda, I can't "make" this kid do a thing you're right about that one.
I completely get the fact that he's having it rough. Being a teen ain't easy in itself and having a Mom who was drunk several times a week all his life sure adds to that. But, he attends AA w/me and he's real involved in the program himself. He picked up a surrender chip right before christmas and got himself a "sponsor" because he's terrifed of becoming an alcoholic. And he and talk openly about all things......
the thing I'm having difficulty with is how do the consequences get put on HIM and not ME for his choices.
Thanks for the ES&H. And Phil, you can leave but remember YOU take YOU with YOU wherever you go..... .
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* We eventually realize that just as the pains of alcoholism had to come before sobriety, emotional turmoil comes before serenity. *
PINS "Person in need of supervision". You can put one on your kid through the probation departmetn or the school can or the court can. It's like a court order to get your kid straiten out. Although I find it don't mean shit now days being my daughter is on one and no one has done anything except yell at her. She is out and about town right now and it's 11:30 at night.
I tell her probation officer and no luck. My daughter is a danger to herself and she is acting bad with being in active addiction. We can blame our past lives as much as we want when it comes to our kids acting out,but we arrested the problem,so now they need to arrest theirs.