persephonebones
New Member
This is my first post here. I have an 18 year old difficult child son, and an 11 year old easy child daughter.
I struggled many difficult years with my son. The struggle was centered on school. He never did work, lost all his homework assignments (meaning he never knew what his homework was because he lost where he wrote it down), and failed almost all his classes. His teachers always passed him though on some extremely crazy "extra credit." It was always because they didn't want him back.
His behavior was never violent, almost never disruptive, and he had friends at got along with everyone. He is quite charming when he's not trying to avoid any kind of work. I'm pretty sure he has tried drugs, but he doesn't display any symptoms of doing them continuously.
We went through many therapists, many attempts at diagnosis, and many medications. None of the therapists could figure out what was going on and much less what to do about it. No diagnosis stuck because none of the treatments worked. None the medications that we tried made any differences besides negative side effects.
When he should have been an 11th grader and still didn't have any 9th grade credits, we got him approved to attend Youth Challenge Academy. (boot-camp style program teaching life skills and getting them ready to take and pass the GED) After 3 months, when we picked him up for the Christmas holidays, they asked him not to come back stating they didn't have the resources to deal with him.
That's when I made him move in with his dad. That was disastrous. He had a few jobs but got fired from them all. He moved out of his dad's on his 18th birthday. He moved in with friends and got a part time job. I was elated that he did so hoping that being on his own will teach him what I never managed to do.
Well, he's lost his job and his friends are asking him to leave if he is unable to pay his bills in December.
I know that I am not mentally or emotionally capable of taking him back in. He refuses to live with his dad.
I want to steer him towards something that will help him. But I don't know what kind of resources there are for someone like him. So....now what?
I struggled many difficult years with my son. The struggle was centered on school. He never did work, lost all his homework assignments (meaning he never knew what his homework was because he lost where he wrote it down), and failed almost all his classes. His teachers always passed him though on some extremely crazy "extra credit." It was always because they didn't want him back.
His behavior was never violent, almost never disruptive, and he had friends at got along with everyone. He is quite charming when he's not trying to avoid any kind of work. I'm pretty sure he has tried drugs, but he doesn't display any symptoms of doing them continuously.
We went through many therapists, many attempts at diagnosis, and many medications. None of the therapists could figure out what was going on and much less what to do about it. No diagnosis stuck because none of the treatments worked. None the medications that we tried made any differences besides negative side effects.
When he should have been an 11th grader and still didn't have any 9th grade credits, we got him approved to attend Youth Challenge Academy. (boot-camp style program teaching life skills and getting them ready to take and pass the GED) After 3 months, when we picked him up for the Christmas holidays, they asked him not to come back stating they didn't have the resources to deal with him.
That's when I made him move in with his dad. That was disastrous. He had a few jobs but got fired from them all. He moved out of his dad's on his 18th birthday. He moved in with friends and got a part time job. I was elated that he did so hoping that being on his own will teach him what I never managed to do.
Well, he's lost his job and his friends are asking him to leave if he is unable to pay his bills in December.
I know that I am not mentally or emotionally capable of taking him back in. He refuses to live with his dad.
I want to steer him towards something that will help him. But I don't know what kind of resources there are for someone like him. So....now what?