I'm new

[nervous]

Hi all, I'm very glad to find you.

Things are spiraling out of control in my home. My 17 yr old son seems to think he is in charge, I know he is using drugs & very disrespectful to me. Recently his friend has been staying at our home, just what we needed, can't handle one difficult child now we have 2. Told my son his friend needs to go home. He doesn't see why since we have extra rooms & I must be terrible mean. I talked to friend's mom & she is willing to meet me to get the kid however the kid won't go with her, my son & him take off on foot & of course end up back at our house later that night.

My son has destroyed our home, the walls in the basement has huge holes in them, He breaks things when he gets mad, light bulbs. picture frames, flower pots, printers. TV you name it he breaks it. Well H moved his X box tonight & it inadvertantly scratched his game & he is rip roaring mad, yelling that we owe him 25 dollars after all the hundreds of dollars of damage he has caused. HE drops F bombs left & right & all the while this uninvited guest is in our house. We have called the police before & they take him out but he just comes back later.

My difficult child has been in treatment, arrested multiple times, suspended from school. He refused to get any help at all & pretty much won't talk to me.
I wake up every morning with a bleeding knot in my stomach & it is there when I go to bed.

Grace of God has gotten me through so far.

 

[SuZir]

Hi and Welcome! Happy you found us, sorry, you had to.

It sounds your situation is totally out of control right now and first thing to do is gain back that control. First of all, tell your uninvited house guest to leave. If he doesn't call police. If he comes back, call again. Try to get him arrested of trespassing or something. Tell your son he is not to invite anyone to your home and if he does you are going to ask them leave and if necessary call the police.

Then your son. I would take about everything away from him. He does need roof over his head, food several times a day, his school books and a mattress and some clean clothes. Nothing more. If there are things in his life that are positive influences for him, I would let him keep those too. But for example that Xbox certainly has negative influence on him from the way he behaved. If he breaks things or is violent, call the cops.

You can't force your son to accept help, you can only offer that. But you are not required to offer him comfy life while he is screwing his life up either.

But the first thing you need to do is have a good talk with your husband. Blame game doesn't help and you absolutely need to work together to gain your house back and to put your son to his place. After you have got your house to be a bit more peaceful and cut down a bit of that extra entitlement your son has, you are in better place to try to find the ways to support positive changes in your son's life. But first things first, you have to gain back control of your house.

 

[BusynMember]

When will your son turn 18? Sadly...he is bullying you in your own house and self-destructing with drugs, probably doing them in your house which is illegal and could get YOU into trouble. He is also defacing your property, which is unacceptable. That will cost you a mint in the long run. I don't know how much money you have, but I couldn't pay to fix a house a difficult child put holes in.

Do you have younger kids? I'd be planning for him to leave when he graduated high school unless he goes to a rehab and stops trying to rule the roost. Be careful with "friend." "Friend" can by law become tenant where by law he CAN'T be tossed out. Be careful there. Are you married? I'd have your hub/SO and his father/SO carry him out of the house, if necessary. Since when is he allowed to just stay there? If he is under 18, call the police and say a minor refuses to go home...he is a runaway. And be sure to tell them he is using drugs in your house. I'm a little fuzzy on why you haven't tried harder to get him out. No extra kid would ever be living in my house, regardless of how tough I had to be or what I had to do to get him out or how PO'd my wild child acted. Sounds like you are afraid of him. Does he attack you? The police should be called every time this happens until he is 18 and asked to leave.

Make it clear to your son that if he doesn't get help NOW and listen to your house rules, that he will lose the privledge of residing in it. Many of us, if not most, have had to make our drug using children leave for our peace of mind and for them to either sink or swim in order to be motivated to get help. He can not continue to wreck your house, spoil your health and interfer with your marriage. If you let him do this, apparently he will. You deserve a good life too, one of peace. This is NOT his house and in my opinion he should not be allowed to break the law and destroy your things in it. Does he steal from you? That is typical of drug users too. His bullying of you however is worse than many drug users and he needs to have his life put into perspective. Right now he owns nothing, not even the right to live with you after he is 18.

Can we have more detail/background on your son? Has he always been this way?

I strongly suggest going to Narc-Anon for face-to-face help. You don't need to be religious to benefit from all of the parental knowledge you will gain at the meetings and all the emotional support you also get. I went...it was invaluable for me and my husband. I also went to Al-Anon. Anything, just to help give us the strength to keep going.

 

[scent of cedar]

Hi, honey :O)

Welcome. You will find safe haven, here.

I'm glad you found us.

From us, you will learn the strength to cope with, and to change, your situation.

Others will be along, shortly.

:O)

Barbara

P.S. If you read the links so many of us enclose at the bottoms of our posts, you will find information we have found helpful in dealing with, or understanding, our own problem children. There is much good information there for you. :O)

 

[Zardo]

I am so sorry for your situation. Earlier this year, my 17 year old was similar....maybe not quite as severe, but I know this pain. It does sound like he is using drugs, and not just pot. Your best bet would be for him to get arrested and put into the court system. So - call the police every time he acts out. Call the youth officer in your town and tell them your situation, get your son on their radar. They will have good suggestions. In my town, you can register your difficult child as a "youth in crisis" with the court to get them onto probation. That way, they are under the watchful eye of the court, being drug tested and sent to programs. If they step out of line, the consequences go up. If he doesn't comply, he could even get sent to detention. Don't feel guilty about it - you have already tried to help him and tell him what to do, he doesn't want to listen to you - so he can listen to them or go to detention. That may be what's needed to get through to him. You are in a terrible situation - you need help and the police and courts have dealth with these situations before - they know what to do.

As for the friend, I agree - call the police on him every time he comes back. You need to regain control of your home - you deserve it. Please find a support group or a counselor who has a lot of experience helping families of struggling teens - you need support right now. Keep posting. Good luck.

 

[Nancy]

Welcome, you have landed in a place where you will be understood and comforted. My personal feeling is that you should not have to live in your home in fear and if you son is using drugs and treating you and your home with disrespect, as soon as he turns 18 he needs to leave. You can call the police on him now, we did. Each family has to decide that for themselves. You have tried treatment and it didn't help so this is not your first time around this block. You need to take control back in your home and if that means youcall the police, so be it.

Once he turns 18 he should not be allowed in your home at all until he gets help.

 

[nervous]

Thanks for the advise, I have decided to give friend's mom one chance to come get him (surprise visit) and then I'm only dealing with police. If we have to have them out here every day then that's what we have to do. I wanted to give you a little history but for some reason I'm having trouble formatting my posts here. I will see once I post this & then start a new one. I am truly thankful to find this board, until now I really felt alone & totally guilty of how he has become, as if it was my fault.

 

[BusynMember]

Do NOT feel guilty.

Unless you lit some weed and stuffed it in his mouth and put a gun to his head forcing him to inhale, he made that decision himself. Ditto for his other drug use. Unless you taught him, "Be rude to us!" he made the decision on his own, in spite of being taught correctly and drug use does NOTHING for the manners of our teens. This kid, like most of our difficult child teens, got into a bad crowd of kids and decided that his peers were more important than his family and we didn't teach our kids that at all. They chose to disregard their upbringing.

Take a load off your shoulders. Your son is almost a man (even if he is not emotionally mature) and soon he will be held accountable for all that he does and only HE can make the necessary changes to turn his life around. It does happen to some of our difficult child teens, even when we think it will NEVER happen. Take care of yourself. Try to reconnect with your husband and pay attention and spend time with loving family and friends who treat you the way you deserve. You have a life completely seperate from your child (took me a loooooooooong time to believe this one), but you deserve to have a GOOD, productive, peaceful life in spite of your child ruining his own life.

Unless you beat him with a frying pan on the head, you are not responsible for your son's behavior and therefore you have no reason to feel any guilt. Please...give yourself the break you deserve! We care about you here

 

[DDD]

Ditto the other "family" members. We all have the "scars" and with caring support encourage you to stop the cycle because it will NOT stop on it's own. Hugs and welcome. DDD

 

[Kathy813]

Hi nervous. I commented on your other thread but I wanted to say hello and welcome on this one. I'm sorry you had to find us but glad that you did.

~Kathy