B
bepositive
Guest
This is my second post here. My 16 year old has struggled with school (ADHD) and started using pot occassionally, but generally, outside of the home adults say he's a model kid: great leader, empathetic, considerate, hard worker. At home, however, he's a bully, rude, disrespectful. My husband has had it with him and on Monday, after my son swore at him, my husband kicked him out of the house. My son said, "Great. I don't want to live with you anyway." And he left. He spent the night with a friend the first night, but I don't know where he was last night. I know he's still going to his job each day and he stopped by the friend's house last night & today, but he refuses to come home. I'm not sure what to do. I said he can come home (& we want him home) IF he can be respectful and stop being a bully, but he says he won't respect us because we don't respect him. (Apparently asking him to close the front door is disrespect.) He refuses counseling, but my husband and I are going. My son says we get along fine as long as we don't try to parent him. He says he's 16 and he can take care of himself. He believes he's capable of making good decisions and we should trust him. However, the issues with pot and giving up on school and laziness at home make me doubt his abilities. The therapist says I can't parent a 16 yr old who won't be parented. My sister says let him stay away until he's ready to abide by our house rules (if we force him home now, nothing will get better). But I don't know what to do. Can I allow my teen to bounce from friend to friend each night? Or sleep in the woods alone? I'm legally responsible for him. Is he technically a runaway if he's going to work every day? How long can he stay away from us before I'm a negligent parent? I mean, if he was living at home I wouldn't let him go somewhere unless I knew the parents were there, etc. But tonight he could be anywhere doing anything. And of course, it's unfair to other parents for him to mooch off them. Am I supposed to call the cops or something and have them bring him home? This is all new territory for me.