Hearhope, you asked whether husband and I would use the "or you can leave" as a threat to back up our rules.
No.
Focus on your goals in having taken your son home again.
There have been some problems (not unexpected). What you want is to reclaim your power as parents.
And what parents do best is help their children clarify and achieve their goals.
One of the most important things I ever said to my son is that I loved him too much to watch him destroy himsef. I told him that it hurt me to see where he was taking his life, and that I would never help him to do that. That was how I led into the "these are the things I expect while you are here at home with us".
Whatever age your son is, if he is living at home, it should be because home is the best place to prepare for a future filled with many good choices. Home is where you live while you take a degree, or save money for your first business, or whatever.
Home is not where you live while you destroy yourself.
See the difference?
If we go into it all thunder and rule making and anger, the difficult child has no choice but to respond the same way.
It isn't really a battle, though. Everyone wants the same thing.
When we see where the kids get themselves to when they go a wrong way, it is almost impossible not to blame, or at least, question ourselves and our parenting. Those questions make us weak. When the kids are in trouble though, we need to be as strong as we know how to be.
For me (and I think it was DDD who taught me this), our task as parents is to believe for the kids that they CAN turn things around. When you look at it that way, you always have a response, because your goals for them are so clear. Because your goals for them are so clear, you begin to feel the rightness in the things you have to do or say.
The thing is, if your son is determined to walk down that other path, he has no business trying to pretend he is walking the path you all understood he would be walking before he came home again.
Go ahead and call a spade a spade, but love him while you do it.
And believe he is capable of more.
About the bathroom thing, and the prom thing?
Tell him you know he knows better than to do stuff like that, and to stop acting like a jerk.
Because (yep, here it comes again!) he was raised better than that.
The other thing I would say is that it never feels right, it never feels clear or correct, when we are in these kinds of situations with our kids. Mostly it feels lost and lonely and pretty dark.
But that's okay.
This will pass.
Barbara
