Not sure what to make of this

[welcometowitsend]

So difficult child is up to his usual antics.

He is back living with girlfriend - at least for now. I'm not sure where that is going.

When we went to the counsellor on Wednesday he told her that he was allowed to stay at girlfriend's for a week and then was planning on finding another friend to move in with. So I think - ok, let the couch surfing begin.

Then when the counsellor says "do you think you crossed a line when you called your mother an f'n b?" He says, "No, not really." Whaaaatttttt!!! Now, he may have been saying this just to tick me off but you should have seen the counsellor's face! The usual impartial face looked a little shocked!

Anyway, he also informed us all that he often sleeps in the same bed with girlfriend at her place. And he wonders why I won't let him stay there? Duh! Oh no Mom, this is perfectly normal teenage behaviour and all my friends are allowed to sleep over at their boyfriends/girlfriends house. Yeah, ok.

I'm not sure how he is going to like this counsellor. He was pretty disengaged through the entire session - after she told him that a home was not a democracy (I love that!!) he seemed to kind of glaze over unless he was given an opportunity to make me look bad and then he was all over it. He goes to see her alone next week so we will see how that goes. I may go by myself next week too - I think I need it.

So, anyway, he skipped classes two or three more times this week. The school calls each time and I report him truant - not that they seem to be doing anything about it. Next time he skips I will call the vice principal again. Grrrr.

Fast forward to today.... I call girlfriend's house and get her dad. (I knew they weren't home - it's Friday night after all) Anyway, I say I have something sensitive I'd like to discuss with him and that the reason I am calling is because if girlfriend was my daughter then I would want to know. I tell him I'm very sure they are sexually active and that difficult child told us that he sleeps in her bed with her. girlfriend's father was kind of surprised by this - really? So, anyway, I discussed my concerns with him - their young age, neither has a job, neither is finished high school, blah blah blah.

We then move on to other topics. girlfriend's dad is discovering he isn't very ambitious. No kidding! He has been asked to cut the grass, clean up, do dishes - he doesn't do anything unless girlfriend badgers him into doing the dishes once in a while. Apparently girlfriend has to be on his case all the time to get anything done. he's probably getting worse nagging from her than he got from us - but I guess the sex wins out.

I also asked girlfriend's dad how long he was intending to let difficult child stay. He doesn't know. He'll have to talk to girlfriend and find out what is going on. So girlfriend is running the house? Or is girlfriend's mom running things and just not telling dad because they are getting divorced and I don't think they communicate with each other at all. It was just weird that my kid is living in his house and he has no idea if the kid is allowed to stay, has to go or what - he has to ask his daughter?

I get a phone call from difficult child at 11:15pm tonight asking me why I told girlfriend's dad that I would sue him if difficult child got his daughter pregnant. What? I never said that. So, I told him that I had concerns about him sleeping with girlfriend and thought that her father should know what was happening. I said maybe he is worried we will sue him but I didn't say that I would. It was an odd phone call.

Why wouldn't girlfriend's father just say - gig's up. You're not sleeping with my daughter in my home. I"m not ok with that. Is he that afraid to make his kid angry with him that he feels the need to blame it on me? Sorry dear, you can't sleep with difficult child because his parents might sue me if you get pregnant? It was just weird.

 

[DaisyFace]

So weird!

Sounds like the girlfriend's parents are pretty messed up. girlfriend must be a difficult child herself!

 

[TeDo]

Definitely sounds like girlfriend "wears the pants" in that family. Talk about dysfunctional. Dad DOES sound spineless....let's his wife leave for another man, let's his daughter be the boss of the house, uses you as a scapegoat, allows difficult child to stay there any time he wants, etc. He sounds very wishy washy.

 

[welcometowitsend]

Well, there is definitely some chaos over at their place. And you are right about the father - wishy washy and walking on eggshells so no one gets angry with him.

Funny thing is that although girlfriend seems very controlling and obviously likes to get her own way - she does know how to self regulate herself. To my knowledge she is still going to classes all the time, gets her homework done and is not up until all hours on the internet. So on the one hand she has appeared to be a terrible influence on difficult child but on the other hand she seems to have her own act together.

 

[TerryJ2]

Oh, dear, an entire difficult child household over there!

You did the right thing. Parents should always communicate, even if it isn't taken the right way. (I've done plenty of that this year. )

girlfriend does seem to have her act together and I wonder how long she'll put up with-all of this. Sad that her parents are such wusses and she is forced to learn all of this on her own at an early age.

Fingers crossed for all of you.

 

[SuZir]

It seems to bother you a lot that your son and his girlfriend are sexually active. And I understand a worry (I do hope my easy child isn't yet sexually active and doesn't become so a year or two, but to be honest, I'm not holding my breath.) In my life experience it is very difficult, or more like impossible, to control teens sexuality. And after they have started their sex life, it is loosing battle to try to prevent them continuing doing so. It's of course relatively possible to forbid kids spending a night or sleeping in the same bed, but that doesn't mean they are not able to have sex. When I was young there were couples who were having sex in school bathrooms during the breaks because that was their only opportunity. It is simply impossible to control. You can talk to the kid, you can try to instil values, you can make opportunities less etc. but in the end you can not control other person's sexuality. You also have to remember sexuality is the second strongest urge any animal has and teenage brains are wired for preproduction. In complicated world teen kids brains and situation in life is often not yet ready for the baby, but their bodies think they are. So if I were you, I would maybe think about damage limitation when it comes to this topic. Try to press the idea that they are not at all ready for the baby and using reliable birth control - and making sure they do have an access to that. Luckily it at least seems that girlfriend has her act together enough to maybe take care also this.

Maybe it would help to make a written list about the problem behaviours your son has, a list about the things he should absolutely do and things you hope he would do and a list about what you are and are not ready to make for/with him. If I have understood right and your problematic situation is something rather new, it probably feels like total mess. Those lists could make it easier for you to see, what is going on, what options you may have and also help you to prioritize and pick your battles. And also come up with the boundaries that are not to be broken (for example how much destructiveness you can stand in your home considering not only you parents but also his little sister.) Things like that. It doesn't solve anything per se, but may help to make some sense and order to the chaos.

 

[welcometowitsend]

Suz - Yes, you are right. It does really bother me that they are sexually active. Mainly because I'm terrified of them getting pregnant and having to deal with the fallout of that. Birth control is only as effective as the people using it and while they do have access to it accidents still happen. It's just scary, as I'm sure we all know. I guess I just don't want to help them along on that journey - I know they'll do it anyway but difficult child is the kind of kid that would come back and say "Well, girlfriend is pregnant. What did you expect would happen when you let me sleep over at her house?" Of course he would probably find a way to make it my fault no matter which stance I took. Ugh.

I will make some lists of things so I can get it out of my head and on to paper and then I can try to make some sort of order from it and get the counsellor to help walk husband and I through this. Thank you for that.

 

[SuZir]

Yes, kids like them having a baby is a scary thought. And no birth control is 100 % even with meticulous use and much less so in the hands of difficult children. And I'm in no way saying you should accommodate your son having sex by e.g. allowing him to spend a night with the girlfriend under your roof. I just wanted to point out that you may want to consider how much you want to waste your ammo to this matter because it is the one parents usually loose.

But after I had wrote that message to this thread, I read your post in the other thread, where you told more about your worries concerning your son and sex. And after reading that I felt there was some warning signs of behavioural addiction. I don't have experience of sex being that addiction, but in your post there was something very familiar to me when thinking of my difficult child's gambling issues. All addictions have a lot common and behavioural addictions have even more and something in your post really felt familiar. It is very typical teen to think a sex a lot, be very curious about it. I wouldn't for example worry much about one or two time thing there a kid pretends to be something different than they are and have online sex or something like that, I would just think it is curiosity and quite normal. I for example have a easy child niece who writes fanfiction (her own stories using characters from TV, movies or books) and draws manga. And a lot of it is homoerotic stuff featuring two males. I'm sure she has not shown me the rowdier stuff, so what I have seen has been rather romantic and not explicit, but I do know girls (it is mostly written by girls) do write much more explicit stuff also. That kind of things I see as totally normal curiosity. Same goes with porn. It is not nice and we certainly have talked a lot with our sons about how narrow and untrue view porn is to human sexuality. How watching too much of it they will just take an excitement away from their real sex lives when they will start it, because real sex is something totally different and if they try to mirror porn, they will be disappointed and also loose a lot of fun of real sex. But teens being interested about porn is also something very, very normal and common. I do know for sure my sons watch porn occasionally, and indeed when he was given an assignment to analyse Charles Baudelaire's poetry, my difficult child decided to 'be funny' and wrote an five page essay to his lit class arguing how Baudelaire's poetry and porn were basically the same thing and to prove his point he used lots of comparisons that made it clear he is very familiar with all your standard porn clichés (and that he had also read the poems.) He was around your son's age at the time.

But same way like many other normal and common things, sex and porn can turn to addictions and devastate a person with the addiction and people around them. And while I can't pinpoint a certain one thing in your post that made me worried about your son maybe being in the process of developing addiction, there was something in the whole that made me feel alarmed. I may be totally wrong, but that is how I felt while reading your post in the other thread.

 

[welcometowitsend]

Suz - That is exactly how I feel about it. It's a combination of things that make me worry about him developing some kind of sex addiction. Scares me for him.

One of the things I find most alarming is he doesn't seem to have any embarrassment. I have found his lotion and toilet paper left out in his room (for masturbation - which is totally normal) and he just shrugs. I mean it's left out to the point that if you walk past his door it's in the middle of the floor staring you in the face. He just doesn't seem to care or be the least bit embarrassed that his mother is approaching him and asking him to please - put it away - I don't want to see it.

He also had a lot of pornographic type stuff on his FB page and I was asking him to take it down (his little sister and grandparents can see that) and he was sitting and laughing about it - how funny it was, etc.. I was disgusted by it and he didn't care. That alarms me.

Now I know kids these days are a lot more open about their sexuality than we were but I think he goes beyond that to a different level.

I guess time will tell. So hard to sit back and watch what they are going to choose for themselves. Sigh......

 

[Confused]

welcometowitsend,Hugs. Im so sorry your going through this. Its a tough situation that I have not experienced. I do know that you have to keep being open and calm with you them and keep the counseling like you are. Sexuality is so much more open these days, but there should be limits, I agree. You have your hands full and I wish you luck

 

[DammitJanet]

Welcome...my kids are very open but yours has ours beat by a mile. Honestly I think I would contact that girls mother since obviously the father doesnt seem to have a brain cell in his head and ask her if her daughter is on birth control. If she isnt, its time he is on the depo shot. I wouldnt even trust her to take the pill. I would then give your son condoms by the case each month. Also hand him at least 4 boxes of Plan B. Just in case some one doesnt use protection one night.

I have no clue if you can force your son to come home or not. In some states it is legal for a kid to leave the home at 16 and just go about their business but you are still responsible for them. Its also legal for them to quit school which might be why truancy isnt a big deal to them. If your state says he is required to live at home it might still be an upward battle because most police departments wont actively look for a kid who runs and wants to be gone. you can keep reporting him as a runaway but they wont look.

Good luck.

 

[welcometowitsend]

DJanet - No, I can't force my son to come home. He can legally leave at age 16. The ridiculous thing is that he has to stay in school until he is 18 or he graduates.

I am going to get in contact with them again to discuss birth control and follow your advice about making sure he has boxes of condoms and plan B (if necessary). I really don't want to be a grandmother right now.

And yes, he is very open about stuff I wouldn't think he'd be open about. I guess the best thing I can do (if he comes home) is just keep myself aware of the potential problem and symptoms of it progressing.

Confused - Thank you for your post. I appreciate the support.