SS troubles
Hi everyone this could turn into a long rant for which I apologise but i would love to know if anyone else is in the same position and myself and my husband. We have been together for 13 years and I have helped him bring up his son since he was 3. My husband relationship with his ex wife hasn't been healthy and we have had some disputes is the polite term over the years. She has never had boundaries with SS and he's always got everything he wants but we bring our children up with rules and boundaries. The last 18 months (he is now 15) he has begun to cause real issues with lying about being ill to get out of going to school and coming to see us. We have him every other weekend and recently every time he's here it's I'm bored I wanna go home so we talked and he asked if he could have a PC here so he could play with his friends which we thought ok that's fair enough so we spent a lot of money to get him the PC of his choice. Then it was oh I need more PC memory, new keyboard and mouse etc etc so we spent our more and it's still not good enough he is still causing issues every time we are due to have him. Then we found out from school after we have been told by both SS and his mother that he had been to school that I fact he had missed 3 weeks of school and that welfare were going around. She has already paid a fine for his school absences. Then she has kicked him out twice and he's lived with us until she's got lonely and wanted him back. I don't feel like she is the best parent to him she has mental health and his behaviour has caused her to self harm and yet when he is here he is no trouble goes to school without any hassle because he knows he's in trouble if he doesn't. Any way fast forward to this weekend and our turn to have him again and he's "ill" and refusing to come again. His mother isn't answering our calls or texts either. My husband is so upset and I hate seeing him like this, he's a great dad and we have done everything we can to make sure SS has everything. I was expecting him to stop visiting so often at maybe 17/18 but not 15. Should we just let him dictate when he's coming or not. I'm at my wits end with him but it's my husband I feel for. Sorry for rant any advice would be appreciated.
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I could be wrong but I
I could be wrong but I believe (if it ever came down to being analyzed in court) that once the kids reach high school age they have more of a choice in their visitation/which parent they want to spend more time with.
Ss could choose to spend more time with his mother and it can't necessarily be forced to have him come over
I personally would still ask him (somewhere it can be documented) every other weekend or whatever is the typical visitation schedule so he can't come back years later claiming abandonment
And no probably not a good idea to let him dictate per say so if you all invited him and he refused then he will have to wait until the next scheduled weekend he cannot decide to come on an off weekend unless it's an emergency
Thanks for your reply what
Thanks for your reply what you said makes sense. Think we are going to have to accept we aren't going to see him that often :(
stop trying to tempt him to
stop trying to tempt him to be in your home by giving him a never ending 'I want' list. At his age all dad can do is ask before every pick up and accept when he says no but paying him to show up is allowing him to use you. spend that money of something for the two of you. Mummy wants to raise him like this, it's on her.
Very true thank you he doesn
Very true thank you he doesn't even seem grateful for anything we do. He just wants to do the weekends away, the holidays without the boring weekends when we aren't doing something for him.
If BM is letting him do
What he wants. Like not going to school. Play video games all day and night. Following no rules. Why wouldn't he like it there.?
Why would he want to be at your home with rules . He's face the fact that you are going to lose .
Sounds like very much Permissive parenting
The kid dictates at 15. Hes on a power trip and guess what - if your DH doesnt have boundaries now, this will get worse over time.
Follow the visitation orders. Let DH do the parenting. I know its hard to watch how this all goes down, but its very common for the kids to choose the more lenient parent even though what they REALLY need is rules and structure.
The intensely hard part is what if the kid doesnt graduate high school? Are you up for becoming the failure to launch pad?
SD18 barely graduated. When she started high school during the lockdowns, she was failing half her classes (like art, english and orchestra), and I tried to step in then got my head chopped off for it, and was accused of "harrassment".
Since then, SD18 her senior year was not showing up to classes, so she decided along with her mother to do "independent study" and was failing that too. At the last few weeks she got it together and walked etc, but it was touch and go for a long time.
Its stressful, but you have to let go...
As soon as I saw "failing
As soon as I saw "failing half her classes such as art, music (typically the 'easy' classes)" .... I was like this has to be that lazy powersulk girl
You need to decide now what
You need to decide now what you will and won't tolerate when he is an adult and make that clear to DH now. Can he change the path SS is on ? Probably not, the most dysfunctional parent wins. Don't let any of your money go towards this black hole. Make sure DH pays his fair share first , don't cover for him so he can enable SS. DH will eventually be forced to chose his own future over chasing SS. Be sure DH is saving for retirement too. Most important.
Wow, this is so similar to my
Wow, this is so similar to my story it's crazy! There are some differences. But my SO and I have been together 13 years and his son was 3 when we started dating and is now 15 as well. But my SO and I are not married yet... We have had the same issues with BM giving him what he wanted all the time and not disciplining him when it was seriously needed and the effects of that lack of discipline are showing up in his behavior now I feel. He threw a fit when he had to come to our place every other weekend even though for the most part we did everything he wanted and accomadated him a lot. He was able to play video games most of the weekend, we bought all the food he liked, took him to the park to play and on hikes. But it got to a point where he was deciding if he came or not. He was always "sick". He missed an excessive amount of time from school. But I think the school brushed it off a little because of his mom's Lupus flair ups. But I believe him not wanting to go was partly due to his mother having Lupus and he had anxiety about it. But we have also had a problem with him lying a lot. In the past he has gone home after the weekend and told his mom things that never happened. Since he was 3 it has been very difficult for me to feel like I was able to have a close relationship with him no matter how kind or accomadating I was to him. He was very closed off and I didn't know if it was because he was resentful of me or if his mother was causing him to feel some kind of way towards me. He has been in therapy for quite a while now because he had some serious behavioral issues in school since elementary. (spitting on the floor, throwing things and trying to hit his teachers) That has actually gotten better since he has gotten older. But his mother passed away this past November. He has been living with us since. And since then we have caught him being abusive towards our cat and just yesterday discoved he has been deliberatly peeing on his bedroom floor. He lies and denies it but ends up admitting to it and when asked why his answer is always, "I don't know". My SO has said many times that he should have tried to take custody when he was younger when he realized that he was being disiplined correctly and not parented correctly and that he regrets it now. It's hard to say if that would have made a difference or not.
I'm not saying this to scare you or anything because you may very well never have any issues like that. I hope you don't! But it's a good idea to keep an eye on his mental health and his behaviors. And it could possibly help if he had a therapist or someone to talk to that he can feel comfortable opening up to. And maybe SS and SO can sit down and have a heart to heart. I don't know if this is very helpful but your story sounded so similar to mine I almost thought I was reading an old post of mine for a minute. So maybe in some way this can help!