Recieved Ss's progress report
The report just got emailed to our family email account. Ss at one point could not be bothered to give us anything from school so we get the reports emailed. Here is what he got. 65 in English, 71 in Math, 58 in Science and 63 in History. And the most infuriating part is the teacher's comments. All of them mentioned that he does excellent work in his assignments but leaves entire sections in his unit tests blank. He gets high 80's and 90's in assignments. They are the only things keeping him from failing. He knows the material. But he just sits there during test taking. One teacher even said that Ss was sleeping and she had to wake him up to get him to try and attempt the test questions. He gets assignments done because he gets bored at home, and my Dh rides him a bit.
He has zero motivation and we do not know what to do. He has no plans of what to do after high school. We want him to go to college but at this rate, he will be lucky to graduate high school. My Dh is close to buying a house with a separate basement apartment in it. So Ss can live there when he gets older. This upsets me because Ss should be living his life. Not cooped up at home forever. We have tried everything to get him to do better. The therapist has said he will only do better if he wants to. I can only imagine how upset my Dh will be when he sees the report. We know it is going to be bad but it upset us every time.
And Ss called me the c word recently. It hurt my feelings. No one has ever talked to me like that. It is very tense between us. I have tried to keep away from him a bit until everything cools down. How did my life get to this?
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Okay, here is the plan....
Okay, here is the plan.... and it worked for us.
Turn SS in to your beck-and-call-boy-chore-bitch. We told my SS that he would never starve, be cold, or run around naked. But, we also never commited that he would be allowed be a professional sofa wrestler in our house either.
We had to keep our collective foot up his ass to get him out of HS on time. He did step up and graduate with honors but not before nearly getting himself killed by either his mother or I. Fortunately for him, he never pissed us both off bad enough at the same time that we both wanted to kill him in the same moment.
When he graduated from HS he went on a several week RV road trip with my parents and his cousins (my nephews). They had a blast. Then he went to SpermLand for his final CO'd SpermClan visitation. He turned 18 on the last day of his visitation and aged out from under the CO for both visitation and CS. Not one adult from the SpermClan bothered to call him for more than a year after that.
Anyway, my wife went to SpermLand to bring him home after graduation to get him the hell away from the SPermClan's idiotic bullshit. She wanted to pick him up in person so that it would be very difficult for him to tell her he was staying if that was his plan. He was happy to come home.
When he got home we told him "get in school and get a job or join the service". Nothing ..... he wore our sofa out with his couch rodeo career for about 6mos. During that time we gave him increasingly long chore lists. It started with cleaning his room and bathroom and vacuuming the living room once a week and eventually grew to cleaning all of the bathrooms, the kitchen, all of the floors, dusting, cleaning the kitchen, the bird cage, brushing the bugs and webs off of the outside of the house, cooking every night and cleaning up after it .......
He finally had enough and approached us with "you guys should pay me for all of the crap I have to do around the house". We showed him the house payment, payment for his car, insurance, the food bill, the utilities, etc..... and told him "we do pay you. We house you, clothe you, feed you and provide you with transportation ..... no go do your chores".
He started looking in to the service, narrowed it down to the USMC and and USAF and eventually joined the USAF. He signed for 6yrs and got a great school and some amazing training out of it. He graduated from Basic in June and just finished Tech School this week and heads off for advanced secret cyber training stuff after he finishes a week of leave.
So, embrace having a live in beck-and-call-boy-chore-bitch until your SS finally gains clarity and launches.
Trust me, the incredibly unpleasant chore list works.
Good luck.
Ss does no chores around the
Ss does no chores around the house unless its his room. He does not even clean his bathroom, my Dh does it for him. Getting him to do anything is like pulling teeth. Thanks for the idea though Rags.
We have. He just has no
We have. He just has no desire to do the tests. He does the assignments himself because sad to say, he has no friends right now. And we see him work on the assignments everyday.
GG's kids get way worse
GG's kids get way worse grades than that. Mostly just didn't bother turning in assignments and the lovely Child Protective Worker BM (the Behemoth) doesn't make her darlings do anything they don't WANT to do (i.e. brush their teeth, shower, do homework, go to bed at a reasonable hour, etc.) b/c she's her kid's best friend!! :sick:
Much LESS study or do anything that might require an iota of effort!!! Basically they are prize pets to her and of course, the almighty CS brass ring!!
OH and GG's kids are in 10, 7 and 3rd grade. Nowhere NEAR graduating!
I wonder sometimes if your ss
I wonder sometimes if your ss needs to feel normal praying. Like after all he's been through, a part of me wonders if rags approach (that may be a little harsh with this child) may be exactly what he needs. To have his dad see him as "normal" again, and treat him like ya'll do your other two kids. I feel so bad for all the abuse and torment your SS has gone through... but unless he wants to spend his life institutionalized (because well.. honestly eventually you and DH won't be around to take care of him) he has to suck it up and come back to normalcy. What is more normal than a child than household chores? Giving him some sort of responsibility that he can do every day/week to be proud of. It doesn't have to be difficult or monumentous, but even like him being in charge of vacuuming all the "common rooms" of the house every week.
I just wonder sometimes if he doesn't progress because everyone treats him like he's as fragile china doll. I get that in a lot of ways he IS a fragile doll, but I think the only way for him to grow stronger is for other people (mainly your DH) to treat him like he's stronger.
You are right. But we are not
You are right. But we are not able to find a middle ground on this. My Dh has become overprotective, almost excessive. We have tried the whole chore route. It was a nightmare. Now we just make him clean his room.
I know about the chores. The
I know about the chores. The meltdowns we get from it is crazy. And when we try and make him eat with us, he has refused to eat altogether. We are trusting this therapist because she has worked wonders. It may not look like it but Ss was much worse in some areas. I wish we could fix it easily but its not that easy
And yes, my Dh is going to be a complete enabler when Ss grows up. I see it starting now.
Is your dh going to
Is your dh going to counseling at all? It might help him work out some of his guilt about what happened, and help him find better ways to help him than giving into his every whim.
I know my own dh balks at the idea of ever going to therapy or anything, but if its therapy or crippling his child more than he already has been set back... it certainly can't hurt