All hell is breaking lose
I have been married for 4 years. I have a step son who is 8 years old. Recently, the way I dicipline is wrong and all my husband and I do is fight. My MIL swear my step son is ADHD sorry but quit making excuses for bad behavior. I have had doctors say that he is not. I am at my breaking point. my husband pretty much blows me off cause he says i yell too much. Well sorry but when you are talking to someone who is like a brick wall you are going to yell. we just moved from oregon to texas and it has just been hell. Because i am not allowed to disipline any more my step son keeps getting in trouble at school. I really dont need this crap in my life. I love my husband and my step son. but I am falling apart. I have no authority over my step son perhaps that is my fault.his mother abandoned him but and i am suppose to do everything for this child but I cant disipline.My husband travels for his job so it is mostly me taking care of my stepson. my husbands idea of disipling is taking away games for a day. Iwould rather straight ground him for the weekend. This is getting out of control.I need some advice.
The root cause of the
The root cause of the problem is ........ OREGON! My Wife and SS are and the SpermClan are from Oregon. Accountability is a foreign concept in the whole damned state IMHO. Fortunately my Wife and SS have been out of that liberal cesspool long enough that their eyes have opened to the toothless moron "it's not my fault the man is out to get me" crap that the SpermClan and even my IL's all spout.
Take the little shit to court in Tx and let a conservative Tx judge get hold of him and he will learn in a hurry what accountability for his actions feels like.
I wholeheartedly disagree with your statement "I have no authority over my step son". Take the games away for a day or ground him for the weekend??????????? How about make him take a hammer to the game system and never let him play them again. How about instead of letting him sit in front of the idiot box drooling on his game controller have him sit in an empty room with nothing but a desk, paper and pencil writing "I will do what I am told to do when I am told to do it at home and at school" every free minute until he brings home a progress report or report card with acceptable grades and behavior comments. Every time you get a call from the school about bad behavior or he brings home unacceptable grades ......... back to the sentences. He will learn to love quality time with you and his Dad and it won't take long for him to forget about the game system.
10,000 sentences should get the point across that if he is screwing around in school instead of behaving and working he can work while he should be having fun. When we had similar issues with our Son (My SS) he wrote thousands of sentences in a room by himself while all of his buddies were outside playing. We would not accept poor work either. If a sentence was written messily he wrote 10 more for every messy sentence. Tailor the sentence to the behavior so that the message sinks in and eventually he will get it.
The bonus is that your SS will have incredibly good hand writing when he is through with the punishment. My kid is now 17 and has beautiful hand writing. Every teacher he has had since he was 8 has commented on his handwriting.
Your DH travels for work and that means you are the disciplinarian and you can discipline as you see fit. I for one would insist on being an equity parent to your SS. I insisted on equity parent status when my Wife and I married more than 15yrs ago when my Wife and I married. I would tolerate no less if I was you.
Jerk a knot in the little shits tail and don't untie it until he performs and behaves appropriately.
Good luck and best regards,
Success is rarely final. Failure is rarely fatal. It is character, courage and consistency of effort that count. Vince Lombardi (with some minor Rags modifications) To each according to their performance, screw Karl Marx. (Rags)
You think Oregon is bad? You
You think Oregon is bad? You should come to California!
krystaljc, have you ever heard of John Rosemond? He's an excellent parenting expert who includes advice for stepparents in his books too. If you search his name on Amazon you should get some of his books as results. They're worth reading.
Rags, you have some good advice too. It's important for bio parents and stepparents to be on the same page and I think that so many bio and stepparents aren't on the same page and that is the root of a lot of the problems on this site.
I like the 'writing lines',
I like the 'writing lines', as we used to call it. I think it really works!! so good one Rags, I agree on all points
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“Learn by practice.” - Martha Graham
You can't effectively be
You can't effectively be responsible for a child you can't discipline. It is a safety issues. If SS doesn't think he has to listen to you than how do you keep him from doing things that can be dangerous. I would refuse to be responsible for him if I couldn't discipline.
"God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy" and you can't change crazy!!