Family background – We're from the UK, I’m a teacher, my husband was a communications and PR exec, is now living away from home while training to be a teacher. We have two sons – S the 19 year old, ADD, graduated high school, currently working, has applied to university, and H, 13, calm, steady and doing fine.
We’ve had a very rough time with S since he was 13/14. We lived in Brussels, Belgium at the time, and he resisted his diagnosis of ADD, was also very oppositional. He started going on facebook and began taking drugs (mainly weed), having sex, telling lies, staying out very late, and when confronted or challenged in any way, became violent and abusive. When he was 16, we moved to a small rural island, and he had a great school, but he continued with the emotional ups and downs – was very extreme, sometimes violent, breaking doors, windows, pushing and hitting, swearing, abusive, disrespectful. He has hit and punched his little brother. He always accuses us of pushing him too far, and ‘making’ him do the things he does. He drinks excessively – he’s stolen booze from us, bought and drunk bottles of vodka, and the latest is that he is buying pills from someone here on the island.
Today, I threw him out. I discovered his girlfriend is pregnant, and that he took her pregnancy test and put it on facebook and joked about it. I found out that he had used $250 to buy drugs which he should have paid to me in rent/paid back to his girlfriend’s father. I discovered that his girlfriend is dumping him because he keeps lying to her just like he lies to us. I just couldn’t have him in the house any more, because if I did, I felt I was just enabling him and letting him believe that his awful behaviour was in some way without consequences. I know that he is staying with a friend, but I still feel awful. He is warm, he is safe, and he has someone to talk to, which is a relief. I don’t know what to do about helping him without letting him believe he can get away with being thoughtless, cruel and addictive.
We’ve had a very rough time with S since he was 13/14. We lived in Brussels, Belgium at the time, and he resisted his diagnosis of ADD, was also very oppositional. He started going on facebook and began taking drugs (mainly weed), having sex, telling lies, staying out very late, and when confronted or challenged in any way, became violent and abusive. When he was 16, we moved to a small rural island, and he had a great school, but he continued with the emotional ups and downs – was very extreme, sometimes violent, breaking doors, windows, pushing and hitting, swearing, abusive, disrespectful. He has hit and punched his little brother. He always accuses us of pushing him too far, and ‘making’ him do the things he does. He drinks excessively – he’s stolen booze from us, bought and drunk bottles of vodka, and the latest is that he is buying pills from someone here on the island.
Today, I threw him out. I discovered his girlfriend is pregnant, and that he took her pregnancy test and put it on facebook and joked about it. I found out that he had used $250 to buy drugs which he should have paid to me in rent/paid back to his girlfriend’s father. I discovered that his girlfriend is dumping him because he keeps lying to her just like he lies to us. I just couldn’t have him in the house any more, because if I did, I felt I was just enabling him and letting him believe that his awful behaviour was in some way without consequences. I know that he is staying with a friend, but I still feel awful. He is warm, he is safe, and he has someone to talk to, which is a relief. I don’t know what to do about helping him without letting him believe he can get away with being thoughtless, cruel and addictive.
