tessaturtle
New Member
Morning everyone! Looking for some thoughts on this one~ OK, before the question, bear with me through the set-up:
difficult child tends to not be able to make or keep friends - the ones he does make, the friendships usually do not last more than week due to difficult child being too controlling, raging in front of them, being mean to them, or simply obsessing about them and burning them out! For the last 6 months to a year (!) he has maintained a pretty good friendship with one boy in our town who his age. In his honest moments, difficult child has even said this is his one friend. Well, the past week, difficult child has met another local kid his age and, well, has become obsessed with spending time with him. difficult child completely dissed his only long time friend all weekend due to spending every free moment with this new 'friend'. We even tried to talk to difficult child about it, why you should balance time between the two, not to burn the new one out, how to balance the time - it fell on deaf ears. After promising us he would be spending time with both (and even telling us he did), his text messages tell a different story - he stood up the old friend in order to spend time with the new friend.
We know nothing about this other kid, he came over for a few minutes the other day but didn't say a peep. We know his name because difficult child told us. Normally we don't allow the kids over to someone else's house unless we have met them, but difficult child, despite being told to keep us informed of where he was going, went over after telling us something different. Yesterday evening he stayed out past his time he was told to be home, despite having us call/text him 4 times in an hour to tell him he needed to leave the friend's house and make his way home. When he was told by husband that he was ground from going out the next day, he replied "I don't care" and then proceeded to give husband so much attitude that he husband ended up giving him a week of grounding. He reeked of maple syrup for some reason so we were naturally curious as to why he smelled like that (he literally smelled like he bathed in it!!!), but difficult child lies so much there was no way he was even able to answer that simple question.
Anyway - to the point of my question - since we don't know this kid or family, I checked facebook. The kid has two pages, both open, one that appears to be a normal page with family on it, and the other is filled with rantings about staying up all night and rolling joints, smoking pot, having his mom confiscate his things, etc. etc. It is the same kid, just two separate pages - oh and difficult child is mentioned by name in the second page that is filled with questionable things. Is that second, pot filled, page something to be genuinely concerned about or is it just a teen trying to be "cool"?
Unfortunately, we do have to snoop around like this because difficult child has forced our hand in this way after so many episodes of stealing, lying (about EVERYTHING!), internet porn, etc. etc. etc.
Thanks for taking the time to read, and any feedback is greatly appreciated!!
difficult child tends to not be able to make or keep friends - the ones he does make, the friendships usually do not last more than week due to difficult child being too controlling, raging in front of them, being mean to them, or simply obsessing about them and burning them out! For the last 6 months to a year (!) he has maintained a pretty good friendship with one boy in our town who his age. In his honest moments, difficult child has even said this is his one friend. Well, the past week, difficult child has met another local kid his age and, well, has become obsessed with spending time with him. difficult child completely dissed his only long time friend all weekend due to spending every free moment with this new 'friend'. We even tried to talk to difficult child about it, why you should balance time between the two, not to burn the new one out, how to balance the time - it fell on deaf ears. After promising us he would be spending time with both (and even telling us he did), his text messages tell a different story - he stood up the old friend in order to spend time with the new friend.
We know nothing about this other kid, he came over for a few minutes the other day but didn't say a peep. We know his name because difficult child told us. Normally we don't allow the kids over to someone else's house unless we have met them, but difficult child, despite being told to keep us informed of where he was going, went over after telling us something different. Yesterday evening he stayed out past his time he was told to be home, despite having us call/text him 4 times in an hour to tell him he needed to leave the friend's house and make his way home. When he was told by husband that he was ground from going out the next day, he replied "I don't care" and then proceeded to give husband so much attitude that he husband ended up giving him a week of grounding. He reeked of maple syrup for some reason so we were naturally curious as to why he smelled like that (he literally smelled like he bathed in it!!!), but difficult child lies so much there was no way he was even able to answer that simple question.
Anyway - to the point of my question - since we don't know this kid or family, I checked facebook. The kid has two pages, both open, one that appears to be a normal page with family on it, and the other is filled with rantings about staying up all night and rolling joints, smoking pot, having his mom confiscate his things, etc. etc. It is the same kid, just two separate pages - oh and difficult child is mentioned by name in the second page that is filled with questionable things. Is that second, pot filled, page something to be genuinely concerned about or is it just a teen trying to be "cool"?
Unfortunately, we do have to snoop around like this because difficult child has forced our hand in this way after so many episodes of stealing, lying (about EVERYTHING!), internet porn, etc. etc. etc.
Thanks for taking the time to read, and any feedback is greatly appreciated!!