Well we have reached a point where I am at a loss as to what to do about my kid. He has been staying at his grandmother's pretty much the whole summer and has been taking a summer class, algebra which is just killin' him, from there. Only three hours a day. Starting at the ridiculous time of 7:30 in the a.m. When are the schools going to catch up with the studies of the teenage brain?! Anyway, because he failed it he needs to make it up. He has a girlfriend who is a year older than him, she is very sweet and has been very good for him, she helps him with his work, keeps on him about his meds, helps him stay on track. Unfortunately for her she has a mother who can't decide whether she wants to be a mother or to be on her own. She drinks and takes pills and smokes pot. She doesn't do this around the kids , she tries to hide it but at their age, well she is not too good at it. She kicks her daughter out so she can have her drunken weekends and so that her abusive occasional boyfriend can come over and beat her up. Besides all that it is sad to say she has been very good to my son, Brandon cares about her too so he has done some things that have not been to his benefit for her. Nothing illegal or anything like that, just stupid little things.

Ah the meat of the problem, grandma is a biatch, flat out, no bones about it. His dad is a crack addict and lives there also and lets his momma lead him around by the nose or else no where to live. Well my son finally came out during an altercation amongst the three of them and told his grandmother that his father is an addict and smokes in her garage and her other son's garage and some other juicy tidbits then left.

In the meantime son is not doing so well in class, doesn't really like teacher, again, doesn't do work to full potential, missing some classes. Still vomiting blood cause not following diet from GI specialist, seems to be in some kind of weird manic phase. Doesn't want to be at grandma's, she follows him around and nags, she is one who will not let go of something or give it time then talk about it. She is like a pit bull, tearing and chomping and....well........ anyway. His father follows him around trying to convince him that he does not smoke crack, me thinks he doth protest too much, waaay too much. Poor kid doesn't want to come home. Wants to be with girlfriend all the time. Calls me Monday night crying on phone wants me to pick him up Tuesday morning from girlfriend's house and take him to school. Well not happening, stay at grandma's, stop being unreasonable, all you have to do is follow rules, only 12 days of school left, come home if so miserable, lots of crying, now I am crying, now he is angry, not staying there, needs to get away, asking what am I gonna do if he does go to girlfriend's? Call the police? Will you calm down, stop being unreasonable, what is going on with you and repeat. Then just breathing and silence. Time to calm down. This is happening more often. As he gets older. He wants more freedom, wants to be grown yet can't handle what little responsibility he has now.

I have all these plans to fight for him just before school starts to set up a program for a personal curriculum for school but if he is not going to make the effort then I am not going to bother. I am trying to save him. I am struggling to keep my head above water and I have my arm around him to keep him from drowning.

Last night he calls me at almost 10:30 and says I want to come home. Where are you? I will walk to girlfriend's house. She is one block from his grandmother's. So I go to pick him up and he gets in car empty handed and he should have a duffel bag. Not going, is going to stay, said some things to grandmother that were very mean and needs to go back and apologize but is giving time to cool down. I am mad that he makes me go through this roller coaster with him. He did not go to school on Tuesday morning, stayed at girlfriend's, now I am furious, missed quiz at school, wants to know can he stay night at girlfriend's house, her mom and some other kids are staying.
Tell him no and he starts talking trying to explain to me how miserable he is, what happened at his grandma's, I am crying, so tired of this fight. Though I know it would be worse if he was home. Wants to stay, I can pick him up and take him to school because I have to get up and go right by there anyway. Defeated, don't care, never again. Tell him to call grandmother to tell her where he is at.

Get there this morning and he comes to the car no shoes on and I know he is not going. He has been vomiting again. His stomach is shot, not following diet. Screwing up meds. Nerves. School. I am angry. Tired. Give lecture. He made this mess he can fix it, call teacher and explain, beg forgiveness. Only 8 classes left. No more misses. Call grandmother. Then later I will call grandmother and explain to her about son's diet restrictions. I tell him I am calling her, no pop, no chocolate, no overly greasy foods, no spicy foods. He is mad, that is all my favorites, what am I going to eat. Healthy foods, I do eat healthy foods. What? I had some grapes yesterday. OOOOOh! Drink more water! I do drink water. In proportion to how much milk and pop? Oh.

He doesn't understand how serious this is. This is all going to come crashing down on him someday.

This girlfriend thing is really driving me nuts too. He can't stand to be away from her. God forbid if she has company, he has to know what she is doing at all times. I remember when I was that age and I was seeing his dad. It was the same way. I can remember being up North at a family get together and I was miserable, I wanted to be home, thought I was in love. Made my family miserable so they sent me home, caught a ride with my grandparents. Man was I awful lol. Poor mom.

I guess more therapy and some therapy with me and him. I told him last night that I am not going to go to all the effort this fall if he fails this class. If he can't make the effort for a lousy three hours in the morning for a couple of weeks then there is no point.

Stressed, scared, tired. I will be so glad when he is old enough to do things on his own. If that ever happens

AAaaaahhhh yes and the clincher, grandma on the answering machine, son banned for a long while. Call her back when I can.

It's so hard raising children, especially when they have adultish issues to handle too. You're doing the best you can and that's all anyone can ask. Glad you could post to us and rant, I know how much talking can help. Hang in there Christina!

Oh I am so tired, and I hurt and I really don't want to do this.

Dear Christina,
I hear you.

If venting helps, keep venting.
Mari

Christina

Sending you thoughts, and hugs.

I am here to listen also. Not as much sometimes as I wish.

Let us know how we can help.

Donna

So sorry, Christina. Parenting is sure full of challenges.

You are right to expect him to finish his summer school before accommodating his desires/demands. You are a good mother!

I had some equally stressful situations with my kids. Not for any amount of money would I turn the clock back to when I had 4 teens!

Life gets better as they learn and grow. Just go into survival mode until then, I guess. Pray a lot.

I feel for you....saying no is much harder then yes...and while they may seem to hate you for it now, the day will come when they come to you and say thank you for caring enough to fight for me!! I had to be wicked witch at our home and had 3 unruly boys (now men) and they put me through hell but at least we all know I loved them enough to take the hard road, its easy to bury head in sand and turn away and let boys be boys, but its far more rewarding in the long run to say No, I love you too much to let you ruin your life...the day may come when the best thing is to turn head away and use tough love and let them pay the price, sounds like you are on right road! hang in there, it will get better!

Thank you all.

Oh yes, call grandma back and she tells me all these terrible things my son has done. She is the type that will take something that was done a year and a half ago and make it sound like it happened yesterday and it was an earth shaking experience. I have known this woman for 33 years. She thinks her poo don't stink. She says my son has been calling his dad a crack head, I try not to laugh at that one even though it is not funny, he supposedly told her he was going to smash her face in , she has found some of his meds in his pants pockets. I ask her which ones because I want to make a comparison, she hems and haws and then tells me which and that it was twice. Yes it was, LAST YEAR!!! My son had mentioned it to me.

So I go pick my son up because he wants to come home for a bit and we talk and quite frankly he is fine but looks very tired. I feel bad for him, he must be exhausted. Says he never called his dad a crackhead though he did tell on him for using crack. Never told his grandmother he would smash her face in, told her he needed to leave for a little bit or he was going to wind up getting angry and might smash, or break something. I ask him, was there a chance you may have been so angry you blacked out and he says no he hasn't been that angry since he has been there.

I stopped at the psych office today hoping to talk to his psych doc or therapist and of course no one works on Friday anymore. At least not when you need them to so they put in an ER call to his therapist. I wanted to talk to his psych doc because my son is saying that his meds make him feel like crap but then he will stop taking them without telling anybody and then feels worse so starts taking them again. He doesn't seem to understand how bad that screws up his system.

So anyway, while I am still out his therapist calls the house and my son is here, visiting, so they talk and when I get home my son informs me that his therapist says that it would be in his best interest to stay at his girlfriend's house for a while. What the he**! I wish I would have been here. I mean I understand the logic behind the whole thing. The safe haven thing that we have been trying to find for him, the whole reason he went to his grandmothers in the first place. That is no longer safe.

So now I am sure you are probably thinking, did the therapist really say that or is my son just saying that. No I am pretty sure that the T said that. We have been all about finding a safe comfortable place for my son. My son and my BF have butted heads before. My son has gone into a blind rage and attacked him twice. Was sorry afterwards but here is not always the place for him. It is a shame and I have a lot of guilt but gee that is what therapy is for.

Anyway things have gotten worse and I am pretty sure that it has something to do with those antibiotics and his bowel backup. We tried the yogurt but he can't eat it so I got him some probiotics and today I got him some Fish oil. I had completely forgotten. He is exhibiting all the worsening symptoms of almost some kind of poisoning. Mood swings, cognition problems, rage issues, depression and other things. I mean he has always had these things to a point but he feels out of control. He is out of control and he feels terrible about it.

Seems like such a hodgepodge of confused writing. I am so tired. I am tired of taking all these meds, tired of hurting, tired of my child hurting physically and mentally, tired of worrying about court, money, barely being able to remember what my damn name is sometimes.

Went to write down my name and number for the secretary at the psych clinic, drew a blank, what is my name?

I know another long vent. I only write it so I can read it and see where I made my mistake, where I can fix it, what I can do next time.

Dear Christina,
He's going to be safe. That's the main thing.
The tdoc and the family at the girlfriend's will keep him safe.

That's not good news about his physical health. I thought that docs could deal with that stuff better than they could with MI issues.

Drinking a table spoon or two of olive oil works. So does taking magnesium.
Or even suppositories -- not good to rely on of course.

My Verapamil causes constipation so I take magnesium every night to keep that under control.
When I was on Topamax, the problem got worse. I tried everything I could find on the internet. Finally, I told the tdoc to forget it: drop the Topamax.
That was an awlful time.
The probiotics and fish oil should help

I hope that he gets himself together.
He knows that you want the best for him.

Mari

Thank you Mari. Yes he knows, my fear is that his judgement is skewed. At least he is not far from me, I can be there in less than ten minutes. I am going over there today to take some of his DVDs over. He wants to watch movies. I will have a long talk with his girlfriend's mother.

I guess I am going back into list mode and will have to get the "notebook" out and start making lists and questions and all the phone calls that I need to take care of before school starts.