So much this!!! I’ve never cheated, and never felt the desire to cheat, and I just don’t even understand it.
I mean, I understand raging hormones and can maybe see how that could lead to a one night stand, but how someone could carry on two relationships simultaneously… especially when at least one of them is a marriage… how? Why???
This seems extremely likely.
And he maybe doesn’t want to shatter the persona he’s cultivating with you which includes him not using foul language. That might be why he is lying*.
I think it’s normal for teenagers to try out different personas and see what fits, what are the plusses & minuses of each.
As far as how you & Mr NA should handle… that’s tougher. All I can say is “good luck”.
*I mean I assume he is lying about swearing. Obviously I wasn’t there.
With kids, I have no idea. You are dead-tired 90% of the time. They must be super motivated to cheat.
I can see it happening with no kids. But thats about it.
Is this the first time you’ve received a call from her? How much trouble does your son get into in general? What kind of swears are we talking about? How hard do you police swearing around the house? I recall you’ve mentioned it before with 2 other kids?
We have gotten one call from the school before, he had a sub (she’s the gifted teacher so he doesn’t normally have her) and she called because he was getting distracted in class when she subbed it (he has ADHD and gets distracted sometimes). THAT teacher clearly had something against him, and we chatted about it and basically told him, you’re going to have teachers you don’t like, who don’t like you. Gotta figure out how to deal with them. Just try your best and don’t worry about it.
This is the first time we have gotten a call from this particular teacher, and for anything I would call “behavioral.”
I don’t really have a problem with swearing, it’s not the worst thing a kid can do. I don’t love it, there are better ways to express yourself, but if you’re not being disrespectful or offensive with your language, I’m not going to punish them over it. So before we had gone to the school to pick him up, we had decided to give him the chance to be honest with us first. If he was, we were going to just be like, we don’t want you to get in trouble at school, follow the rules and keep the swearing to outside of school. But then he lied and doubled down about it.*
*He came clean about half an hour ago. He admitted he “might” have cussed a few times at school, and he apologized for lying to us. And I made sure to tell him how proud I was of him (Mr. NA did, too, he came to us separately), and as I always tell our kids, it’s easy to lie, but telling the truth when it’s hard is a sign of good character, and it takes work. He seemed much better about himself, even though we told him we still had to take away some of his privileges for the day because he lied, but he was in much better shape for coming clean vs if he had continued to double down.
Absolutely! Kudos to all of you!
Oldest son has decided that not only is doing his homework optional, but also listening to our demand that he does his homework is optional. Fun phase.
i admire the consistency.
as a wise man once summarized “we left england bc their rules were bogus. If we don’t get some cool rules ourselves - and pronto - we’ll be bogus too.”
here’s to your oldest aspiring to be non-bogus.
Is your son younger me? Sadly I didn’t really get good about doing homework until my parents made me front the college tuition and reimburse me based on my GPA…
Caproni: Artists are only truly creative for 10 years, us engineers are the same.
Kid, deeply concerned: Does that mean I only have 3 years left?
My son had a bad day at school and is now convinced he hates school altogether and has “for quite a while now.” At least summer vacation is around the corner.
My oldest is in 6th grade and going through some friend drama. Two friends stopped by and knocked on our door. He got his shoes on and was excited to go outside to meet them. They handed him a gutted stuffed animal and a mean note, and didn’t say anything else. He says the note said “horrible” things but wouldn’t show it to us. And told us that if we made him, he couldn’t trust us to tell us things in the future. So, I feel stuck on what to do. I would not like to be the parent who finds out their child was being tormented after it’s too late to intervene, but I also don’t want to push him to the point of shutting down, either.
The stuffed animals was another friend’s, she was dating one of the two who stopped by, but they broke up. I’m concerned that she is being bullied as well. It’s weird and hostile and I know 6th graders do weird things all the time, and might not know how threatening their actions can be, but I’m pretty disturbed by this. My husband isn’t as concerned, and his mom also doesn’t seem to think much of it, so I guess I’m outnumbered.
The most concerning part is that if this had happened at school, or when we weren’t home, we probably would have heard nothing at all about it. I guess this is what it’s like to parent a teenager.
Ugh, what a gut punch.
I think you’re right to NOT demand to read the note. As your son says, doing so would lead him not to trust you in the future.
I don’t have any good advice, though, because I suck at the social part of life.
I’ll say a prayer for your son , though. That’s a sucky situation for him.
That’s pretty effed. I’m sorry. I wouldn’t know at all what to do exactly.
I would randomly guess that the words on the note are equally horrible and vague.
I think you should go over with your son the types of things that the note might contain that would “obligate” your son to turn it over to you. You don’t want to micromanage petty kid stuff, but when things get big “i am bringing a gun to school and will shoot you” for example, then that is more than he should expect to deal.with by himself. That’s what you are there for. And to commiserate when his friends are jerks. That might serve to put your mind more at ease.
The grades you are talking about can be particularly cruel and vile.
Based on this comment, I’m wondering if your son might possibly be a romantic interest. Just throwing it out there without knowing the story.
I like your approach, and I took it. By getting him to tell me what wasn’t in the note, he opened up slightly about was. But only slightly. Better than what he was offering up before.
You know, some of these moments made me realize a lot about my own childhood. There is no way to get it all totally right as a parent, but I really believed that it was not possible for parents to relate (or even try to relate) to their kids based on how my parents approached things. Turns out, it’s very possible to support and love your child even if they think you’re irrelevant. Makes me even more angry at my parents for not giving me that.
That’s so hard. I have no words of wisdom… just empathy. Good luck!
So in the ongoing drama of my son, he turfed the gf. Which is good, because I guess she was not good to him in private. Also bad, because he never disclosed this and I really liked her, and enjoyed having her live with us. Also good, the house is immediately uncluttered again.
He’s all of a sudden switched gears on career. He’s got an inside track for a six months contract in Alaska, in his field of study. And he’s a huge outdoorsman, so Alaska is right up his alley. Hopefully this pans out.