asking honest opinions on skids based on your experiences
We have a very close friend who has five children total with his ex and four of them are from previous relationships leaving one bio child.
Bio child is now 13. Before the split the son was enrolled in sports, they would go camping as a family, fishing, real "brady bunch" style family.
I'm not exactly sure how long the parent's have been split. BM now lives in a townhouse and her DH remained in the family home and pays CS. Dh does not live in what could be considered a "bad area" neither does BM.
Since the split the son has gradually spun out of control. Dropped out of football, failing grades, started getting into a lot of trouble to the point where his parent's sent him to a facility to get help.
He wound up in juvenile detention several times and always gets released and sent back home after a certain amount of time.
The father is very active in his sons life and always had been. Now he just shared with us that his son is in trouble again for borrowing money from his 11 y/o step sister and buying drugs, and it's a drug that I thought a 13 y/o wouldn't have access too. Son claimed he was supposed to buy it and sell it but refused to say who his contact was. The father is distraught and at the end of his rope, he doesn't know what to do and is trying to research some type of "juvenile boot-camp" to try and get his son out of and away from drugs in general.
I don't know if it makes a difference to add this or not but the other four children are all female and the parent's haven't had any behavioral issues with any of them.
Has anybody noticed that skids, primarily male, seem to reach a point/age when all heck breaks loose after the family splits up? This is a child who never had even one day of detention before, now he's involved in drugs and skipping school. He was in sports, had active parent's, outside activities, and he still went "off the tracks" so to speak.
I ask because dh is terrified that this is going to happen to his son and doesn't know what to do to prevent it. He is convinced beyond all reasonable doubt that his friend must have done something wrong and if he can "just figure out what it is" he can stop the same form happening to his son.
I think if a child is heck-bent on getting into trouble, it's going to happen no matter what the parent does. Short of following your kid around 24/7 I don't know if there really is any way to stop things from happening.
Thoughts? Opinions? Have any of you noticed this seems to happen to skids more or does it happen to bio children just as much? I just wonder how much blame can be put on the "broken home" theory.
Thoughts?
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I know children of loving,
I know children of loving, intact homes who have gone off the deep end. And children of the most wretched parents who have become solid citizens. It’s not that nature always overwhelms nurture, but sometimes it just does.
Of course divorce negatively impacts a child, but so do a lot of other things that happen in life. It’s something to be recognized and dealt with, but chances are that something else could derail that child even if the parents did not divorce.
It’s sort of like cancer. NO ONE wants their loved one to get cancer. Often it is successfully treated - usually hard and not pleasant at all. But sometimes there is nothing that can be done.
That's kind of what I was
That's kind of what I was thinking too. I just find it odd that if the child has parent's that are split up, the issue is never focused on the child but turns into "he's from a broken home, poor thing that's why" or he could have the most involved dad EVER and they still say "oh it's because the father isn't doing enough" and its swept under the rug. I know that doesn't happen all the time, but that is all I've seen so far with our friends and family. It's crazy to me.
^^This^^ It can happen in
^^This^^
It can happen in both home environments. Perhaps in the split home situation..the kid has more wiggle room to be not under supervision.. but honestly.. it's just luck of the draw.
Iamwoman, IMO is spot on.
Iamwoman, IMO is spot on. Yes everyone has personal choice. But kids that age aren’t equipped with long term reasoning skills. Add a coddled upbringing and it can be rough.
I hope you everything works out for you and the family. Discipline and clear boundaries are your best bet. You might also try Al anon and other groups for families in crisis to get tips on how to deal with this.
My older brother was not
My older brother was not coddled as a child and my parents didn't divorce until he was 20. He had three felonies by age 16, went to juvie, been in and out of jail his whole adult life.
Sometimes, mental health issues don't present themselves until young adulthood and parenting isn't the issue.
They the undeniable they who
They the undeniable they who tell us about child rearing after divorce say that it's not the divorce itself that screws kids up, it's parental conflict after divorce--sometimes it's obvious conflict and sometimes, I think it's just conflict in parenting styles. In other words, kids don't get consistent parenting (not the same, just consistent) from both parents and they fall off the edge as a result. I think there's also a base-personality component to the falling off, too, but I'm sure that's not as documented.
I look at my XH's parents. Their relationship was toxic, ripe with conflict, even before the divorce. His parents had 50-50/week-on/week-off parenting time. His dad was pretty consistent, but his mom became the "fun" parent. There was barely any supervision and the boys ran feral, which they loved. By the time they were pre-teens, they moved in FT with their mom, as a result. XH has a rigid and negative personality. He was going to be fine, no matter what. But his brother wasn't rigid, and he flailed without structure by high school. So much so that he developed a drug habit (that mom wouldn't deal with) and got expelled for dealing out of his locker. Even though he was brighter than XH by far, he never recovered and died of an overdose when he was 29.
I worry about my skids, especially SS. He's got issues that BM won't deal with and won't let DH deal with. BM is permissive with him, and he knows (even at 8 ) that he can do not wrong with her and she works hard to minimize DH's influence on him, too. I suspect he'll fall off at some point.
Did your friend screw something up with their son? Probably. We all screw up our kids. The question I think we need to ask ourselves is what do each of our kids need from us to succeed? Then we have to work hard to help to meet those individual needs as parents. That gives them the greatest chance in my mind.
It's got nothing to do with
It's got nothing to do with parents divorcing or staying together, boys in general loose the path age 13- 18....
It's a thing called, I'm the man now, I need to be part of the crowd, I'm bad ass rebel and I don't need schooling...It's called the wrong friends, girl friends and yes parents not parenting cause they want to be friends with their children, they want to be better buddies then the other parent.
My son is not from a broken home so to speak and he started with all this crap age 14, I warned his scrawny little attitude ass, if you do not pick up your marks you will be shipped off to a boarding school, Big man thought I was joking, even played the card, I grew up without a father... and he kept on going down his own road, simply to find his ass in a boarding school, far far away from mummy for the next 4 years of his high school life lol...
Girls are more behind your back kind of things, way more sneaky, cause that's the girl thing, much more fun doing it in secret and laugh cause my parents does not know, boys flaunt it
All you DH can do now is start working on his sons, tell them why divorce happens, people simply grow out of love and it's better to part ways, but it's no ones fault...and DH needs to get through to them, if they are caught with theft, drugs, under age drinking, there will be very very harsh consequences, and Military school will be considered...