**** some people on this thred make me want to puke, if ur child is a **** up its 100% ur fault.

You probably could have worded that better, but yes, that is my understanding too. Although, actually it’s the influences the child had before (IIRC) 7 years old that mainly shape them, so the OP might not have been around them.

G/f with fecked up kids? I’d move on, life is too short.

When I met my current and her nipper, we quickly established that (what with me being a reasonable chap), my word was the law as much as hers was. Nipper eventually asked me to be their ‘real dad’, and even changed surname to match mine (bought a lump to my throat).

cases where kids have had perfectly good upbringings and it’s other influences, such as peer group, getting in with the wrong crowd etc, and previously good kids go off the rails.

^^ This. It’s an interesting one the nurture/nature thing.

EG: I am a fine, upstanding member of the community 😉 Helps old ladies across the street kinda thing. Don’t smoke, hardly drink. University, goodish job then property ladder. And never had so much as a parking ticket.

My only sibling is and ex-heroin addict and recovering alcoholic and has been all her life… since she moved out at 16. Never done a day’s work in her life. Has lived rough and begged on the streets (through choice).

Same parents, same genetics, same upbringing, different peers, different priorities.

Another possibility is the the kid is resentful of the op.

Don’t think that’s the case. We get on well.

Fix the motorbike together, go to a football match etc.

We do all sorts of stuff together. Have even taken him – and his bro – mountainbiking. 🙂

Another possibility is the the kid is resentful of the op.
Maybe doesn’t like him so makes no effort.
He knows that this upsets mum which in turn angers op.

You got all this from them saying nothing about this?
The behaviour seems to be drunken loutishness in general rather than anything directed at the OP.

Just as a related story we had neighbours at my old house that had a son like this – into his late teens early 20’s though.

They kicked him out and after a while went on holiday (2 parents and non-tearaway daughter), we watched him get up on the roof, remove tiles and get into the house through the roof/loft causing christ knows how much damage on the way. Nice lad.

I am no parent and was a pretty well behaved kid, so I don’t have anything very useful to add to this debate, sorry, hope he sees sense sometime soon, but it sounds like some time inside is his next option.

alcol70 – my oldest was a bit of a handful & had me pulling my hair out at that age, packed all his stuff in my car & threatened him with moving out on one occasion, seemed to do the trick & with time did improve to the extent of being a perfectly good & useful member of society, albeit maybe not achieving his full potential, his best mate was taken “on holiday” to the states & endured 18 months of boot camp which was the making of him, so just to reassure you that there is light at the end of the tunnel & you are without doubt experiencing the worst of the worst at the moment. good luck

-as the for the bad parenting comment, jeez H christ

**** some people on this thred make me want to puke, if ur child is a **** up its 100% ur fault.

My parents were nothing short of perfect and I still wobbled when I was 16. Drinking, smoking, doing drugs and getting the police involved. It had nowt to do with my parenting and more to do with so called mates, my environment and my love for drink, drugs and smoke. My folks were brilliant and still are. I could kick myself for being such a tosser but that’s life.

My mates brother was like this – 3rd of 4 sons and was totally off the rails. Came from a reasonably well off family, nice house, good values.

He eventually moved out with his mates and everyone prophisised doom, except it was the making of him, coming home to no clean clothes, no food, no comfy sofa etc – so got his shit together and then got a place a uni. They all need to find their own place in the world.

You got all this from them saying nothing about this?
The behaviour seems to be drunken loutishness in general rather than anything directed at the OP.

that is just as much an assumption as the one you have castigated the poster for !! 😕
My comment re jealously, which mirror the comment you disagree with come from actually having lived with teenage step kids
How about yours ?

**** some people on this thred make me want to puke, if ur child is a **** up its 100% ur fault.

What a load of tosh. You clearly don’t have kids.

Does his father have any involvement in his upbringing? I know this sounds quaint but I firmly believe that boys need a father figure.

What a load of tosh. You clearly don’t have kids.

Does his father have any involvement in his upbringing? I know this sounds quaint but I firmly believe that boys need a father figure.

The irony is strong.

I personally think that kids who are bad/trouble are so because the parents have let them be. however I may be wrong.
and all 16yr olds are not the same, my son rather stupidly fathered a child at 16, but he never was or ever has been a minutes trouble, and his sister is 16 now and she also has never brought us any trouble/problems.

a bad/unruly 16yr old lad needs putting in his place, imho.
not by violence, by some other means. a family friend who he looks up to maybe, or his boss to have a word with him, or to get the police involved to give him a proper strong talking to.

It’s coming across as if its you and your girlfriend against the boy. Be there for him, include him in conversations, talk and listen. Get him back on side and act as equals in the family.

Introduce a very high rate of housekeeping, tell him that he needs to pay it to live with you, but if he doesn’t mess around and behaves himself you’ll reduce it month on month?

Hit him in the pocket. He might understand that?

Sounds to me that there has been a lack of a father figure or at least a strong male mentor. Getting drunk and disorderly at 11 could have been a cry for help or at least a massive warning sign that things are not right. You are going to have to try and engage with the kid and try and steer him down the right path. Little steps at this stage. Set some boundaries, practice what you preach. Does he ride or have any interest in bikes, could you get him to do a bit of all mountain or downhill gnarry stuff that might appeal to a sixteen yr old!

Just threatening to throw him out won’t end well, blood is thicker than water.

Picked up twice for drunk and disorderly. At age 11.

How the hell does a kid that age get let out to get pissed? Didnt your Gf have any idea what he was doing ? Once is bad enough to be on lock down ,twice shouldnt happen !

Army is where you shod be pushing him

I cannot decide if the army calls are heartfelt or trolling

cases where kids have had perfectly good upbringings and it’s other influences, such as peer group, getting in with the wrong crowd etc, and previously good kids go off the rails.

That was the case with the Bulger murder. A good friend taught one of the killers in a secure unit, and he was as nice as pie, middle class background, loving parents, academic, but just lead astray by his phsyco best mate. Didn’t fit in at all locked up with genuine teenage phsycos and other high risk patients.

Spare the rod and spoil the child !!!

So take him fishing !

To John O Groats praps !

He may like it and want to stay !

**** some people on this thred make me want to puke, if ur child is a **** up its 100% ur fault.

more sense in this than people are giving credit for. Kid is the parents responsibility. Having said that 100% might be stretching it a bit.

My parents were nothing short of perfect and I still wobbled when I was 16. Drinking, smoking, doing drugs and getting the police involved. It had nowt to do with my parenting and more to do with so called mates, my environment and my love for drink, drugs and smoke. My folks were brilliant and still are. I could kick myself for being such a tosser but that’s life.

That’ll be me as well then.

If that was me at 16 i’d have been battered from one room of the house to the other, then when my dad came back off the fishing boats he’d have battered me again, sounds like he’s been getting away with being a little arse for years so he obviously knows no better way to behave.

Dunno what you can do really?, ship him off to a family friend abroad somewhere to remove him from his peer group?, or totally 100% ignore him till he grows up and starts accepting responsibility.

And – just to negate your argument entirely – she is an SEN (special education needs) teacher in a rough-ass inner-city academy. Dealing with difficult teenagers and their ‘challenging’ behaviour is what she does for a living. And she’s very good at it.

This totally means nothing at all, this is mixing up your job with parenthood. It’s like saying all midwives have perfect births. Adopting her work mindset to her own child might be part of the problem, but I’m no expert, then this isn’t an experts forum.

A few things stick out. In two pages, unless I’ve missed it I can’t see any evidence of anyone actually doing anything over what a five year period?
He has a job. well that’s a good thing which says he isn’t all that bad. He has bought a motorbike. Just little things that point to him not being a loser.
The job and motorbike are two very little positive things than can be built upon.

Just going back to your GF’s job. A parent applying their work place skills to their own child can seem very patronising, and seriously backfire.
But the missing bit from ‘being allowed to drink at 11’ until now?

Just a thought. can you ban alcohol in the house? he is under age after all. Try and appeal to his good side. Then perhaps counter with something like an offer to go to the Motorbike show?

Any idea who has been buying all his booze over the years?

Tough love all the way. My recommendation, based on past experience, pack all his stuff up in boxes and bags and set outside the front door. Change the locks. Write a very honest and frank letter to him detailing why the decision has been made, express your concerns about him and leave the door open to come back if he wants to moderate his behaviour and start acting like an adult (which he technically is).

It will be a cold bucket of water in the face but without the door being slammed totally on future help.

Warning that this will happen has to come first though. I am sure you already have but explain that this is what you are thinking of doing and give him 2 weeks to change his behaviour.

‘He eventually moved out with his mates and everyone prophisised doom, except it was the making of him, coming home to no clean clothes, no food, no comfy sofa etc – so got his shit together and then got a place a uni. They all need to find their own place in the world.’

As a parent of a 9 year old and a 7 year old, I’m constantly looking forward at this very time of development.

I think the above quote is a round-about way of saying they need to learn accountability and responsibility for themselves and others.

The learning mechanism is different for all, but theres nothing like having the rug pulled on your subsidised (financially and domestically) lifestyle to make you have a look at yourself and how you’re living. Personally, I’d hope to never get to that stage due to a longer term approach of you know, parenting, by who knows what will happen.

As a parent, you’re in the position to exert the most effect on this learning and give as many opportunities as required. Whilst I will be the first to admit that the nature of a child will make this easier or harder to acheive, I’m with the failure of parenting bridgade. Failure to be objective about the problem, failure to exert the right influences, failure to adopt the right strategy and deploy the correct skills, failure to seek help.

Its a parents responsibility IMO. Bleating on about how nothing works is just saying ‘I haven’t found the correct approach’ or shows you can’t be bothered.

IMO plenty of comments on this thread show people still willing to stand away from the ownership of their responsibilities and blame something/someone else for their woes. Seems to be a common theme in our culture these days for many different things, not just parenting – product of the nanny state perhaps?

I should get some nice cosy heat on a chilly Autumn morning for this one…

As a parent, you’re in the position to exert the most effect on this learning and give as many opportunities as required. Whilst I will be the first to admit that the nature of a child will make this easier or harder to acheive, I’m with the failure of parenting bridgade. Failure to be objective about the problem, failure to exert the right influences, failure to adopt the right strategy and deploy the correct skills, failure to seek help.

Its a parents responsibility IMO. Bleating on about how nothing works is just saying ‘I haven’t found the correct approach’ or shows you can’t be bothered.

I think there is truth in what you are saying, it might just be the way it reads or how my ‘conditioned’ ear hears it that rankles. ‘Failure’ to me these days is intimately connected to the word ‘blame’. When I hear one I sense the other’s presence. This in my opinion is wrong. You are of course right – in this case whatever has been tried, whatever help has been sort has not worked (or ‘failed’); the child is not behaving as society and their parents see appropriate or acceptable. But that is not to say attention has not been there or help sort. It’s just not worked.

Parenting is such an emotive issue and it is so easy for parents of ‘successful’ and ‘good’ children who have in all honesty had an easy ride as procreators to castigate the efforts of other parents who could have been much better parents and have had to put in so much more time/energy/imagination but are just dealing with a much more difficult situation.

What I’m saying in a roundabout way is a difficult child does not always equal bad parenting and the word failure is now too intimately associated with blame to be easily tossed around without truly knowing the facts.

You don’t say a single word there that I disagree with.

You’re totally right about parents that had an easy ride thinking that their methods were responsible for the ride, and this is why there will always be the nature/nuture argument.

The truth is that it is both. I’ve seen it in my kids. You can’t change nature (much) IMO, so you have to work with nurture, and there are multiple and varied approaches that have to be adapted to parenting the type of child that nature gave you. Whether you get it right is down to your effort and competence.

Oxford Online dictionary:

BLAME:

feel or declare that (someone or something) is responsible for a fault or wrong:
the inquiry blamed the train driver for the accident

(blame something on) assign the responsibility for a bad or unfortunate situation or phenomenon to (someone or something

FAILURE:

1 lack of success:
an economic policy that is doomed to failure

[count noun] an unsuccessful person or thing:
bad weather had resulted in crop failures
2the neglect or omission of expected or required action:
their failure to comply with the basic rules

[count noun] a lack or deficiency of a desirable quality:
a failure of imagination
3the action or state of not functioning:
symptoms of heart failure
[count noun]:
a chance engine failure

[count noun] a sudden cessation of power:
a sudden power failure

[count noun] the collapse of a business:
business failures rose by 53%

Hooray for word-sounds meaning different things! Hooray for the English language!

Oldgit.

but I’m no expert, then this isn’t an experts forum.

Of course not. However, I consider this place to be made up of largely my peers who may have been through a similar experience, and could offer grass-roots, first hand advice.

With all due respect, I asked for help and advice with a tricky situation. Not your ill-informed opinion as to where my GF ‘went wrong’ for the last seven years.

I’d like to see YOU bring up four children on your own, with or without a background in youth-work.

Thought I was being quite positive 😐 I think you’ve crossed posts as I’ve not criticized your GF at all.

Happy to discuss in personal message, having been there and got though it. Though with help from our GP, schools and a psychologist. We’re still on tenterhooks though.

Dickyboy when we got our son out I just ended up being worried sick, so that period didn’t last that long. It did make a minor improvement in things though.
We got to the bottom of the cause of the problem in the end, I don’t know if all problem kids are a problem due to a cause though?