13yr old hanging with wrong crowd running away now waging school
Discussion forum for parents in Australia
Hi EK232323
I feel for you. It is so tough! especially given what you have already gone through with your other child. Heartbreaking. Sometimes I wish there were a roadmap.
You are not alone!
My 14yo son has discovered girls and is running away from home to spend the night with girls. We don't know where he is when he does that. It is so scary...and he is so arrogant when we try to talk to him about it....but talking we are...constantly. The girls he is spending time with all have their own mental health issues and are engaging in self-harm and discussing suicide which seems to feed his mental health issues. so we are talking with him. gently, but fairly constantly. Not in a judgy way - but talking about safety and the importance of feeling loved and belonging...for him and for the girls. I feel like we might SLOWLY be making headway.
We thought about changing his school, but figured with social media etc he would just find the same desperate type of girls to hang with. It would only be a matter of time. I wonder if the same thing would be true of your daughter.
I have adjusted my work hours (thank goodness for a flexible workplace, I am so grateful) and am spending a lot of time with him, doing things together, even when he is not keen. even when he doesn't want me, I am physically present. Watching movies, cooking, going to the beach for a walk. The activities take the focus off the problems and create something for us to talk about. He says he hates it, but I know that is not always true.
We also have some consequences for his behaviour that he hates. His phone is now my phone and the only time he has his laptop is when he is at school, or when he has homework (when he sits by me to do it). We turn off our phones and devices too, to show him that it is possible to have a good life without devices 24/7. It sounds controlling (and is) but he needs to understand that behaviour has consequences. Our one consolation is that he still goes to school (even when not sleeping at home). We have had to trust him to go to school with no phone, and he does. Having no access to making plans, seems to have cramped his running away style a little. It will only be a very short term thing (the loss of the phone) but we will have a gradual reintroduction of phone access over the next week or so.
Right now he is sleeping @ home. Instead of going on about the behaviour and the arrogance and the constant lying, we are gently talking about his mental health, his feelings of not being worthy (god knows where they come from), and the need to be safe and loved. No shouting, just talking. His dad says I will wear him down with words and love - maybe joking, maybe not... I feel so desperate.
Seeing his social media stream was heartbreaking. But already - with less access to social media - I can see little glimmers of changes. I think he is now a little (secretly) relieved that we know he is thinking of harming himself, and feels depressed. He is such a good pretender, most people would never know his inner turmoil. I think the same is true for many teens - they wear a mask (fed by the need to look good/cool at all times, fed by the stupid social media feed of toxic happiness).
I don't know if this is the 'right' thing to do, but my gut (for him) is to see the behaviour as a sign of this inner turmoil. Instead of focussing on the behaviour/actions, we are focussing on his mental health and physical safety (ie not catching public transport at midnight when no one knows where he is and he turns off location services).
We have a GP mental health plan today, and I have rung almost every psychologist in town to see what I can get. Who knows if he will talk, but at least he can see we are trying. We have now negotiated a safe place he can run to (family friends) if it all gets too much - who knows if he will comply. We have made sure he has access to a landline phone to call whoever he needs to and all the support services numbers are plastered on our wall. We have talked to the school psych (not hugely useful but yours might be). Are there other teachers in the school she connects to?
In my case, who knows if it will be enough, but I am not giving up the fight to keep my beautiful son connected to my family and safe. However, I am exhausted.
I hope you can find whatever services and supports work for you and your daughter. I put all this up because it feels good to talk and I wanted you to know that you are not alone.
#I could have had NO kids, new clothes and a lot of dogs 
