Advice: 15 Year old son’s downward spiral

OP here. Thanks so much for all the thoughtful replies. Really is helping to get some perspective / see this situation differently.

A few things to add:

I am the kid’s mom.

I am a teacher (middle school). Husband is a project manager in the construction industry.

Military school just isn’t going to happen. There’s the cost and I just don’t think it is the right approach.

I actually have a pretty close relationship with son, he shares a lot and is pretty honest about everything.

He failed two classes last year (Chemistry and Algebra 2 - taken as a freshman because he was on a two year ahead track through middle school. This year he is taking only two college track classes and is failing both of them. The science class he is taking this year is Horticulture, which he was very excited about, but currently has a D.)

He refuses to see a therapist. I suggested it today based on advice given here. I have talked to him about it in the past.

He just doesn’t cares at all about school. I have talked to him about the value of a business degree / background for his chosen profession but it doesn’t change the lack of effort in school.

Regarding the insult for posting here about this. Over the 10 plus years I have been on Let’s Run I have gotten and read about some incredibly helpful advice on many non running related issues that have made a profound impact in my life.

To the poster who lost his son, I am so sorry. That is what I worry could be the end result with my kid.

If I could go back in time and do things differently, I would not have allowed him to get a smart phone at age 11. I would not have given him as much freedom as I did in middle school. I grew up in a family where I had huge amounts of freedom, so I assumed my kids would be fine with that approach as well. I would not have allowed him to do sleepovers at friends’ houses unless I knew the family well.

I agree with those who say every kid is just wired differently. My other two kids have none of these issues with the same parenting approach.

Again, thank you to everyone. I read every post and will be re-reading tonight.

truth seeer wrote:

John Utah wrote:

If the son decides to pull a gun on the cop, then yes. It's not really that hard to understand. All of this stuff is very very basic.

You don't give a floundering drug user unlimited support unless you plan to turn them into an LRC troll like yourself. Unconditional love sometimes means acknowledging what your child is doing is wrong/damaging and taking drastic action, when warranted. Kind of like an intervention. Force them to face the truth and tell them what the consequences will be. Then follow through.

Clearly John Utah is a pimply faced kid surfing the internet from his mother's basement with zero life experience.

You are obviously not a parent and your insult game is pathetic. Mom’s basement. Really?

Get him into a Christian youth group at a church. I am a volunteer leader at one, and we councel numerous young adults, providing someone they can talk with outside of their parents. The kids don't see it as counseling, most of them just enjoy having another adult take an interest in their lives. Being surrounded by kids doing the right things in life has really helped the kids on the fringes make better decisions. Many of the kids form strong friendships with each other, and often meet outside the church.

I totally agree with those who said get him a medical evaluation. If the behavior has changed, it's possible there is some chemical imbalance that is partially responsible. There is such a stigma about mental illness and taking drugs to keep it at bay, but nobody has a problem taking insulin for someone who is diabetic. So think of it like this.

I'm not a parent so i'm not sure how helpful this would be and if you even have the time to pull this off. But sometimes, seeing life from a different perspective can change people's views. Can you or his dad start volunteering with him at a homeless shelter, special olympics, or other organization where they need help on a regular basis? You basically tell him that "next saturday at 10:00 am we are going to xxx to work with this group cause they need our help." you get him there and you both do what is needed. It's not as easy to be an ass around strangers, especially ones that are obviously less fortunate than he is.

it's not a short term solution but i'm wondering if being exposed to the other side on a regular basis may change his perspective?

Your school teaches horticulture?!

I’m a plant biologist and would have loved that in high school!

Anyways I failed chemistry and AP geometry in high school. But my teacher for AP geometry felt pity for me because I always sat in front of the class alone... it was sad.

And for AP chemistry? The teacher hadn’t pity for me too. Ugh those days.

I got Cs when I should have failed.

I got into college with a 2.54 GPA into a noteworthy one because of my extremely difficult high school. Our school is a Harvard feeder... ew.

Anyways I’m applyjng now to positions here in Massachusetts and I’m thankful I have knowledge that can help some businesses, but my people skills suck äss.

Your son is 15 and I’m soon to be 23. I didn’t get out of my rut until recently.

?

John Utah wrote:

truth seeer wrote:

I don’t concern myself with betas, alphas or “cVck”. Your sexual hang ups are not interesting or relevant to me. And your parenting advice sucks balls.

First, I'm not surprised with your position on your beta status. That's typical with beta types.

Second, my parenting advice is essentially: giving more unconditional love, support, attention, time and personal sacrifice. If you think this is wrong you are truly a retard in addition to being a cVck. Not a good combo. I hope you are not a parent.

You guys have really helped out a ton in this thread. Thanks guys.

I was one of those kids growing up who led a double life - heavily into drugs and drinking and hanging out at times but just blended in at school and kept fairly good grades. I made plenty of mistakes and somehow managed to pull out a killer opportunity when i needed them. Got in to a good college and partied enough to honestly say it's a miracle i am alive. Went to several more colleges, did an artist stint, etc...

But the thing i always kind of knew, and what you may try to relate to your son, is that a life as a down-and-outer is going to suck big time, all the time, and when the cards are stacked against you, you lose.

So, I would relate to him that you can understand why he wants to smoke pot, doesn't want to play the game, doesn't want to work hard (or at all). But tell him that he's going to have to pay his dues one way or another, and it is a hell of a lot less dreadful to do enough to get by than to fight to survive through the ranks of the downtrodden.

So, it becomes a little game to do just enough to get you to the next step. Tell him, if you agree, that he doesn't have to buy into any of it - it's just a strategy so he leaves his options open and doesn't run out of, well, options. Get him help in the form of tutors or college coaches or both.

I can tell you that that is how i went through many years of alternative life style kind of stuff, going back to college, navigating career changes, etc. FWIW, i found out that business is not that bad, just a tool, and managing is cool if you do it with a heart for those you impact. And i can tell you also that in the normal metrics of success, i have succeeded to levels i never would have imagined and have a hard time believing.

Good luck. These kids, and i have one, are just there own persons to an extent that has astounded me.

If you have any question(s), please feel free to ask.

I don't have great advice to offer, other than to say, keep the lines of communication open as much as possible. It won't be easy, because obviously, he is doing a lot of things that displease you. Doesn't mean you have to water down your standards and hopes for him, but try not to fly off the handle and get angry with him. That will shut down any and all communication. Figure out what he enjoys doing (well, not the pot stuff) and try to enjoy it with him, even if it means learning a new sport, a new video game, or something.

Regarding how to get his life on track, I'm not sure what to say. There has to be self-motivation that he discovers inside himself. If he can figure out how to succeed at something, it feels good, and will motivate him to do well. Hopefully, it's something other than pot. That's a dead end street.

All the best to you and your son.

furry legs wrote:

But sometimes, seeing life from a different perspective can change people's views. Can you or his dad start volunteering with him at a homeless shelter, special olympics, or other organization where they need help on a regular basis? You basically tell him that "next saturday at 10:00 am we are going to xxx to work with this group cause they need our help." you get him there and you both do what is needed. It's not as easy to be an ass around strangers, especially ones that are obviously less fortunate than he is.

it's not a short term solution but i'm wondering if being exposed to the other side on a regular basis may change his perspective?

I actually think this is a good idea.

When you're 15, or any age in high school, you don't really fully understand life, you don't understand things that can happen, how things can end up, anyone can end up homeless etc with a serious of bad things happening/bad choices/illness/injury/bad luck.

It might open his eyes.

A job is so, so important - what happens if he gets hit by a car and it rules out jobs where you have to stand/walk - he needs something to fall back on, a career, for a desk job, anything, options are the most important thing.

If he does want to open the weed shop how is he going to accomplish that? I'm not against that in principle but it may be way way harder than he realises - e.g. what a previous poster said about going to a bank for a loan and you're just out of high school. He may need certain courses, experience, to be able to start the shop up.

He needs some kind of jolt.

Having said that it doesn't all sound bad.

He is physically and mentally relatively healthy?

He has family

He has a home

He can walk, stand with no problems

He is still actually in school

He is not in prison or juvenile detention

He does have some kind of plans about the future

Yes it would be better if he was not smoking weed, but a lot of people do - for some it does zero harm and helps them, but for others yes it can lead to worse things. The problem is you don't know which you are when you make that decision.

If you can get him to see that having a job, especially a good job, opens doors and means his adult life will be so so much better and more comfortable - not living in shitty low income housing being scared of homelessness every night, not able to afford to eat or buy yourself anything, living with people you're scared of or awful neighbours - IF you can get him to see that picture of the future, and understand it properly, he will change.

CCB wrote:

My son has been on a slow downward spiral since 6th grade. Up to 6th grade he was a dedicated swimmer and runner. He had an amazing work ethic. Would set goals and work hard to achieve them. School was never a big strength although he qualified and was in our school district’s gifted program.

Four years later he is a heavy pot smoker, possibly also sells pot. His grades are horrible. Failed two classes last year and currently is failing 3 classes. Skips classes frequently. Grounding him / taking away things makes no difference. Doesn’t see the importance of doing well in school and has no plans to go to college. His career aspiration is to open a pot shop.

I had a somewhat similar experience as a kid. Good grades, hard worker and then a few years later I'm a pothead skipping school and flunking out. Looking back at it, the problem was the hard work/success. I worked too hard for a kid. I wanted to be good at everything I did (I still do). I basically had this cycle where I worked like a dog to achieve something and things would go great for awhile. So great in fact, that I figured I could afford to ease up a little and because I had been overworking myself so much, easing up a little would invariably turn into not doing anything at all. Think overtraining. Grades would start falling and suddenly everybody is on my ass. "Why can't you get the grades anymore anon?" "Why didn't you do your homework anon?" "Look at your sister anon, she's getting her PhD, look at your brother, he's just getting stoned and working in a warehouse, what path do you wanna take?" "Why aren't you paying attention in my class anon?" "Your GF is a bad influence, anon, dump her" "You started smoking anon!? Smoking kills!".

Being a 15 year old, my reaction was basically to deliberately make things worse to piss off everybody even more. Really, I was acting out because I was disappointed I couldn't match the expectations of both myself and my environment. I was always pegged as the smart kid, the good kid and suddenly I can't live up to that. Eventually, I found pot as well. Pot at first was heaven, because one of the subtle, insidious effects of pot is that it dulls your motivation, especially if you use it regularly. I found a way to temporarily turn off my need to perform and to achieve and it was so, so nice. I could just have fun and just enjoy things for what they were. Of course, being a teenager, I couldn't use responsibly and I got to the point where I pretty much smoked all day every day. All motivation to be anything more than a pothead disappeared.

I got out of it when I did mushrooms for the first time. The hallucinations come and go when you're on shrooms. When you're hallucinating, you're looking at something really intently, but when you slowly stop hallucinating and the snake turns back into a lamp again, you'll still be staring at it. I was looking at my room, like actually actively looking at it for the first time in months. It was a complete shitshow and I realized this was my life. All the rolling papers, takeout food, clothes everywhere, dirty ass ashtray. It showed me what I was doing to myself and that's what motivated me to get help. It took awhile, but eventually I got back to how I used to be. Last year I finished my first year of law school with honors.

Obviously, giving your kid some shrooms is not the solution, but I think the moral of my story is this: if you're told from day one you're gonna be a success, it's easy to hear that you need to be a success. When you fail to live up to that, it's really tough. You don't wanna admit it and everybody around you is just making it worse because they keep telling you you're not living up to your potential. It takes maturity to adjust your expectations and maturing takes time. My guess is that your son will eventually be fine. Deep down, he's still the hard working kid who wants to be good at things. He just needs to reconcile that with everything else life throws at you.

It would be helpful if you broaden your view, as pot shops have a bright future.

As the rest said: act positively on his ideas.

Also give him a sense of purpose and responsibility about his future, it is not in your hands, but in his.

Have him talk to shopowners so he understand what it is like to run a shop.

Suggest him to consider studying plant biology and do an MBA afterwards.

Grow some marijuana yourself.

Worst thing that can happen is that it is not cool if his father likes it.

Good luck

What about getting him a puppy or kitten

So he has something other than himself to care for?

Learn about caring for something else being responsible etc

Seriously, it sounds like something happened, something traumatic, behind the scenes in his life, like sexual molestation or rape.

Time for regular therapy, family therapy, not just you.

I don’t care for dogs but wrote:

What about getting him a puppy or kitten

So he has something other than himself to care for?

Learn about caring for something else being responsible etc

Drop him off under a bridge in Portlandia. He can join our ranks for the coming revolution against the facist regime.

To CCB,

Your situation is almost exactly what my wife and I went through with our son and pot from when he was 14 until about 19. I feel for you, your heart is breaking and you feel like your son is screwing up his whole life and you feel helpless. I'm not going to rehash all we went through with my son but we also think that getting him a smartphone when he was very young and permitting him to go on sleepovers where we didn't know the parents well were 2 big mistakes. Anyway, my son is 21 now and appears to have righted the ship in the last year. He's getting A's and B's in college now and is competing for his college team and enjoying it a lot. My wife and I kept in touch with him through all this, although it wasn't easy at all, he was very secretive and withdrawn from us for the longest time. The oddest thing seemed to turn him around - the death by drug overdose of a fast-rising rapper he admired immensely and had met a few times. After this, my son seemed to think that he needed to do a much better job of what he was putting in his body. He cut back immensely on the pot, seemingly came out of a fog, regained motivation to do well in his sport and school, and appears to be on a much better track, although we worry he could backslide.

Keep talking to your son, keep telling him you love him, lotsa hugs even it it feels awkward. Try not to have every conversation be about his bad choices or habits, ask him his views on life and current events and events going on in his life in an interested not trolling for bad news manner, do things with him that he likes to do, see movies with him, take hikes or walks with him, if he's doing anything (sports, acting in a play, debate team, whatever) show up and support him..... This is a very difficult time in your parenting career but don't take it out on yourself and beat yourself up. This happens to many parents/children. Your son is alive and trying to find his way through life - it's very hard for him, too. The vast majority of his life story is hopefully yet to be written. Be there for him. Always. Don't ever ever give up on him.

I wish you the very best of luck and patience and wisdom in getting through this and out the other side.

Best to cut your losses before things get really bad. Give him a month to straighten up and fly right. If no improvement after this time, seek legal emancipation for the brat and kick him out of house. Yes, sometimes tough love is what is needed. Tell him he will no longer be financially and emotionally supported by you and you have two Kenyan teenagers ready to take over his bedroom once he leaves. If after a short time, he comes back begging for forgiveness and wanting to eat a good Thanksgiving meal or Christmas dinner tell him he had a chance, but life is hard and he better learn the lessen now before he's in his forties sleeping in a homeless encampment and selling blood to pay for his crack habit. If he comes back and is contrite you can tell him he can sleep on the bunk bed with his new Kenyan brothers, although he will need to change his name to Kwanza.

M.A.G.A.

do u even know de wae?

https://media.giphy.com/media/84CRvhy2DJlwA/giphy.gif

https://youtu.be/hLTgQ5SC-PU?t=10

He is 15 and a pot head. He doesn't get to decide on whether he sees a counselor or goes to counseling or not. That attitude may just be an extension of giving him too much freedom. It's far from putting him in a military school!

I still think there are mommy and daddy problems here. Try more introspection. Did you spoil or neglect him more than the others? Did his father? I under adored my first son, over adored the second one and got it about right with the third. My wife's got it a little differently and you can probably guess who her favorite is after brief observation. She didn't even want the third one but has loved and cared for him quite well. Still small discrepancies can have great impacts on them, starting with there relationships in the family. They are teens now and I am doing a decent job of reassuring the less adored one but the over adored one is kind of scary actually. All doing pretty good, but it's a lot of work to build the confidence of one and get the other one to be less spoiled.

I agree that this crazy place has some useful thread for on and off topic help/learning.

This thread was pretty good and perhaps applies to your situation. Maybe not, but don't write it all off on the kid. It's impossible that's all there is too it. Like nurture had no role? That's absurd.

Tell him he is in control of his own life and the direction that it leads. Tell him that you are your husband are, when it comes down to it, the only people who care about him more than themselves(yourselves). Tell him it sucks to look back over the year(s) and realize you completely squandered and wasted your time doing things (or not) with no value/meaning. Tell him you have been thinking and dreaming about him since before he was born, what his personality was, what he would be like, what he would do, what he would become. Tell him that life has been very difficult for the majority of the worlds population for the majority of history. Tell him that it is every parents goal to have their children live a better life then they did. Tell him that with age does not come wisdom, but it does come with experience. And you've seen how these choices can lead people. Tell him that he is in control, but tell him you are there to help.

We've all had our lows and highs, goodluck

-RS