I live with my best friend and her little brother is the most annoying shithead on the face of the earth!
He’s 17 and he has no friends at all. He is very lonely so he insists on butting into everything my best friend and i do. He refuses to respect those in authority, and cusses them out frequently. This includes his parents. I have seen him make his mother cry for an hour.
He has dropped out of school and he does nothing at all but sit on his ass, eat candy and watch television. Because of this lack of activity, he has gained over eighty pounds in the last year and is now obese. And unfortunatly, this is not an exaggeration.
His parents cannot handle him and as they live in another state this leaves the responsbility of looking after him to my best friend. She is a lovely, caring person and is too soft to kick him out, even though he refuses to get a job and contribute to our household.
I don’t want to move out as I love where I’m living and I love my best friend, but it’s becoming a major strain and I don’t feel that I can take action as I am not a family member. I do realise that his behaviour is a cry for help but he consistently refuses to accept help whether it’s from his sister or his parents, or any other member of his family. My best friend and I are tired of supporting him. Does anyone have any suggestions on how this situation can be resolved? And is there anyone out there who has been in a similar situation?
Yes, and luckily it ended in divorce (not mine, my mom and my step-father).
Suggestions: Sounds like you are not a really mean person or else you’d’ve mentioned your attempts to poison his Cheesy-Poofs (unless you just conveniently left those details out). If he is approachable, you and your friend should talk to him together. Sounds liek he has a problem with AUTHORITAAY, so let your friend take the lead. But you mentioned she’s a bit soft on him, so first you should make clear what you are seeing going on.
One important fact that you left out: when you say that you live with your best friend, what does that entail? You rent an apartment together, I assume? Or does she own a house that you rent a room in? Something else? Does the brother pay rent?
If, as seems most likely, the two of you are renting an apartment together and the brother is simply living there, then I think you’d be well within your rights to simply say, “Look, I’m paying half the rent on this apartment, and brother is paying nothing at all. In two weeks, I want him to either start paying a third of the rent, or move out. Period.” Simply allowing him to live there is a major concession on your part; there’s no reason you need to financially support him, too.
And the sooner you say it the better. Sounds like your only other options are to move out, or stay in and risk becoming increasingly resentful of your best friend.
He’s being financially supported…I’d tell my friend to notify him that this will end at a specific time. When he turns 18, or at the beginning of the summer, or in Sept…something like that. First put a time limit on it. When that time comes, he will either contribute his 1/3 financially or he goes elsewhere, like back to Mom & Dad. This way no one is being very ‘authoritative’, it’s only common sense that he’ll legally be a adult soon, and no longer someone else’s responsibility. It is providing an incentive. Under no circumstances should she be supporting him after age 18, it does absolutely no good to anyone involved. (She probably knows that already but do stress it because big sisters can be soft. :)) JMO.
The eating situation is a whole other topic…and so is whether or not you want to continue living with the both of them, like zut said. Good luck.
Since when can a 17-yr-old get away with sitting around and doing nothing all day?
He’s 17, and a mess. He’s still a minor. I don’t know how he got this way, but since he is still a child I have some forgiveness. The boy needs counseling and discipline. Too bad you can’t force his inscription into the military (not that they’d take a high school dropout)
Her parents need to step in here. It’s unconscionable to leave your friend as his guardian. He is their responsibility.
It’s unfortunate that there’s no dearth of perjoratives such as ‘fatty’ to describe someone who is obese, and yet a sad lack of similar stinging terms to describe someone, such as the OP, who is willing to sling such terms around at others but apparently lacks the backbone to make and enforce important decisions in her own life.
You also might try to starve him out. So to speak. If you and your friend can pledge to do without for awhile, that is.
Cut off the cable. When he asks, tell him it’s not going back on until he finds a way to pay for it. Buy only staples at the grocery store (keep any good stuff and convenience foods in your locked car). Same story: until he wants to get a job and contribute, there aren’t going to be any more of those foods he loves. Change your computer so you can’t sign on without a password. Tell him he can have a password to use it when he gets a job. Refuse to pay his way when he tries to go out with you two.
The kid has copious amounts of free time, so he has no excuse for not finding a job.
Sounds like you and your best friend have to have an intervention with Baby Huey. If she’s a softie, she’ll appreciate and need your support in this situation. You aren’t a family member, true, but he’s obviously impinging on your quality of life. It’s not unreasonable for you to at least want this guy to contribute to the household, if he’s going to be there eating all of your candy and all.
He needs an ultimatum. Set a date not in the far-off future and tell him that if he doesn’t get a job or go back to school by then, the locks will be changed and his stuff will be moved to the curb. Tell him you’re serious. Tell him that only little boys stay home and eat candy all day. If he think he’s a little boy, his butt should have stayed in school.
Then after he gets a job, he should make plans to get his own place. Sister is nice to let him stay with her, but she’s under no obligation to keep him around to the detriment of her own life. If he protests, tell him those of the rules of the house and if he doesn’t like it, there’s the door.
Seeing as how I’ve never had the pleasure of shrugging off a blood-sucking relative, take my advice with a grain of salt. But do something. The brother will one day appreciate this kick in the ass.
No, the responsibility does not fall on your friend. He is a minor and his parents have legal and financial responsibility for him. If they cannot handle him, whatever that means, they need to contact the proper authorities or SUCK IT UP - that’s what happens when people have kids. They are not supposed to dump their problem children on someone else when the going gets rough. And how did they end up either moving out of state from their minor son, or allowing their minor son to move to another state when he has no means of support?
If your friend feels a family obligation to care for her brother, then you have to decide which is worse: allowing someone to live for free in your home, in which case you are subsidizing his living expenses; or moving yourself out.
Wait, this is a minor, correct? Who is his legal guardian, as they say? Has he essentially been abandoned by his parents to go live with his sister and her friend?
If he’s a huge pain in the ass, he might not even be living there legally, although im certainly not up on the applicable laws.
Just to clarify for zut , my friend owns her own home and I pay her rent to live there. It is convienent for us both as it is a large home and she needs help to look after the grounds, ect. and it is close to my workplace.
He’s a male teen…even though he may not have ambition or manners, the odds pretty high are he has hormones. Let him read this factoidfrom Bordelond, confirmedby Merhouse. If that doesn’t wake him up & get him to get off his ass & put down the pies, consider him a lost cause.
Sounds like a teenage funk-- self-hatred, deliberate self-destructiveness (dropping out of school, doing nothing but eating, being a hateful person, etc. all destructive choices)–turned into depression. You say he’s “so lonely,” it’s very sad really, but having had friends with their own charming self-destructive spirals I now how hard it is to be patient, especially when it all seems so deliberate.
Anyway, my point: Get him to a doctor for evaluation, possible medication and an exercise program, give him goals and if it comes to it, ultimatums.
Oh, I think he should go to military school. And that his parents should pay for it. But then, I don’t think that this kid should have been Sissy’s problem to begin with.