Its been awhile, but here is the latest on my nephew

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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If you want all the background, you can do a search for Threads started by Dragwyr, and the keyword, “eric”.

(I was going to try to keep this succinct, but that failed.)

It has been 2 years since my last update on the saga of my nephew, Eric, and his substance abusing mother, K. For the most part, Eric has adjusted to living with us. He still sees his counselor regularly and is now on a prescribed mild antidepressant.

6th grade for Eric was tough. Its normally tough for the well balanced student, but for Eric who has all that baggage, it was extremely tough… especially in math. He was having trouble and it just started a long downhill spiral that he wasn’t able to recover from. Plus, we found out his math teacher was really the bad teacher he said she was. He also would get consistent migraine headaches at school, at leasdt 3 x per week and always during or just before math class. For the summer we got him a math tutor who is absolutely fantastic, so now in 7th grade math, he’s doing pretty well, but he’s still having problems remember to turn in his homework in other subjects and basically shows a lot of apathy.

I realize that part of this is adolescence and raging hormones, but there’s still something mentally keeping him from being motivated.

K (Eric’s mom), has lost her driver’s license. She continued over the past 2 years to float around from one guy to another. Earlier this year, she managed to find a guy that is able to put with her crap (John… he’s some sort of truck driver) and she’s been living with him and making him cart her around. As far as we know, John doesn’t have a drug or drinking problem, but he is not without significant issues that I think are bad signs (The main one is that he’s a pathological hoarder and has literally tons of crap all stacked up on his counters, stove, tables, beds, TV, etc.).

With John being able to drive, both K and Eric have been bugging us to let John drive K over to pick him up for his visits. Up to this point, we had been either letting Eric walk around town (its a small village so you can walk anywhere), or we take Eric to John’s house. This plan had been working fine for the most part., but Wife had been trying to convince me to change the arrangement and I kept saying no. My thought was that would allow K to take Eric anywhere she wanted in AND out of town, essentially opening the door to potentially expose Eric to her loser friends again. Also, she could start pushing the boundaries of where she could take him and end up somewhere we can’t get to quickly (Like out of state!!!).

What changed all this was that both wife and I were scheduled for surgery the same week (1st week in Nov), and she was concerned about Eric being able to get his visits, so she wanted to change the arrangement again. I was very reluctant to allow the change, but agreed. So from the beginning of Nov to now, John has been bringing K over to our house and picking up Eric.

Also during this time there were several other incidents, all related, but the short version is that Eric wants a pet, bird and it’s impossible for us to have a bird here, so his mom bought him one without telling us and is keeping it at John’s house.

During all this, we thought we had struck a level of normalcy for him with regard to his psyche. Yes, he was starting to push some boundaries and also show a little bit of disrespect, but we weren’t worried. He’s a teen. We were kind of expecting that to happen.

Then today happened.

Wife called me into the bathroom tonight to show me that Eric has been cutting himself. :eek::eek::eek: He had scratch marks all over his wrist, some of which were a little red. It was right then that I realized that he’s not getting any better. I don’t know if its adolescence plus all the crap he’s still dealing with, or if it was the new amount of leeway that he suddenly had with his visits with his mom.

I’m sure his counselor and his doctor will either increase or change his medication. Counselor visits will probably become more frequent and we will need to keep a sharper eye on what he’s doing in his spare time. Wife and I will definitely talk about how to proceed tonight.

ps. Eric’s dad, has been pretty much out of the picture… no requests to visit, no phone calls… until the week of Thanksgiving. He wanted to go to the community thanksgiving dinner with him. Since then, we’ve heard no word.

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Oh, no. I’m sorry to hear this Dragwyr. Will you be able to talk to his doc & counselor about the increased K visits? I, too, would be suspicious that something over there triggered the cutting.

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Keep in mind that with kids, especially troubled ones, sometimes they take a step backward. It doesn’t mean that he’s not getting any better. He had a misstep. Show him that you’re not going to freak out and you’ll still be there no matter what, because that’s really what he needs right now. I hope things get better for you all.

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Thank you both for your kind thoughts. The doc and the counselor will be fully informed of his visiting status w/his mother. Alice, you make a good point. I’ll try to keep it in mind in the coming days.

5

This is a bit of a long shot, but…

You said there is a pet bird at John’s house. Now, I have pet birds, and though small, they have claws and beaks. I sometimes have scratches and gouges on my hands and wrists due to them - not because they’re bad birds, but because they have claws. Ever see the gloves falconers wear? Even small birds can leave injuries. Is it possible that some of what you’ve seen comes from a pet and not self-injury?

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** Broomstick**, we’ve been able to confirm that Eric is cutting. He’s admitted it to us…more or less. Plus he was extremely reluctant to even show us his arm when we confronted him about it. The kid is hurting big time and we don’t really know how to deal with it. I will keep everyone posted.

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Article on cutting

WebMD article on cutting

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Update: After talking about this with my wife, I found out the following…

When wife was first trying to find out what was going on with his arm, he wouldn’t have any of that and kept flat out refusing to to show it to her. When she finally managed to get him to show it to her, he started saying stuff like, “Its not like my counselor doesn’t know about this already.” and, “I’m surprised it took you this long to notice”.

These make me think that its been going on a lot longer than we’ve known about, AND that his counselor does not know about it. The counselor would have told us if he suspected anything.

One thing wife and I discussed last night that makes sense is that Eric is 13. His mother pretty much has the mentality of a 13 yr old. Eric could be stressing over the fact that he’s now seeing his mother for who she really is. Another possibility is that now that he see’s his mother for who she really is, he’s realizing he HAS to stay with us… and I know he doesn’t want to. He’s always resented living with us and had made statements saying that he’s “… NOT a Dragwyr” and that when he turns 18 he’s moving out. We always respond with, “Move out to where?”. We’ve always told him that he will always have a family, but he just refuses to believe it. I don’t know how much of that is just him being stubborn (which is in his nature) and how much is the abuse. Unfortunately his stubbornness makes it harder to deal with him.

I suggested to wife that we tell all his teachers about this because we need to know if this behavior happens again. Wife told me she didn’t tell all of his teachers because she wanted Eric to be treated like a normal kid. The thing is he’s not a normal kid. He’s hurting inside and needs help, and if his teachers know that, maybe they can help as well.

He has an MD appt this week and also a counselor appt this week. We will see what they say about this.

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Maybe he’s testing you, to see how far he can go before you abandon him like his mother and father did. Even if they technically didn’t, I’m sure he feels that they have. Even if he says he doesn’t want a family, doesn’t want you, he probably really does. Just continue to be there and help him- that’s what, in the end, really is going to matter- your consistency, your calm, your unconditional love. Kids have undeveloped brains and they sometimes do dumb things and sometimes it takes them a long time to understand things. Keep plugging away- all it takes is one person that cares, and he has at least two in you and your wife.

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Oh, yeah. +10 on this.

When SWMBO and I got serious, her kids gave me hell. Not because they were mean or nasty, but because their bio-dad is a serious, grade-A asshole and they both felt abandoned by him. They basically pressured me to see if I would abandon them, too. It wasn’t anything conscious or voluntary; it’s the way kids in a situation like that feel.

Hang in there. Be there for him. That’s all you can do. My stepson gave us - especially me - unmitigated hell for years. He’s now 27, out on his own with his own car and mortgage. We had him over for dinner a while back and he told us that he would probably be dead today except for the fact that we were supportive of him throughout his troubled times. A whole bunch of his friends from that time are dead.

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I agree he’s not a normal kid and he must be hurting (my college roommate was a cutter, so yeah, I’m aware such people even when calm outside can be an emotional tornado on the inside) but I’m not sure everyone needs to know that. If EVERYONE knows then there’s the problem he might be seen and/or treated as the damaged emotional cripple crazy cutter kid 24/7 - and there ARE people who will treat him poorly for his problems, even among educators and medical people who should know better. Sure, a good teacher can help - a bad teacher may hurt him. He doesn’t need more hurt. Reveal this truth about him on a need-to-know basis, because not everyone needs to know.

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Broomstick:
You are, of course, correct. I think I was thinking more along the lines that we should tell all this teachers and administration that he is an abused child with severe emotional problems, but it didn’t come out that way.

Clothahump and Alice the Goon:
I had never thought about that… that he could be testing us on an unconscious level.

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My niece is a little older, but when she expressed a desire to move out at 18, I didn’t throw cold water on her idea. I talked to her about how to save up money, how to choose room mates, whether or not to work while going to college - practical advice about how to manage living on her own, in her own apartment. I let her know that she always has a home here but she is welcome to test the waters by living on her own. I do insist that she has a plan. I don’t want her to feel trapped here because nobody behaves well when they feel trapped.

I agree that he is probably looking for holes in his safety net. As has been mentioned, the best thing is probably to remain as steady as you can.

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I actually did most out (mostly) at 18. There was one summer I had to go back home, but after that I was out for good. It wasn’t because I hated my family, it’s because I wanted to be out on my own.

13 isn’t too soon to start preparing him for that. I mean, if he expresses the idea of moving out at 18 then say “OK, let’s make sure you’re ready to do this”. I’ve known some abused people in the past (who hasn’t?) and the more secure they feel the less inclined they are to be angry, belligerent, and confrontational. The kid has been hurt by the very people who should care for him most, maybe he really needs to feel like he can take care of himself before he can trust others to help him. I’m guessing trust is a huge issue for him. I’m guessing he feels like he’s not in control of anything in his life and he’s looking for something he can exert his will on, even if it’s only his own body.

Think about it. He may be entirely serious about wanting to be on his own (so he can be in control, maybe?), and if you treat it seriously, as a long term project, he might not push back so much.

Just food for thought - you know the situation far better than I do.

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Broomstick:
I think you are right about a lot of this and you give some good advice on how to deal with it, but Eric has told us straight up that he’d move in with his dad. The thing is that he just doesn’t know just how screwed up his dad really is because his dad is never around. Perhaps his reason for moving out will change as he gets older, but we will still have to worry about his parents trying to take advantage of him. One day at a time, I guess.

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Can’t hurt to teach him how to take care of himself, regardless of what happens. If you teach him sensible skills for money management, buying groceries, cooking, laundry, minor repairs, etc. then he might well see how screwed up his relatives are for himself, without you having to be the bad guy. Teach him that if he shows responsibility (say, getting himself up and ready for school on time without nagging) he’ll get privileges. Reward adult and responsible behavior. Hey, you know all this. The trick is implementing it. Remember, in some societies 13 year old boys are taking on adult jobs and responsibilities.

Once kids reach adulthood and move out parents can’t keep them safe any longer. The best you can do is equip the kid to take care of himself and teach him what you can of good decision making.

He might also be doing “I’ll move in with my dad!” in an attempt to slap you in the face, given that you’re in the dad role right now. Maybe a “I’ll reject you before you can reject me” sort of thing.

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Needs to be repeated.

He is use to the parental units in his life screwing him and abandoning him. This is his way of doing the abandoning FIRST.