Question on dealing with a kid who's not my own

In My Humble Opinion
1

Here’s the background:

One of my son’s friends, Jake is 17 y.o. and is sorta kinda living with us. He comes from an unstable home and his mom is a flake. She moved to a major city a couple hours from here after getting in trouble for banging two different married men. The son moved with her, reluctantly. He hated the school and mom started banging some other married guy down there. He decided to quit school and come back here for his GED, then would enlist in the army in July. That was May. It’s now August 20 and he’s supposed to start his GED class this week.

We put a spare bed in our son’s room and he stays there quite a bit. He eats with us and we wash his clothes. However, he has a hit-and-miss job working for a landscaper. That guy has an old trailer on his property that he lets Jake stay in the night before he has to work, because they usually start work early so they can quit soon after lunch before it gets too hot.

Jake is a good kid. We’ve had no problems with him doing anything he shouldn’t. He frequently complains about money, usually hinting that he wishes he could come up with $20 for gas. Then he’ll buy a $30 hat. He needs basic clothes and we have provided some of this for him, as well.

Last week, a day after telling Mrs. Hollister that he was almost out of gas and needed some way to come up with some money, he went out for the night. The next morning we woke up to see his truck in the driveway with a new sticker in the back window. It is huge (12 inches tall, 36 inches wide) said “Imports are like tampons. Every Pussy needs one!!!”

So here’s the deal. We have an 8 y.o. and really don’t want him exposed to such. Also, we have very respectable neighbors who certainly aren’t approving of this language, either, including the fact that they have young children. We have friends coming over frequently. We would not allow him to speak like this in our home and believe that having the sticker is akin to speaking. People driving past our house can see the sticker from the road.

We struck a deal with him to cover it up every time he parks at the house or to remove the sticker. He started covering it with a silver reflective accordian-style windshield shade. Now he doesn’t remember to do this every time, so we are insisting that he remove the sticker. He doesn’t want to do this, claiming it will ruin the window tint on the glass, so we should pay to have the window re-tinted.

I know when we refuse to pay for this, he will move into the trailer permanently. It won’t harm our family any for this to happen, but I worry about him. He has no positive influences in his life at all. We have been the only stability he has had in 10 years or more. We even gave him a spare key to the house. If he moves in to this trailer by himself, he has poor living conditions, no internet access (a good part of his GED can be completed online), fast food for every meal, no responsible adults for guidance, etc., etc.

To what extent should we go to keep him at our home?

2

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3

Seems to me he didn’t think about ruining the tint when he put the sticker there.

I think you’ve already helped him out a bunch and have every right to insist that sticker be gone. He can decide what his priorities are. Explain to him just as you’ve explained to us that you care and would like to see him have some of the advantages your relationship offers, Then let him decide and wish him the best.

4

He’s an adult, treat him as such.

5

He sounds like a tremendous douche. It sounds like you’ve bent over backwards for him. You let him live with you, buy him new clothing, etc and when you ask that he remove an offensive sticker from a truck he parks in front of your house he demands that you pay for the tint? This fucker doesn’t care about anyone but himself. I have no sympathy for him at all.

6

We are constantly re-asking and re-answering this question at our house in regard to my stepson. He gets everything, gives nothing, and his life is sliding directly into the toilet.

I would have to go with cosmosdan’s advice: Have a heart-to-heart with the kid and then let him choose. But you’ll have to be prepared for him to make the wrong choice.

7

Wellllllll, not really. Not legally - he’s only 17, right? - and certainly not emotionally. Sorry, OP, but he’s not gonna realize how good he had it with you until that’s all gone.

Do you get the sense that he got this sticker in order to test your boundaries? Push things a little? You said he’s a “good kid” otherwise. And while I totally understand **Clock’s **reaction, I still think that any teenager who’s got the guts to leave his own mother so that he can get an education is a cut above the average slacker-leech. It wouldn’t hurt to reinforce that message to him, too - that all this work and effort will be worth something in the end, and that you believe in him.

Agree with the others: spell it out for him about this whole sticker nonsense.
Basically… he removes the sticker - tint damage or no - and he continues to get a FREE place to stay (including utilities! a toilet to shit in and a shower to wash in and a place to wash his clothes!) FREE food, FREE Internet access, etc. etc.
He stands his ground about keeping the sticker, and he loses all those other things.
If he moves out into the trailer … would you eventually let him move back in? i.e. Would he be irrevocably burning his bridges by leaving you now?

8

You should probably change your locks when he bails on the free ride and back to the trailer.

9

Call his bluff. Tell him if it ruins the tint, then he’ll have to drive around with a ruined tint. You can even play off the sticker and tell him “Only pussies bitch about their truck tint.”

Allowing him to keep the sticker or paying to fix the tint is going too far. Make him get rid of it.

10

You are basically acting as his parents while he’s staying with you, and you do have the right to expect him to abide by your rules. He’s acting like one of your kids, and hinting for money (and then blowing any money he does have) and testing the limits is part of acting like a teenager.

Give him one more chance to remember to cover up that stupid banner, and tell him it’s his last chance. If he can’t remember it EVERY TIME, then he has to get rid of the banner, even if it ruins the tint.

11

I would suggest asking him to honor your wishes or get out.

If he chooses to leave, he chooses to leave. You are not responsible for him. If he wants to push the limits, let him know that the limits have been tested, and he has gone beyond them. If he doesn’t want to shape up, then he can ship out. Personally, based on the OP, I would have him leave with no option of removing the sticker at this point.

Why are you wrestling with your conscience over this? He doesn’t sound like he is giving anything positive to you, and the ‘pay for his tint’ is insult to injury.

The only thing I find odd is that you didn’t find it obvious that it is time for him to go when you put the question in print.

12

There are things that are his choice, and he can do what he wants, and there are things that affect your family, and he doesn’t have as much of a say in them (if any at all) - I think a huge, offensive sticker (and I do think that’s offensive) falls under the, “Affecting the family, not his call” category. The sticker comes off, or the truck doesn’t get parked in front of your house. Period. “Wreck the tint?” Don’t put stickers on it, then.

Plus, he’s wrong, too - imports are better than domestics in most cases, because US American car companies have been very lazy for a long time. :slight_smile:

13

On the scale of bad things that teenage boys can do, an offensive bumpersticker barely registers on my meter.
I wouldn’t make such a huge deal over this. Be thankful he isn’t doing drugs or bringing strange people to party in your house. If anything, I’d just tell him that he can’t PARK his truck right by your house and has to walk over if he insists on keeping the sticker. It does sound like your family is the only positive influence he has. Ruining the kid’s life over a slightly offensive sticker seems like a huge overreaction.

14

First of all, Rafe, you’re a good egg for letting the kid crash at your house and being concerned about providing some modicum of structure in his life. I’m impressed with anyone who can be a sort of overseer to whatever kids don’t happen to have a great homelife in the neighborhood.

The most important thing here is that the whole situation is on the fence; he kind of lives with you and kind of doesn’t. So far it hasn’t been a huge problem since he’s an okay kid, and that’s great; you don’t want it sliding too far off the tracks and letting it get out of your control as long as he’s under your roof. Pulling on the other side, however, he’s getting a little older and wants to exert more control and is leaning toward the “fuck it, I can make it on my own” mentality.

Before you let him go completely, having the heart to heart talk is definitely necessary, as others have said. I would, however, include the following: you’d like him to stay, and want to guide him the way you’d guide your own kids, and that means setting goals (and rules)… including, finishing GED, getting a real, stable job (with a reputable and consistent employer), being very vocal about how a successful adult manages money, gets life skills, and the whole figuring out the future whether that’s trade school, army, or whatever, and the steps required to get him there; and furthermore, that all your adult guidance is there and working with him to get him there.

If he chooses not to pursue this sort of adult-vision of life, that’s fine, but if it were me, I’d offer him the whole positive vision of the future that you have to offer, with all the responsibilities that go with that, and if he rejects that, that’s it. But I think you owe it to him to show him so he knows exactly what he’s rejecting by moving away from your family permanently.

I hope this makes sense; my SO and I were in a similar situation and it ended with the kid choosing to go back to a loser mother, and a flailing future. But I take a lot of comfort in knowing that we showed him what a successful future looked like, and he knew fairly clearly what he was giving up.

Hope this makes sense.

15

He can remove the sticker and live with the messed up tint or he can move out. They would not be ruining his life over a sticker. He would be choosing to give up a positive situation for a sticker. His choice.

16

UPDATE

Mrs. Hollister had been texting with him today, it seems. He said there is no way he’s about to remove the sticker and damage his truck. The truck is his baby and that’s why he treats it so well, polishing it and adding all the aftermarket upgrades. If we can’t respect that, then he’s just gonna get his stuff and leave.

No real surprise that this is his decision, but I am disappointed and quite sad for him. My grocery and utility bills will drop a bit without him around, but that is the only positive I see to this situation, and that’s pretty insignificant. Maybe I’m just feeling melancholy because I have Gillian Welch music playing. Or vice versa.

17

Maybe he’ll realize how good you were to him once he’s not being taken care of. Regardless of his decision, you helped him and were there for him, so don’t feel bad that it turned out this way.

When my kids were growing up our sorta joke sorta not saying was, “sometimes you have to love someone enough to kick them in the ass.”

18

It’s not a bumper sticker. It’s a foot high and a yard wide. Rather hard to ignore, and parking it across the street or down the block doesn’t prevent his kid and neighbors from having it essentially thrust in their faces.

Ruining the kid’s life? Come on. For all we know, it would ruin the kid’s life to give in on this one (and the next one, and the one after that, etc.) as he might never learn to control his idiotic impulses.

19

I’m getting a vibe from what you’re saying here that little Mister Man is trying to manipulate your family a bit and play on your guilt - don’t fall for it. He can go out in the garden and eat worms - as a young adult, actions have consequences, and if you’ve set a boundary, that’s your prerogative. The sooner he learns that, the better (his mom doesn’t seem to have learned that yet from what you’ve described).

20

He seems like a self-entitled little prick. Good riddance as far as I’m concerned BUT- that’s not why I came in.

If you use a hair dryer and start on one edge of the attached bumper sticker, peel slowly as you blow warm air on the adhesive side, you can very easily remove them without leaving any residue.