Your doing him a favor in the long run.
Another possibility: you don’t have to remove the sticker, just make it not visible. So he needs to get another sticker and layer it on top of the first one.
Also won’t goo gone remove the residue without damaging the finish?
I’d say you’ve done just about all you can reasonably be expected to do, and more. How does your son feel about all this, incidentally?
It’s not a bumper sticker. It’s a window sticker. If he put it on before having the tint done, he’s right about damaging it (though that’s not your problem). If he put it on after having the tint done, he’s stupid.
I’d say he’s already damaged his “baby”. That’s one stupid window sticker and if his truck could talk, it’d be yelling “Get it off me!”
There’s hundreds of kids who would appreciate what you’ve done and be glad to take his place. For him to give that up because of something so petty – it’s all on him.
You’ve done what you can. He may try to live on his own, realize it was a mistake to leave you, remove the sticker, and come back as hat-in-hand as a teenage boy can, and ask to come back. If you part with the idea that he has chosen what he wants, you can still be there for him when he wises up. Hope he doesn’t decide to get truck testicles, too. Ikk.
He came by while we were eating lunch to get the last of his stuff and give us back some of our things. His friend, who is in much the same situation, was with him. At least the friend has the option of staying with his grandma. While they were here, he didn’t say 5 words. I expect he probably will not complete his GED and will just bum around working odd jobs until something halfway steady comes along.
I guess I see this as one of those cases where I would pick my battles. He’s really not doing anything that bad. To me this is about on par with when I was in school and adults freaked out about the kids listening to Marilyn Manson (horrors!) or wore offensive t-shirts to school (oh no, not a Co-ed Naked t-shirt!)
For a kid raised the way that he was, he sounds like a basically decent kid who is trying his best.
If he were doing something illegal or dangerous like doing drugs I’d lay down the law, but to me this seems like normal teen “rebellion” and trying to assert his individuality. In a normal household with normal parents who were not stupid whores, he would be allowed to do that kind of dumb shit without having his future screwed up. Imagine if every parent kicked out their kid for being stupidly stubborn over some issue like growing his hair long or whatever.
The kids sounds like ones I’ve dealt with before, you know, liars.
He is 17 and is functioning as an adult. I was 15 and in college. Both my parents were dead by the time I was 16. I got my own roommate and flat and job and paid my own way through college.
I was an adult and acted like one. It can be done.
I used to work with kids from “troubled homes.” Most are excellent in coming up with sob stories. Yes, they’ve had difficult lives, but they are really good at the guilt.
If you want to help him, you have to give him choices. You said, cover the sticker. He doesn’t always do this. You told him remove it. He refuses. You now need to tell him, you have a 30 day notice to find another place to live.
Do you honestly think you’re helping him? No you’re enabling him. He was supposed to be in the army by now. I doubt he had any intention of doing so.
You tell him. Cover the sticker up. You get ONE and ONLY one mistake. After that it comes off. If you don’t like it, then there is a 30 day notice to find a new place to live.
If he had a job do you think a boss is gonna give him even ONE chance. He needs to learn his actions have consequnces. So far he’s learned his actions have no consequences for him at all, because he’s conned you into thinking he’s a “good kid” and everyone else is the problem.
Furthermore if he’s 17 his parents are still responsible for you. Why aren’t they supporting this kid? What are your legal responsibilities for housing a minor? These are some serious things. What if the mother hauls off and charges you with kidnapping. Even if it’s a nuisance charge, is this kid gonna suddenly have a memory slip?
Your not doing yourself or him any favours by letting him get away with stuff. This is YOUR house and your letting a stranger, someone who isn’t a family member, a KID, dicatate you.
That alone means something is AWFULLY wrong. Now is the time to fix that.
I’d give him his 30 day notice today.
I wonder if this kid is playing you about his GED as well. Your profile says you are in Missouri. Here’s the MO state website about the GED.
There is no requirement to take a course. You can simply sign up, pay 20 bucks and schedule the test. The online test classes are not offered “in part” online. They are entirely online, though you do have to go to a test center to take a placement test before course (presumably to select the right course level), and take an on-site test after the course to measure your progress.
So think about what he’s told you, and what the state GED program requires, and decide if he’s been truthful or not.
FYI, I used to work in the WI community college system in a GED office, and we offered to test at least monthly at our site. And if you failed you could take it again next month. I’m guessing if this was his plan in May and he was serious about it, he could have been long done with it.
I’d expect that he’s lying about removing the sticker affecting his tint. Tint’s applied from the inside of the window, no? Most of those vinyl stickers are applied from the outside.
This was my first thought. The tint is on the inside and the sticker should be on the outside. If the tint is on the inside and the sticker was applied to the inside over the tint (mirror image), you wouldn’t be able to see it very well from the outside. If the sticker was applied to the inside and then tint was applied over it, it would make sense, but that would be a really expensive job.
One thing I know from experience (I own a sign and graphics shop) is that although there may be no laws preventing offensive things (short of pornography) displayed on the back of a vehicle, it will offend someone, and someone will call the cops. If the cops find it offensive, they’re going to find a reason to give the kid HELL.
Also, being that it’s on the back window, laws vary from place to place regarding how much of the view out of the back window can be blocked by such things and that could get him into trouble too.
Finally, people who put offensive things on their truck windows are likely to find their window smashed when they get up in the morning.
Good point - as a teenage boy driving a truck, one thing he DOES NOT want is more cop attention - hell, as a middle-aged woman driving a Corolla, I don’t want extra cop attention.
I’m glad to see other people think this young guy is playing you, Rafe, and it’s not just me. I don’t think you can blame yourself if he screws his life up over something this stupid, either. If it wasn’t this, it would be something else, if he’s bound and determined to make a mess of himself.
Rafe,
Don’t forget to change your locks after the kid leaves. While you say he’s a good kid, you never know what can happen to people (drugs, alcohol, etc). The last thing you need is to come home in four or six months and find out you’ve been robbed.
When he hadn’t started towards the GED after saying he would, Mrs. Hollister and I did this research back in June. His army recruiter has arranged the class through a center in Kansas, 20 miles away. Mrs. Hollister spoke with the course administrator and it is legitimate.
We didn’t give him a 30 day notice. We told him the offending message had to be covered. After about a week, he started forgetting to do so. We told him the sticker would have to go and he needed to show us the respect we were due. He had lots of freebies at our home and we asked very little in return. He decided there were too many rules and we needed to respect him and his stuff. We told him to remove the sticker. He moved out.
I hear you on the support issue. A little extra cash to pay for the increased utilities and food would have been nice. His father pays child support to the mom. Mom keeps the money. She sent him a little bit, but not nearly what she had received. Also, Jake gave his mom a cheap little compact car he had bought for about $1000 and put a few hundred more into to get it in decent shape. She sold it and promised to mail him the $2000 she got for it. He waited and waited for it. Finally she said she didn’t mail it, but he could drive down and get it. When he got there, he only got part of that money.
But, the OP is not the kid’s parent. There is a huge difference between what I’d accept from my child and what I’d accept from a boarder.
I get that you set a boundary, he refused to respect it, and now the kid has moved out.
I just wanted to know why he couldn’t just back into the driveway when he parked so the sticker couldn’t be seen from the street? Wouldn’t that have been an acceptable compromise?
Problems do have solutions. Why did it have to be: get rid of it or we get rid of you?
If Jake doesn’t think “get rid of your sticker and in exchange we’ll give you a roof over your head and feed you” I doubt there’s much the OP can do to keep him happy in the long term.
From the OP: “We have an 8 y.o. and really don’t want him exposed to such.”
Because the kid rejected the other less drastic solution.