I have a problem with the school making this a requirement, no matter how thin or overweight the child in question. Requiring x number of hours of unspecified activity which must be verified by parents is vague and odd. It’s very nice in principal, but it’s a one size fits all requirement in a society in which not everyone is the same size, or has the same abilities or free time. Besides, what’s “physical activity?” Anything that the parents say? Or is there some narrowly defined list?
I’m also worried about the message that this sends. Ideally, it’s “Hey, physical fitness is great!” But in reality it’s yet another requirement from the system being handed down to kids without any real reason to comply except the “you have to” that goes with all mandates from on high. That’s a sure-fire recipe for a lot of resentment. Rather counterproductive in the long-term, isn’t it?
What about kids whose parents could give a good damn and won’t sign off, what happens to them? Or parents who have issues and won’t take their kids at their word, or are highly demanding and don’t think that the work that their kid did is “enough” and won’t sign off?
This is high school. I’ll guess that some of these kids have jobs. Is four hours over a grill at McDonald’s or bagging groceries “physical activity” which qualifies? How about teen moms – is four hours of chasing their baby around and getting up for late night feedings on the approved list?
As a kid, I was a klutz. I didn’t like to play sports or whatever because I was always falling down or otherwise getting hurt. I stayed home with my mama, I read books endlessly, I did crafts, I painted, I cooked. I was skinny as a rail, naturally, until after college. Even when I did end up needing to lose a bit of weight, I did it mainly through changing my diet, not through exercising. Eventually I started running mainly to do something with my husband, but that was much, much later in life. They high schoool era me would have never fulfilled a four hour a week mandatory extracurricular physical activity requirement, not ever. Was it the school system’s right to force me into it? Would that have done me any good at all?
Not evident from the OP that he has sufficient info to make the assertions that he does.(especially about the medical conditions, but unless he lives w/them 24/7, he cannot possibly know what she feeds him, or lets him do all the time).
She’s the parent of said child. If she has made certain choices based on her own values/reasons to do certain things (write notes to the school for example), those are choices she’s allowed to make as her parent. He’s welcome to his opinion as well, tho I don’t recall her asking for his input.
My son’s out of high school now. I chose on a couple of occasions to write b/s to the school, since I believed that certain rules and procedures of theirs were b/s. I’d truely have resented some neighbor deciding what was right for my child and commenting on it. It’s none of the OP’s business.
The rude behavior he complains of (interrupting), well shit. That’s the worst that he can come up with? Hellsbells, there’s any dozen of adults who do that on a continual basis. Does he find himself doing the same sort of response w/the adults?
So, he doesn’t approve of the mothers’ choices WRT the kids education, thinks the kid’s fat and lazy and interupts adults. Wow, and that deserves “your child will die a slovenly death?” He may be correct that the mother indulges the kid too much. OTHO, I’ve really quite resented intrusions from strangers about their assesment on my parenting.
Examples - when my son was born, he weighed in at 10 pounds, 12 oz. and absolute strangers felt it was their place to comment on how fat he was. None of your fucking business, thank you.
On another occasion in the grocery store, he was acting up. Some person in the next lane offered up the helpful “that child needs to be smacked a couple of times, that’d do it. I wouldn’t take that shit from my child”, compare that to the responses in the thread about the woman who did smack her child - folks here are suggesting 10 years in prison, torture etc. Once again, thanks, but I don’t recall asking for your input.
yes, of course the child in the OP is 14 whereas in my examples the child was newborn and 3, but the fact remains, in all these cases, there was insufficient data to render a completely accurate picture of what was going on, and pointedly, the parent involved wasn’t asking for input.
Hell, when my son was 13/14, he was doing the whole ‘goth’ thing and listening to awful music. I got all sorts of crap from all sorts of people about ‘I wouldn’t let my child do that/listen to that etc.’. And, sometimes from the school - one administrator commented on a t-shirt she found in his locker “Where on earth did you get that?” “from my mom”. Yep, that was helpful.
When I go out to dinner, I carry small toys w/me (partly to leave as tips), and if there’s some squirmy small child, I offer one to the parent to give to the child. Must I? no. When I see a child ‘acting up’ in public, I often give a small smile of encouragment to the parent, sometimes (depending on the circumstances), I’ve chatted w/the child (only w/parent approval), commenting on what a lovely shade of red they were turning, and was it difficult to both pound their feet and hands at the same time, rating their tantrum as it were. Generally the kid stops in mid rant. Must I? no. Is it annoying to hear a kid scream? you bet.
Yes, I’d prefer that everybody acts appropriately everywhere. BUt frankly, I’ve more often been annoyed or pissed off about adults behavior than any childs.
My parents got to hear all sorts of “helpful advice/comments” like the OP about their first born, how it was obvious that they weren’t raising her right, that she was too picky about her food, they let her get away with too much, sat around too much. etc. Of course, they didn’t have as much to say when she died of CF.
Bottom line: Raising a child is difficult enough w/o the thought of a million or so hypercritical eyes and mouths judging every nano second, based on their momentary specific observations and the observer’s own personal backgrounds.
So what I’m hearing from you wring is that welby1 is being completely unreasonable expecting that this child be at least polite and that his parents choice to raise him as a rude, fat bastard are all right. Um.
I see this kind of kid every day. Usually the parents think that they can go on with their normal lives as they did before kidlet was born. Guess what, folks, ya cain’t. Ignoring the child will not make him/her/it go away. When I rule the world, every expectant couple will have this fact rammed repeatedly down their throat until the kid comes. But this is exactly why I’m not allowed to rule the world.
FIrst of all, the ‘rude’ that was described was minor in nature, and certainly not the earth shattering b/s.
Second, the kids weight is none of his fucking business.
None.
zip.
denada.
Her choices about the school issues are also hers to make.
You see kids like that every day? fine.
I see adults like that all the fucking time as well. So the fuck what.
What I saw was that he disapproves of her child rearing choices.
Fine. Don’t recall that it’s up to him at all.
The kid’s size, and schooling are not his concern, and the ‘rudeness’ was that the kid interrupted the OP. BIg fucking deal. Rude? sure. but what’s the consequence? was he mortally wounded? inconveneinced? mildly peeved?
hell, I saw support for a fucking person who double parked blocking people in - now that was rude.
WRING, you know I love you (in that “two straight girls who’ve never met” sort of way), but surely you see the other side to this. The child is 14 and rude. The mother is 30-some and rude. The OP’er has seen the mother spoil the child and allow public bad behavior (seen her behave badly in public herself, for that matter), and knows she lies to the school to further indulge her son. Now, I admit I don’t have kids, but if I did and my kid was being required to do things I thought were b.s., I’d like to think I’d go down to the school and say “This is b.s., and here’s why. I’m not going to make my kid do it.” More likely, I’d expect my kid to do whatever is expected of all the rest of the kids, regardless of my own opinion of its dubious worth, because I think “you can’t just get out of your obligations just because you personally think they’re stupid” is a lesson worth learning. Certainly I would not lie to the school (repeatedly) about my child’s abilities and obligations in order to get him out of stuff. (And that’s what the woman in the OP did; not what you did.) The lessons taught there are “you’re weak” and “lying is okay” and “if it’s hard, you don’t have to do it.”
Seeing all that, and reaching that conclusion, does not make one “hypercritical” nor was the OP “judging every nano second.”
Frankly, it sounds like the child is an awful brat. I feel sorry for him, because while the childhood of an awful brat may not be too taxing, the adulthood of one is often frustrating, difficult, and lonely (awful brats tend not to have many friends). But I’d certainly avoid the family in the future; life’s hard enough without having to deal with obnoxious children and verbally abusive adults.
The mother’s right; she doesn’t have to take it. But then neither does WELBY. Next time he sees 'em, he should run in the other direction.
The child interrupted him. Yes, that’s rude. In the context of a social occasion, however, I submit that conversations are not linear in nature, that the ebb and flow of talking rarely involves a true ‘gap’ when no one’s saying anything. So, the level of ‘rudeness’ I think is pretty much not substantial. It bugged him, it seemed to me, that it was a child, vs. an adult. We adults are having a conversation and you have no business interrupting. Yea, it’s a common attitude. But, even if I grant that it’s ‘rude’, it’s a mild rude and that’s his biggest valid complaint.
The kid is overweight and he doesn’t approve of the food choices that the mother is making (that he knows about). This is so very firmly set in the “Not your fucking business” category, yet it is quite a bit of his complaint. He asserts that the child has no health issues, but unless he’s privy to the medical records, he simply doesn’t know that. Like I said, people made rude comments about the food choices my folks made for my sister who died. They were wrong to do so. At the very least, it’s more rude than interrupting. Remember all the vititrol over the subway commercial where Jared commented on strangers food choices??? Hmmm?
The school issue. I understand your point about making those decisions that way. And I have done them that way myself. BUt not always. When the school demanded a signed by the doctor slip allowing my son to carry an atomizer w/him on school property (despite the fact that it was prescription, the pharmacy label indicated that it was prescribed by the doctor for my son, that he was to use it ‘as needed’), I didn’t bother. Made no bones about it either. APprove, disapprove, no matter, it was my decision to make.
Yes, you’re allowed to have opinions on stuff. Comment at will
however, look if you would, at the title of this thread. This level of venom should, IMHO, be reserved for the truely evil, those who do active harm.
what he’s demonstrated is that he disapproves of her child rearing decisions, and thinks her kid is fat and rude. His apparent response to this is to be obnoxiously judgemental “Your child will die a slovenly death”, and share his opinion of her capabilities/ how awful her kid is with her in front of the rest of the crowd. Yep, that kid was awful rude to interrupt him.
I’d rather have a kid interupting me, if it’s all the same to you.
(and yes, I still love ya Jodi, in that girlfriend/internet non sexual way)
No offence to the OP because i Totally aggree with them. but i can see how someone might oppose to extra Physical activities (not if your child doesnt need them , This kid could use a few days on the treadmill) But back when i was still in school My dad really didnt appreciate my having gym every day . Basicly because my parents value academics over all and they figured that gym time everyday could be cut down to maybe twice a week and the time left over could be used for better things. Although We lived in florida at thre time and when 10 months of the year are spent in terrible heat , I didnt like gym much either. But community service projects sound like something i would have enjoyed in my school time ( Had they been required that is)
It seems to me that on one hand it’s a very good idea to watch and form opinions about how other people raise their children, not so we can sit in judgement of them, but so that we can come to an understanding of the sort of parents we ourselves want to be (for those of us that aren’t already parents, at least). In the process, it is inevitable that one will come across styles of child rearing that seem, frankly, horrid and unacceptable.
Furthermore, discussing the ways that people raise children is always interesting because what it really is is a great shorthand for everyone to discuss what they, themselves, think about the world in general: the theory of one’s life philosophy becomes practice when discussing childrearing.
However, when observing people raising kids (and, again, I think that anaytical observation is a good thing) it is important to always have that little monitor in the back your head going “yeah, but . . . .” The “yeah but” is that you never see an entire family dynamic, and unless you live with a family, there is a good chance that there is signifigant data you are missing.
So to sum up, watching and making judgements as a way to better understand yourself and to devlop your own childrearing philosophy is ok. Watching and making judgements mostly so you can feel smugly superior is bad. By analogy, it’s ok for someone to look at someone else’s marrige and say “I would never be in a relationship like that”; it’s something else entirely to say “[Someone else] is a chump for staying in that relationship.”
Regarding the OP, my impression was that the woman in question had gone on at great lenghs about her own philosopy of childrearing, and it was fact that the woman seemed oblivious to many things that irritated welby. I can sympathize: there is nothing worse than someone who basically uses you as a sounding board about things that you consider immoral–they aren’t looking for an honest opinion, and it will cause a great deal of trouble to give them one, but sitting there listening begins to feel llike condonning and reinforcing the behavoir they are telling you about. My sister-in-law does this to me and it drives me batty.
Wring, Welby didn’t say that he hoped the kid died a slovenly death. He simply said that he would, and that is quite likely. He isn’t hoping for it. If I say “John Doe was murdered”, does that mean I’m glad he’s dead?
I didn’t read “you’re child will die a slovenly death” so much as a wish as I did a prediction.
While it may not be the OP’s business whether the mother lies for her child etc, and she may not specifically have asked for his input, apparently she felt the need to tell him about her child’s “terrible ordeal”. You don’t want me to respond, then don’t bring it up. It’s one thing if the OP were to just start criticizing her choices out of the blue. It’s entirely another to do it in response to her complaints- and apparently he hasn’t yet made any comments except the one regarding the interrupting. (which is more excusable in a younger child that a 14 year-old, and should I ever come upon a 14 year old who keeps trying to interrupt , I will repond in the same way as I do to adults- " Do you mind if ( ) finish(es) a sentence?")
I have to disagree with wring regarding the insufficiency of information- a stranger who sees your child on the street or in the supermarket certainly doesn’t have enough information to form an opinion, except in the most extreme circumstances. That’s not necessarily the case with a neighbor or the parent of a classmate - especially if the child’s parent makes a habit of complaining about the child’s terrible ordeals. I’m thinking of one of my son’s former classmates in particular. I neither lived with them 24/7, nor was I particularly friendly with the family. I did have sufficient information to see that, in his mother’s eye’s, this child could do no wrong. I still would never have said anything to her, except for the reason I had the information. For eight years, I heard from her about how every adult in a position of authority ( teacher, Scout leader, coach,) that her child encountered “picked on him”. Eventually, I had to ask if she ever considered the possibility that the child had done whatever the teacher was complaining about. That stumped her for a bit but a few days later she went right back to her whine. Same thing goes for medical info- I never would have criticized another neighbor for her child’s diet, except that when that her child missed enough school to be left back, she told me he was sick so often because, although he couldn’t drink milk without becoming sick, she just “couldn’t say no to him”. At that point, I said something , although not what I was thinking, which was " Suppose he asked for arsenic?"
The OP claims the child has no medical condition. I say unless he’s specifically seen the medical records in question, he has no knowledge of that. (My folks wouldn’t discuss my sisters medical condition w/casual acquaintences either).
A neighbor does not have sufficient info on what the kid eats - unless he’s monitoring their trash and watching throw windows. OP doesn’t claim either.
The mom may be prattling on about how poor little bobby is misunderstood etc. and it may in fact annoy the bejebus out of the OP. He’s ranting about the kid. The kid interrupted him. and is fat. and mom’s making excuses for him in school.
and yep, I’ve sat next to folks like that and thought (as Manda suggests) that I won’t do that.
And, yes, I know kids who have bad manners. And whose’ parents (it seems to me) are clueless. And I indeed ranted about some one who drove the car w/the kid unbuckled (which has a more immediate chance of severe harm coming to the child), and I also agree that leaving a kid unattended in a car is in (almost all cases) criminally stupid. and immediate safety of a child isn’t a private parenting decision.
But the rant is mostly about the kid’s weight, his interrupting and the mom’s complaints about the school.
And my point is - the weight isn’t his concern, he has insufficient info to make any reasonable conclusion about the issue. The mom’s complaints about the school do indeed fall under the ‘she’s got a right to parent how she sees fit’ since she’s not putting her child in jeopardy (his claim to see into the future aside), and the interrupting, to me is a minor greivance, and apparently more than made up by the venom that he spews forth here. “your little social retard”, your kid will die and it’ll be ‘your fault’ that he’s a ‘fucking social mistake’; 'Until that day, expect me to treat you like the terrible parent you are, and your son like the social monster he is. ’ and 'But you’re a fucking moron who should be retroactively sterilized. ’
and ends it with this promise for the future
And he will do that because the kid is, in his eyes, rude.
you want to defend that position? be my guest. I wouldn’t.
I think the problem was, the kid was rude, welby pointed this out to said kid, “Please do not interrupt me”, and a fourteen year old threw a tantrum because of this, and the parent lashed out at welby.
As for the wait-it sounds like a horrible thing, but unless the mother says something about it, I wouldn’t say anything, as it is a none of your business thing. Unless it gets like that one girl we recently read about-13, died at 600 pounds and had bedsores and feces caked on her flesh.
We clearly read the rant differently. I think he’s ranting about the mom, not the kid. I didn’t see the OP as complaining about the kids weight so much as the mother’s efforts to “shelter him from any and all physical activity”, or even about the interruption as much as the mother’s attitude about the OP’s correction and her defense of the child.I suspect (although I can’t be sure) that if the mother had corrected the child herself, or at least not spewed her own venom,
the OP wouldn’t have been nearly as upset. And since there’s no immediate threat to the child, it is indeed the mother’s right to parent as she sees fit. But the fact that she has that right does not make her immune to criticism in the choices she makes in exercising it. If you want to whine about how horribly the school is treating your child, requiring physical activity and community service and talk about how you lie to get him out of obligations and don’t expect to hear any criticism, then do your whining in a journal.
You said:
but I don’t think if you posted the specifics of the b/s you wrote you would expect only responses that agreed with you. As a matter of fact, (and I could be wrong) I suspect you didn’t give specifics precisely because you didn’t want to open the subject up for discussion.
Will I defend referring to the child as a “social retard” etc? No, but then againt the OP hasn’t said any of those things to the people involved, and this is a rant.
Re the medical issues- You say the OP has no knowledge if he hasn’t seen the records. I say he could have knowledge from the child or parents. It doesn’t seem at all unlikely to me that a woman who tells people her child doesn’t do his homework, says she signs that he performed community service that he didn’t do and complains about the terrible ordeal the school is putting him through would also say " And I had to lie and tell the school he had a heart murmur and asthma to get him out of gym". Of course, I don’t know if she said something like this to the OP, but it’s a possibility that exists (which is not at all the same as saying if the parent never told the OP about the medical problem, it doesn’t exist)
Giving the kid and his “mother” a break is enabling all that she’s doing to him, making it ever more possible that he’ll die a slovenly death. And why should this guy do that?? Because it’s “hard”?
The more she enables him the harder it’s going to get, until she gets tired of it and boots his ass out. And then tut-tuts about how “hard” it is when your own kids aren’t grateful.
Give THIS GUY a break. He’s done more to save the kid’s ass in a day than Mom has in a year.
If he really does weigh 300 pounds at the age of 14, then he’s obese. Obesity is a medical condition. He cannot safely engage in the same level of activity as someone who’s close to his ideal weight. It will play hell with his cardiovascular system.
It’s also possible that he doesn’t want to change/shower in front of the other kids and hear a lot of shit about his appearance. And don’t say that’s what he deserves. I’ll agree that he should be getting exercise outside of school. But if he’s obese, he should be exercising only outside of school. You need an incentive to exercise, and it’s difficult to keep one if you know that every time you set foot in the locker room, you will hear constant insults and maybe even be physically harassed.
I just wanted to chime in with my unequivocal support for welby’s OP. Good for you, feller. Way too much pussyfooting around kids going on these days. They’re not precious little fragile bundles of wonderfulness; they’re immature humans, and they need to be raised to become fully-formed humans, and that mother obviously isn’t doing much of a job of it. I’m glad you called her on it this time, and I hope you continue to do so in the future.
I’ll go with the OP. I’m picturing the child growing into an Ignatius J. Reilly without the literary bent. The mother is showing lack of inititave in parenting (if you can even call it that) at every turn. In my idealistic little world (shh, don’t burst my bubble) parents bring children into the world because they have a desire to raise children of their own. Along with this goes the wild presumption that a person who wishes to raise a child of their own will want to do a good job of bringing up a happy, healthy, well-adjusted child who will turn into a fully functioning adult.
Sure, maybe he shouldn’t be participating in gym class, due to his obesity, yet I see no indication that the mother is encouraging any other type of physical activity whatsover. She’s taking the path of least resistance with her “parenting.” Call that what you will, but I’ll call it wrong.
Let me attempt to set straight the record. I’m not going to quote everyone because I’d be here all day. I will address wring’s initial complaints though:
I know that the kid has no medical problems because both he and his mother have said so. In fact, his mother’s getting him out of P.E. was, according to his mother not the kid’s idea, but hers. She decided that he shouldn’t be required to take a class in physical education because she didn’t like the class when she was his age.
In fact she did ask for my input, and asked my opinion of both the community service class and the physical education requirement.
No, being rude isn’t the best I can come up with, though if you read the original post carefully you will realize that I was very patient, and polite with my objection, with zero result. The child immediately went into his temper tantrum mode, which I’ve seen more times than is good for my health. When he went into temper tantrum mode, his mother defended his childish behavior while hurling nasty comments my way.
There is a history with this child that I didn’t elaborate on in the original post, but I shall do so now.
The woman’s child is a thief. He broke into another neighbor’s house, where his friend lived, and stole several video games, some jewlery, and some cash. His story was that he wanted to play one of the games he stole, and the friend wouldn’t lend it to him. He took the other items to “make them feel bad.”
The boy’s mother said that he didn’t do it (fingerprints and other evidience, like all of the stolen shit in his room, did not faze her at all), that the neighbor’s kids had framed hers (apparently the neighbor’s kid is willing to put a brick through the glass door in the house to frame the poor lady’s son), and was indignant that the family should press charges. Her son was given (ironic, isn’t it?) community service hours, which he did not complete. His mother wound up paying a fine instead of making him serve his sentence. This is a typical example of how she acts.
The child is a liar whose mother beleives every word he says. When he was seen by three adults and four kids to break a bowl (purposely) while at another person’s house and while his mother wasn’t in the room, she refused to think thather child would do so, and tried to make everyone feel guilty for persecuting her little precious.
And for the record, my rant was about the mom, but did contain a pretty signifigant venom concerning the kid. That’s mainly because I was pissed, though he is a rude little bastard and a thief. I do not hope her kid dies, but I think he will, and that his death will be slovenly. My anger concerning the subject of my rant blooms not from the fact that her kid is rude, over-protected, and spoiled. My anger blooms from the fact that she has encouraged these qualities in her child.
As for his weight, yes, his mom does shove the nearest microwavable junk food in his mouth and send him away, and I don’t get this information by going through her trash, wring. In fact, his mummy has stated repeatedly that “all he eats is junk food.”
She does the family shopping, which means that she directly controls most of what he eats. My kids like junk food, I buy them a limited amount of it, which they have to ration until the next shopping trip. It certainly doesn’t make up more than 15% of thier total diet, if that. If they ever threw a temper tantrum for lack of it, well…they wouldn’t so it doesn’t matter. When she made this particular bitch a few weeks ago, I told her what we do with our kids. Her response?
“But he’d starve himself to death!”
Puh-leeze. Although it would probably be a healthy alternative for the kid to drop a few pounds, the boy certainly doesn’t have the willpower to starve himself to death because he didn’t get his day’s ration of bagel bites. What would actually happen is that he’d annoy her all day long until she gave in. I have seen this child consume more junk food in a few hours than most kid eat all week.
Additionally, the child refuses to eat vegetables of any sort unless they are disguised so as to be unrecognizable. I know this, because I’ve had dinner with these people more times than you can count. The boy is a carnivore and drinks nothing but soda. What few vegetables he eats tend to come on pizzas, in casseroles filled with cheese, or in broccoli and cheese Hot Pockets.
I have also heard repeatedly “All he ever does is watch T.V. or play games on the computer.”
If my kids had thier druthers, they’d do that too. But they don’t, we limit the amount of time spent on the computer or T.V. and make them spend some time outside of the house. Personal preference, I know, but certainly a lot healthier. Not her little darling. “He refuses to go outside in ‘this weather’”
“This weather” has so far covered spring, summer winter, and fall.
And last but not least, no 14 year old kid should throw a temper tantrum, and certainly not as a matter of course. This was not the first little episode I’ve witnessed, it was simply the one that sent me over the edge rant-wise.
And, while wring is certainly correct that I should not be offering up my unsolicited opinion, I have not done so. I supplied an opinion when asked, did not insult wither the woman or her child, have not pointed out thier flaw and foibles to them blunty. Will I do so in the future? If there is another situation that develops the way that one did, hell yes. The way I see it, I’m several nasty insults behind.
welby1, I agree with you because I know someone very close to this mom. It’s my son’s mother. She’s not doing anything that can get the child removed, but she is failing in her responsibilities as a parent.
My son’s mom (msm) recently moved out of state, in part to remove herself from criticism (assumed, based on knowledge of her behaviour patterns), not just from me and the son’s grandparents, but from the school and from the psychologists.
That boy needs psychological help. So does my son. I can’t force her to take him - she says, “He’ll grow out of it”. The psychologist did help my son break out of temper tantrum mode, but there are other problems that he won’t face on his own. When she lived closer, I was able to hound her to take him to the psychologist and make sure he got the help he desperately needs (by showing up to take him myself is she tried to back out). I can’t do that anymore - if she doesn’t take him, he doesn’t go.
If this woman is like my son’s mom, she doesn’t take criticism well, no matter how delicately put. I’ve seen my son’s mom blow up at the most innocuous comments. When she asks for advice, all she wants is for someone to agree with her.
On the plus side, my son has grown up learning that not everyone will put up and try to explain away his behaviour. When he shoots himself in the foot while with my side of the family, we let it bleed (this is figurative, not literal). We explain the consequences of his actions (trying to do so before he performs said actions in most cases), we set goals and do not lower them because he doesn’t want to reach them (not can’t, wan’t), and hold him accountable. Given the disparity in time he spends with us, it’s not ingrained, but hopefully it will help him somewhere down the road.
I know that boy, welby1. I know his mother. I would say it’s in your best interests to keep them out of your social life. Too much aggravation in this world; no need to add more you don’t have to.