Desperately Seeking a Clue – Challenge Life

Parenting teenage boys is a challenge. Doing so as a single mother is American Ninja levels of challenging. I am struggling hard and it’s not for lack of trying, but at this moment in time, I want to give up.

I wish I knew what crawled up my youngest son’s ass and died, but he’s being a real shit right now and it is making me regret taking time off work to spend with him and his brother.

Challenge my patience

Recently, my youngest son achieved something great. He finished the credits required for school and officially graduated high school early. He managed this feat right before the school let out for Spring Break. I took the week off work in case we could do something together. I had not expected he would be officially done with school. I was pleasantly surprised, though not prepared, specifically because he did not tell me.

This development comes at the tail end of a disastrous Fall semester where he was about to fail school because of his attendance record. In that, he did not attend. Not for lack of resources.

He used to take the bus but has not since he got his license as he has access to a car. Granted it is not the most reliable car. There was a short period when it was on the fritz. And the car being in the shop led to him losing his job at the shitty sandwich shop where he was working very briefly. However, it is reliable enough to get him back and forth to school.

I don’t know what is happening with him because he doesn’t like talking to me. 

Challenge the single mother

He has never liked to talk to me about what is happening. He is the child who as an elementary student would shove his assignments and permission slips into his backpack never to see the light of day. When I would sort through the mess in his overstuffed bag and I found the slips and the unfinished worksheets, it turned out to be weeks after assignments were due. Then when I would try to bring it up with him, he would dismiss me or tell me that his dad already took care of it, or that it was too late. The bit about his dad taking care of it was all lies, but the rest, I was never sure.

I never once tried to do what one of my friends does for her child and do his assignments for him. What would be the point of that? His failures need to be his own. There are preventable failures but you can’t help someone if they aren’t willing to help themselves. 

Challenge the brokenness

All I have established of my youngest child is that he resented me when I left his father. He is embarrassed to be seen with me. When it suits him to tolerate me, he is rude and treats me like shit. It didn’t used to be this bad, but I don’t know how to improve this broken relationship. 

His older brother sat down with me recently and asked me about how he could improve as an adult. It’s a step in the right direction. However, his younger brother does not have the same compulsion or self-awareness. He has made multiple mistakes and has told me stubbornly that he isn’t interested in my help, and that he has to make his own mistakes, regardless of the consequences. 

I get that, but it doesn’t make it easier to watch him fail when the mother in me wants to help.

There is a reason why he is the only one covered by accidental death insurance. I don’t have any concerns that his older brother is going to do something stupid and get himself killed. I’d honestly be more shocked that he had left the house. 

Challenge the blame

My youngest on the other hand is foolhardy, he doesn’t admit to being wrong and blames me when things go wrong. For example, I offered to pay for tickets to a comedy show. He didn’t bother to check which comedy club the show was at, despite me asking him which club specifically so I could buy the tickets. He made an assumption, and he assumed wrong. He went to the wrong club, missed the show, and lost the money spent on the tickets. 

There was no point in crying over the lost money, I wasn’t going to the show so it wasn’t me who missed out, but I don’t know what response I was supposed to have when he called me to say that he went to the wrong club.

I didn’t yell at him, and I didn’t say I told you so. I was confused about why he was calling me, and what he hoped I could do about it. I asked him some questions, but his answers were unsatisfactory, so I told him we’d talk about it when he got home. When he got home, I asked to see the tickets, and right on the ticket, it said Fort Worth. There was nothing more I could do. I hoped he learned a lesson. 

Since that day, which was the day after he finished classes early, he has been a total asshole to me. I blew up at him today because I was sick of asking him to help me around the house and having him throw the one time two weeks ago that he cleaned something without prompting back in my face. I already compensated my son for his effort that day with a cash reward. (Which now I regret)

At this point I am at a total loss. 

Challenge the pattern

This situation reminds me too much of his father (the ex) when he would bring up the one time that he did something around the house (something that I likely did everyday without notice) as if because of that one time, I should be fucking prostrate with gratitude to him every day hence.

Something else that reminds me too much of my ex is the way that my youngest is passive-aggressive pissing me off. It feels like the decades of abuse that mr horrible threw my way in the hopes that I would give up and leave him because he lacked the balls to do what he truly wanted and leave me. We out-stubborn-ed each other through 15 years of marriage until finally I got a grip and did what I should have done at year 7: filed for divorce and walked away from all the bullshit. 

But that’s the thing. mr horrible would NEVER have walked away. Never. Not because he was being loyal. Not out of some abiding love he had for me. From my surveillance and evidence gathering for the divorce suit, I discovered he low-key hated my guts for not being white (I didn’t realize I married a racist until it was too late), and had no intention of leaving me because he didn’t have the guts to walk away. Not for anyone. His first wife left him. I left him. Maybe the third will eventually leave him too? Who cares.

Regardless, of the patterns he created, I am afraid that my youngest son is subconsciously following that path of behavior created by the foolish man-child, aka his father. And I don’t know what to do.