It's Tearing me up Inside

Many attempts but no progress

      I guess the story starts when my son was 15 years old, and I started motivating him to think more like an adult. I am divorced from his mother, and he lives with her together with my daughter. I  wanted him to just start thinking about his future and about what field of work he would be interested in, so that he could later learn and qualify himself for his dream job. After talking to him and researching with him different occupations and their requirements I gave him some homework, he was to research some occupations for himself, and get back with me. As it turned out all of the occupations we looked at together he decided against, for one reason or another. I didn't find out until later, but there wasn't an occupation out there that he would like to do. As it turned out his intentions weren't to do an apprenticeship or have a job or do anything at all. He preferred hanging out at Hotel Mama's and playing video-games all day!

 Taking a turn for the worst

     So now my son is almost 18, and until he turned 18 he was required to attend school. He had waited to long to send resumes for any type of apprenticeship and had two alternatives. He would have to do a vocational preparation program with other misfits and antisocial youths or he could start a qualifying pre-appreniticeship program at the plant where I worked. This was not a full apprenticeship, but it was financed by the employment exchange, so he could make a little money albeit not as much as one doing a full apprenticeship. After helping him get the apprenticeship at the plant, I was so proud to have my son one day working alongside me. Well that wouldn't be the case after a few weeks I got a call from one of his instructors asking me if I knew that my son was not making the requirements because he just doesn't show up for class and when he does shows no interest what-so-ever in the subject matter. Later I even found out that he was belligerent and disrespectful to his supervisors and instructors. This eventually cost him the program. The only thing left for him was the vocational preparation program, and after two Internships he had shown no interest in learning anything or doing anything. This coupled with the poor parenting skills of his mother, gave him exactly what he wanted - to stay home an do nothing.  His conduct would lead one to believe that he is just lazy and doesn't intend on starting his life as an adult, and a useful member of society. At this point I made the only decision I could make - I would have to use tough love methods to motivate him, so I stopped supporting him financially.

     Sometime during all of this he was also doing driver's education to get his driver's license. One day he was actually doing a little driving practice when his instructor noticed him blanking out and was paying no attention what-so-ever on the road and the street signs. After this incident his mother took him to a children's psychology hospital to have him checked out for attention deficiency syndrome (ADS). After going there a few times they couldn't find a problem with ADS, but rather found what they called an undefined personality disorder. Fast-forward a month or so and my son has a small seizure and is rushed to the hospital where he is diagnosed with absence epilepsy.

     All of the handling doctors have given him a list of treatments. Outside of taking the pharmaceuticals prescribed to him no other treatment has been sought after. I did research on both the personality disorder and the epilepsy and found that the cause of both of these problems were home made. The personality disorder was one direct result of the way he was brought up. The epilepsy was more likely than not a direct result of continuous long hours of video gaming, and watching anime on the TV. No one is blaming him for him having these problems, but instead we are giving the blame to his mother, who is in his own words too easy to manipulate and to soft on punishments, allowing him to do pretty much what he wants. All of this coupled with the fact that our relationship seemed like a sunken ship, I had now longer any influence on him and what was going on in his life. After him turning 18 I was definitely out of the picture.

     It was my birthday when all I got from my son was a nice letter from his lawyer explaining that I had just been sued for not paying child-support. The only way I was getting information from his side was through the lawyers and the judicial process.

     After resigning my efforts, all I could do was to lift our situation up to God and let him sort everything out.

Tough Love

I think they call it " Tough Love," but there is probably another way to describe it. Wikipedia explains hard love so, "It is an expression used when someone treats another person harshly or sternly with the intent to help them in the long run." Using this method or this type of loving, for a normally very loving and caring person is tough, not necessarily only for the person toward which this love is shown, but it's especially heartbreaking for the person showing such love.

    The first thing you want to do is just give up this "tough love" method. A little voice in me say's, "Stop it for "peace" sake, just do what you always do. You want to keep the peace and not rattle any cages." Of course I thought that there is a time for showing this mushy, and lovey-dovey type of love expression, and there is a time that you have to rattle cages, and go against the standard operating procedure.