I’ve edited this to put in the beginning that the last sentence of this post is what I’m asking for help with if you don’t want to read all of this.
Update I called myself being proactive and taking the phone for tonight to set the restrictions and he decided to stand in my face and I asked him to back up to which he responded by taking a half a step back and asked with a heavy attitude “is that enough?” I then notified him that I’d be keeping the phone for the night and he went upstairs crying. When I checked on him I found him laying in a pool of blood. He slit his wrists. He’ll live but this is one for the professionals. You guys had amazing advice that I’ll definitely bring up to the treatment team. Thanks for caring
I’m typing this in tears as I ask for advice on what fellow parents might know about their or another parent’s annoying kid who regularly violates other kid’s boundaries. I don’t have a troubled teen with a bunch of behavior problems or yelling at me or disrespect toward me or any of that so I just don’t know what to do about the discovery (via going through his social media) that he is a serial boundaries violator.
This is a child who’s been bullied in school and online and I’ve done literally all that I can think of, to show him that home is some place that he will always be accepted and boundaries will always be respected. I went through the phone at the request of his school because they got concerning reports about multiple kids who reported conversations held with my kid that crossed their boundaries. He sent one kid a noose after his dating proposition was turned down, he called one of this friends on FaceTime breathing heavy on the phone and implied the next day in school, that he was masturbating, just outrageously boundary violating things. It was so embarrassing to sit in a meeting in front of the head master and leaders of the school I’m paying $23,000 a year for him to attend and have them turn red as they express incidences to me that they don’t know how to approach. Due to my son being trans and having been bullied in his last school, he’s in therapy for 2 years at this point. I’ve tried to back off of his personal life because he’s said on multiple occasions that I’m a helicopter parent and pay too much attention to him and care about him too much. He asked that I take the parent monitoring app off of his phone and since he was 13 (at the time) I figured why not try some independence? He’ll be 15 next month and wants to get a job but his messages go back pretty far and show communication between him and kids from student apps, various social medias, school group chats and fellow kids from the LGBTQ youth center we travel to PA multiple times a week to make sure he has a safe space where his boundaries are respected, his wishes are regarded, his peers are apathetic and he is happy. He met his boyfriend there. They are crazy in love (you know teenagers), I take them on dates with one another and do birthday and holiday outings, he attends the only private school in our area that would accept him as he is and not force him into a skirt based on his birth certificate. I’ve done all I can to show him what respect and honor to boundaries is and how much of a priority it is for children to feel safe in their decisions. My son is regularly disregarding people who ask him nicely, to please give them space. I’ve seen multiple people threaten to block him if he kept doing intentionally annoying things, I saw people completely snap after request and request and curse him out and tell him to fuck off to which my son KEEPS fucking with them.
What the hell do I do when I’ve had multiple conversations at home about not doing things that people don’t like and he’s even gotten ISS at school instead of them following their no tolerance policy to the sexual behavior he found funny. I realize that taking his phone is the only punishment that’s worked for past punishments at like 10 and 11 when he was staying up too late in bed on the phone but I don’t feel like cutting his social life is beneficial at this age. But clearly I haven’t been doing shit right. I’m a parent that has always valued perspective on my behavior and open to what might work.
Can anyone give any insight as to what to do next? I’ve told him before that it’s not fair for him to take his safety privilege and make other people’s children feel violated and disrespected without regard and I really want to address this asap. We’ll be having a talk during our hour long drive after school today, as he asked to go to his youth center. Which by the way I also found messages between him and fellow members who he intentionally annoys and disregard after they tell him to please stop texting so much because he does annoying things like send the same word 20 times to set off their notifications and screenshot their social media stories and send unflattering pictures with ignorant captions and call it a joke after they express their dismay. This center is a locked, protected center in the gayborhood in downtown Philadelphia where lgbtq youth can come and be themselves and most of them have to hide who they are from their family and school peers and here my kid is, getting people’s numbers to violate their space and wishes. My heart now hurts for them the way it hurt for my son back when he told me that public school was not a safe place for him since he came out as trans. Long conversations that ended with him in tears, I was sure got through to him… haven’t worked.
As the intentionally annoying kid who consistently crosses other people’s boundaries and finds it funny and completely ignores requests to be left alone… I’ve tried talking, incorporating his own past into examples and even got to the point of threatening to restrict his social media back to the parenting app monitoring and nothing has worked… What can be done here?
So UPDATE UPDATE after initial evaluations and conferences with the parents of the kids the officials and I thought were most affected, it’s been confirmed that the “masterbating” incident is something these kids do to one another when they think it will be an inconvenient and embarrassing time and the kid was laughing while telling the story to his friends and a teacher overheard it and told the school officials, the “noose” incident, the kid says and my son confirmed to the evaluator, is a sign that kids use when they’re so embarrassed or humiliated that they wanna (proverbially) die and the PARENT of the kid saw the messages and reported it without context clarification and the kid that I saw constantly telling my son to fuck off, messages him on SnapChat after he says these things because my son by default texts people and most of his friends like using Snap instead. He talks to him in there like nothing ever happened. My fucking god that’s the last time I take the school or anyone’s incident response for face value and react to it according to what I understand in the moment. My son still sends annoying messages to kids and that will still be addressed but I 100% should have fucking asked him about these things or allowed him to talk to a professional to iron out relevant facts. His reaction to losing devices is totally abnormal regardless and this is what we’re going to focus on moving forward.
Don’t ever be like me. At least ask your fucking kids a house shit before you throw the book at them for what someone else reported.
But again, thank you guys so much, a lot of these suggestions still apply and resonate with incidences outside of school interactions and I appreciate the concern and replies.
