Our son, 16, is adopted. We did an older child adoption, so he has only been with us for a few years. We became found family at the onset of his teenage-hood and we have talked to him about sex, relationships, and ect.
Without going into detail, he had been through a lot before we adopted him, and that trauma definitely has impacted how he interacts with the world. As a result, understandably, he has always been immature compared to his similarly aged peers.
He had his first relationship around 14, which resulted in his first kiss. However, both he and the girl were hot and cold about each other, and it ended pretty quickly. We didn't think too much about it as it seemed like garden variety young love and learning. That is until, about a year after they broke up, we were at the dinner table talking about first kisses and our son chimes in with sometbing along the liens of "Yeah, I didn't even like the girl I kissed. I just used her to get my first kiss."
We were taken aback, and we explained to him that this is not how he should see or treat people. We let it go after that because felt like we parented it, but also that maybe he was just putting on a show of bravado and trying to seem cool.
He is now in his second relationship at 16. At first, all was sunshine and rainbows, and he was very excited about her. She has a job and a car, and she showered him with gifts and attention, two things he values quite a lot. For his birthday, she spent quite a hefty sum, getting him thoughtful and nice gifts and giving him money as well. However, when her birthday came around, he refused to buy her any gifts and instead dug around in his old jewelry drawer and pulled out an old necklace that he explained he didn't like anymore and had no use for. He didn't even want to wrap it. We explained that she had spent a lot of money and thought on him and he should do the same for her, but he blew us off and spent all of his money on himself when he went out next.
We came from the rear and bought additional gifts for her "from the family" so that she would not only have a single, unwrapped, secondhand item.
After her birthday, their text exchanges became pretty odd. He would go from blowing up her phone with texts demanding that she answer him immediately, to completely ignoring her. And when she asked for comfort/reassurance about their relationship, he blew her off and told her to stop talking about it and she was silly to worry. After one of their bouts where he messaged her repeatedly, she apologized and told him that one of the side of effects of her medication makes her sleepy. Our son told her that she was using her medication as an excuse and that it was unacceptable/not a valid reason in his opinion.
Currently, he is ignoring his girlfriend, and has been for weeks. She reaches out to him via text and other platforms, but he refuses to respond, despite messaging with his other guy friends constantly. Homecoming is around the corner and he refuses to buy their tickets, flowers, or even put together a nice outfit for the night. Despite all of this, he claims she is still his girlfriend and things are fine between them. We've offered to cover tickets and flowers and he has nice things to wear. We've asked what color his girlfriend's dress in, in an effort to get something together for her, but he ignores us or blows us off.
We aren't sure how to parent this and any advice would be appreciated. We've had our son in therapy with multiple therapists. The first few were provided by the state, and they all stopped seeing him because they report that he tells them that everything is fine, he feels happy, and that he has an immature understanding of relationships (platonic/familial) but that there is no reason to continue to see him as there is nothing he wants to work on. We had him with a private therapist and we were not privy to much information. The therapist did communicate that our son reports that he has no issues and mostly chats about school and the books is he reading. We understand that trauma impacts social relationships and WHY he may be acting this way, but we need some help on parenting him through it.
We're not sure what to do next.
