My 14-y-o ds has had issues with bedtime for several years but over the last couple of months things have gone from bad to worse. He is very attached to his 90-y-o grandma, probably to the point of "anxious attachment", to use a technical term. She had a fall nearly ten weeks ago, sustaining a bad fracture and ending up in hospital, and she's now in a rehab unit. He visits her twice a day if he can, when we were away recently he phoned her every night and he's saying he doesn't want to go on a school trip abroad next month (which he's been looking forward to for months) as he won't be able to speak to her every day.
Ever since she's been ill he's refused to go to bed at any kind of sensible time and most nights I find him sitting in the dark wrapped in his towel after showering and staring into space. He very often falls asleep in the chair, at c.2 or 3am, and it's virtually impossible to get him going in the mornings, with the result that he's late to school virtually every day. He also has activities on Sat and Sun am's (for which he's also nearly always late) so doesn't get the chance of a lie in, and he refuses to give these up.
He's gone into overdrive with physical activities, going for late-night runs or swimming multiple lengths at the local pool, but he's not eating properly either and has gone from being chunky to being stick-thin.
He says he doesn't care about looking after himself and almost seems to want to suffer so that he can empathise with her, and he says that he'll be all right when Grandma gets better - but that might not happen. I think he's depressed and he kind of admits it, but he refuses any outside help, saying that he can deal with it.
During the day he carries on just about as normal in spite of being desperately tired so h reckons I'm catastrophising and that the problem's in my head. However, h always goes to bed soon after 10 so just doesn't see what goes on - and to my mind just buries his head in the sand, a long-standing problem. I'm terrified that if ds is this bad ATM when she's making progress, albeit very slow, he won't cope at all if/when the worst happens as he doesn't appear to be able to cope without his grandma.
Is this just over-dramatization or should I be pushing for some help??
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Teenagers
Am I worrying too much???
overthehill · 16/06/2013 00:19
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