DC skipped their first day. AIBU about DP’s reaction

I feel terribly sorry for your DD. It’s is your and your husband’s job to support your son in going to school, not hers.

I would push away a 14yo who is hitting me, to be honest.
Re phone punishment, what other consequence would you suggest? Maybe you could give your DD her phone back but only for school travel, and your DS also but only for listening to music - but they need a consequence, what they did is really bad.
Re your DD, no she isn’t in charge of her brother but decided to also skip a day of school is not on! Why didn’t she call you when her brother didn’t board the bus?

How convenient he needs his phone. He doesn’t need his phone and it’s good that the twins lost their phones as punishment for skipping school. They’re teens and not toddlers so you need to be harder on them. I’m surprised your DP hasn’t already left. If your DS is like this in his early teens then it’s scary to think about what he’ll be like when he’s in his late teens and older.

You need to end your relationship, so your DP can enjoy his life rather than having to support you and your children.
You need to start parenting, instead of excusing your sons behaviour.

What a situation. Feel for you. Do identify with pp saying trying to negotiate in the middle of a melt down is like trying to deal with a wasps nest.

Regardless of diagnosis, teen boys do generally have a phase of - idk how to describe it - irrational opposition fueled by testosterone and not always the brain working on full power. You have got to give them a firm, but endlessly encouraging, steer. Your son must be bored stiff and lonely not mixing with kids his age - take him to school yourself, you are not back to work yet.

Make it your mission just to encourage and champion him to embrace as much of real life as possible - I bet he really wants to, he is just scared (and no wonder, returning to school after so many years must be incredibly daunting!) Support, support, support. Let him know you are in his corner.

Give him back the phone, he has got the message now. Things happen in the heat of the moment, not ideal, but you all need to move on and focus on the main goal - support him back to school.

(Not your daughter's responsibility, let her focus on herself)

The colleges set up sounds good for him, I think you need to get him there. I understand that means you can't work but i think college will be better for him than home schooling, and you can't work then either. Maybe when he's settled at college you'll find you can work. It's better for him because he'll be in a proper setting and mixing with others, I think.

What support does your daughter get for being a Young Carer and made responsible for her brother's attendance and safety?

Or have you not told the school that this is a responsibility you've given her?

Your DP handled it badly but you’re also way too soft on them.

I do think DS getting the bus was setting him up to fail.

And I feel very sorry for DD who was essentially given the responsibility of getting him to the bus stop and college and then told off - she’s not his parent and yet she’s expected to do more parenting than your or DP - no wonder she’s anxious and struggling with her MH.

I would also not have a man, especially someone who is not their biological parent, overrule me in my own home.

Sit down with DP and tell him that you will be giving the phones back and you think to keep a united front, it should be him giving them back to them.

When giving them back, there needs to be a plan moving forward.

DD needs the responsibility dropped from her straight away.
She is in no way responsible for anything that DS does.

Then DS needs to be taken to school by one of you or even pay for a taxi.
Being expected to return to school/college and all the anxiety that goes with that, plus the stress of the bus is way too much to handle.

You seem to let your kids and DP walk all over you and the result is unequal parenting and 2 anxious teens struggling with their MH.
You also seem a bit anxious and struggling.

Have a think what you want and make a plan going forward - you are the parent here and what you says goes.

This all the way. You or your DP, or both of you, should have taken the morning off and taken both kids to their respective schools. This was too much pressure, and too much responsibility to put on your daughter.

I'm going to go against the grain here OP from what you put in your original post- your DS has had issues for almost 2 years. Your partner has supported the whole family financially and quite possibly emotionally as well, you don't mention what his input has been prior-but he has paid for DS to have a private autism assessment, which has enabled DS to access support he would otherwise not have.
The behaviour of DS was not isolated to this one day-you stated in your OP this has been going on all summer.
I stand by what I said up thread about boundaries, but regarding DP- your 14 year old who you acknowledge has been physically aggressive over the whole summer at points and has also had a growth spurt hit out first and was shoved back by DP. It is a horrible scene to think about and no one wants to be in this position-what would you have had DP do instead? Because there is a point where its no longer a parenting decision but a reaction to a physical assault of one person on another. He pushed him away in your own words not enough to hurt.

As unpalatable a scene as it is, you cannot expect your DP to put up with being assaulted by your teenage son and do nothing, when you are completely unprepared to parent that behaviour with a consequence.

I suspect there might be a further drip feed here; but based on what you have said, your DP who has financially supported you all in some measure since the children were 6 is at the end of their tether and has made an attempt to lay down a boundary by-reasonably imo-confiscating phones.

I would be very careful that the stress of the whole situation is not transfered into the blame game and all laid at the feet of DP. You are a family in crisis and need support. Blaming will not help at all.

I hope things are calmer this morning for you OP and now the dust has settled, I hope for all your sakes you take the advice given by several people to sit down and agree mutual expectations, boundaries and consequences for both children. They need you to do this.

I do feel for you, as I mentioned, I have been there, and I also know how easy it is to blame the other parent (DH is DS' biological father and we have disagreed many many times on how to address various issues) but in reality you have to work together here as a united front with them-good cop, bad cop is a terrible parenting method.

I agree with pps too about contacting college to see how they can support-and also re focusing DD to concentrate on her schooling too in her GCSE years.

Exactly.

The only way you’ll know they’re in is by taking them.

You don’t have a world where they can go on the bus.

So, if I’m getting this right: you aren’t taking him in because in the future you plan to go back to work (but don’t have anything lined up yet) and do t want DS to get used to you taking him? And if you do take him you won’t be able to work? And DP will be cross with you and say you’re lazy?

And DS, as he is, after a year off school, was supposed to get off at a stop on his own and go into his first day back?

And responsibility for getting him there was DD’s?

@BlondeSpider please just look at those facts.

That plan was never going to work.

There is NOTHING more important than your kids going to school.
You MUST get DD in today.
You SHOULD also get DS in.

YOU must get the kids ready calmly, take them in, walk DS in.

Every day.
And pick them up.

And only when DS is thoroughly back into the routine can you even think of maybe him coming back in a bus. But morning drop off you must do, to be sure he’s in there.

You said there’s ’no way’ he’s going in today. WHY? It should be the opposite. That he’s going in come hell or high water.

As for DP, he’s lost it but tbf I can see why. I’m so sorry @BlondeSpider but I think you really need to be calm, clear and simple here. Everyone looks to you to be the leader as you’re their mum and DP is a step parent.

But you aren’t leading at the moment.

You need to.

You need to change your stance on work.
Work around your essential commitment to the kids.

My advice for a plan would be:

To the kids -
Right, kids. Yesterday was a dog’s breakfast.
I’m so sorry.
The bus was a mistake. It clearly won’t work.
So I’m taking you every day and we are in today.

(otherwise what - you’re all going to have a lie in and mope about in an awful atmosphere with kids missing another important day, snd having no phones? 🤦🏼‍♀️)

And I’m getting your phones back but you’ll get them when you’re in the car on the way to school.

To DP -
I’m sorry.
That was a disaster and it’s my fault for not realising how important it is I take them in.
I’m going to own this now.
I’m in charge, they’re my kids.
They're getting their phones back on the way to school.
I’ll work around that commitment to school drop off and pick up.

I’m sorry for my part in creating such a situation of tension.
We can’t have him getting physical and you reacting.
Once I’ve got him going to school, you need a quiet chat with him and to apologise.
He needs to feel secure and understood.

That’s it @BlondeSpider
And you need to stick to that religiously.

Your job is being that leader. Do it.

Sure, but you could have got on the bus with him the first day to make sure he got there? And given you say you are returning to work, what happens now - is he going to be home educated? By whom if you and your husband work?

One day your DS is going to hit someone and get punched in the face for it. He’s 14, not 4.

I think they should have been perhaps driven in on their first few days, given the circumstances. Once they’d had a few days settled in, then start the bus routine.

Set them up to succeed as much as possible.

i work somewhere like this and with all due respect, you can’t expect an autistic school refuser to make a fresh start and get the bus independently on day one. I understand you want to go back to work, but kids like this need to create a sense of safety around each and every new step. First college, dropped at the door and welcomed by his key worker. College in little bits as you describe. Then maybe walking in from the street. Then maybe practise taking the bus but not going to college. One of the young people I work with has, after two years at our setting, just started getting the bus in with her dad (it’s been dropping her to the door by parents since she started, and if they couldn’t, she didn’t attend). We will see how she progresses and what impact that journey has on her day at college.

I feel you should be eligible for more help financially, as your son will need so much more support from you, but I get that it will be like blood from a stone getting that help. On that side I can’t suggest anything unfortunately, except bits and pieces of work which may fit around times when you can leave the house (your dp or dd are also at home).

Exactly. Why didn’t a parent travel with them the first day to new college? There’s more going on here, I suspect.

I am so sorry OP.
It sounds hard because it is hard.
And it would and will continue to be hard.
There are three issues here:

1. The frustration, aggression and lack of understanding from your DP, who is not their biological parent.
2. The sacrificing of yourself and your own needs, including financial and work, being forced to home educate.
3. The pressure on your daughter to help, support and - sorry but on this occasion - co-parent her sibling.

My daughter also goes to a separate school from her brother. This is deliberate on my part. She cannot feel responsible for him. It's just not fair on her.

I have accepted that working from home is not compatible with home ed and that any job I do, sadly has to work around my kids and the school run.

To that end, either you look for work that allows a regular shift after drop-off/before pick up: a care home local to the school?
Or you find a job at your son's provision. Office admin? Cleaner? Lunchtime organiser? LSA? Pastoral support worker?

Even then, it's not without its problems but hopefully your employer will be sympathetic to your situation/reward loyalty/allow some quid pro quo.

The only other solution would be night shift work allowing you to do the drop-off and sleep in the day before pick-up then dinner then shift again, but you'll be run ragged and it means your "D"P has to be there at least overnight for your kids.

You aren't alone but the stark truth is, that there is little support for those of us in this situation.
I understand your partner's position and resentment to a degree ( I find parenting mine hard and I love them unconditionally) but he needs to realise that school refusal isn't chosen in the majority of cases, and certainly not chosen by the mothers picking up the pieces.

Good luck to you
Yesterday would have been timetables issued, expectations and not necessarily on timetable, so it is not too late to get them both in now.
I'd send DD on the bus now and take your son in today/see the SENDCO this morning.

God bless and take care xx 💕

Yeah I've read every update and OP is absolutely just excusing her son's behaviour. As many, many prev posters have said if you're considering going back to homeschooling anyway, why wouldn't you take him to school? He is building no resilience being at home.

You keep saying you can't take him because he'll always expect to be taken then and you want to go back to work, yet you're thinking of home schooling again which gives no possibility to go back to work.

The bottom line is you don't want to take him in for whatever reason. You're doing your son a disservice with this. It will only get harder for him to re-enter society the longer he's out. It's not really even about education and long term prospects.

You keep saying he's so rigid and if you take him on the bus once he'll expect you to always take him, but what about keeping him home: won't he always expect to be kept home? Just take him in - it's easier to work towards him taking himself if he's attending (as, again, many many others including those with asd children themselves are saying).

You need to do better by your son, OP. Your partner is pretty much irrelevant here.

The more I look at it, the more I wonder if you might be ND too, OP, the way you present your son's situation and excusing him, as well as catastrophising he will never do X if Y happened is a very binary and anxious vision projecting your own fears and it nearly sounds like deply, these are your preferences which is stopping you from parenting him. He can't stay as is just because some things are hard for him, you need to do what you need to do to help him move forward which also means challenging his difficulties and not accepting bad behaviour for his own good.
You can't live like you do forever either, you need a job to do something for yourself and bring an income. I remain unconvinced your DP is a bad guy in all this, but either way, you have the same binary and catastrophising approach to your own life and work and weak authority in respect of making your own decisions. Just a thought, in my view you could make the situation better for your DCs and yourself if you changed your approach but you seem stuck in it.

Leave anyway. He's the problem.

Your partner who isn't their dad shoved your child?

How long have you been with this man and why did he have anything to do with this situation? Why didn't you intervene?

How much of this sort of behaviours have they seen? Did he stop going to school around the time he started dealing with your new partner? My husband is my kids dad and if he shoved him I'd shove HIM right out the door.

Sorry but you have a huge DP problem here and your DS needed a lot more support on day 1 of school. There is a lot to unpack here.

Partner or yourself should have taken both kids to school, but I think you might have to reconsider home ed option for your son,so many kids with autism do better learning at home than in a busy forced school environment.

How many practice runs did you do over the summer holidays though, he should have been having travel training to get him used to the routine, the bus stop, the seats, the driver, getting off, the walk up to the school. You or your partner could have done that several times over the summer,a lthough this is unhelpful now as you cant turn the clock back

If a child has autism, has self-harmed, experiences suicidal thoughts and is receiving insufficient support from CAMHS, nothing will be improved by an angry phone confiscation after a hostile interaction.

The whole family needs to calm down and review.

Not read all your other posts but it sounds like you need to leave OP, or ask him to go. UC will cover the rent and the landlord won’t even be aware. Why stay with this abusive partner when there are options? Your DC will be much happier.

You need to drive your son tomorrow, or Monday, whenever he will be persuaded to go. I have a DD who is not diagnosed but very likely autistic and i’d definitely have to drive her or she wouldn’t go. You are just going to have to hope he makes some friends and will be happy to get the bus, because right now you have zero chance of him going. If you will need to stay home and home educate for a few years then leave this abusive guy and live in a much calmer household.