15 year old son stole my car and took it for a joy ride while were away

Would you have said the same if he’d killed an entire family, child and baby?

Will it?
Are driving offences different?

I was caught underage drinking at 16. I was told that if I didn't drink underage again my record would be wiped clean at 18, and it was.

Dont call the police, it will be on his record for life! My child dud something similar and needed a police check recently (aged 42) and it was detailed there.

You are welcome

Teach him how to drive or he will crash the car next time. He sounds very bright, not in the common sense arena, but 15 year old males don't have common sense, yet, they won't for another decade. He needs more enrichment, activities, hobbies, classes he's interested in, sports, all of the above and all of it asap. He's bored. Explain to him that if he takes the car out again and is caught the authorities will take away the car. That should curtail the spontaneous driving.

I do think you need to involve the police, the fact that so many SEN schools have refused him due to his defiance he needs the authority shock now. It looks like his defiance is escalating.

How has he reacted since you got back?

Ignore some of the shitty comments, you are navigating a very challenging situation and you aren’t minimising it.

He sounds lucky to have you as a mum 💐

@Peoplearereallyweird, I just wanted to add some support. You are handling an extremely difficult situation bery well. It's not surprising that you feel tearful; you must be in a state of shock. I agree that getting the police to spell out, in no uncertain terms, exactly why his behaviour was so potentially dangerous would be an excellent idea. As he is at a special school, l think they need to know what has happened. He will not be the first or the last pupil they have had to have done this. Not one person is making excuses for his disabilities but severe ADHD and teenage boys, coupled with autism, is horrendous mix. You will all get through this, even though it doesn't feel like it at the moment and you are definitely not a failure as a mother because you have obviously had fifteen years of trying to get him the help he desperately needs.

I would definitely would not want to do it, but I would inform the police and provide the dash cam evidence.

He is 15, but if he doesn't take it seriously and feels that he has gotten away with doing this, then what will he choose to do next? Especially if he knows that mum and dad will go easy on him or try to mitigate his wrong doing.

He needs to know that both you and your partner/husband are not going to look the other way when he does wrong.

I think their needs to be consequences sufficient to breakdown his attitude and hopefully impress upon he cannot just do whatever he feels like and get away with it.

I know that mine is not a popular view, but I would not want to have my son grow up and know that he the kind of person who can't be trusted to do the right thing when no one is watching.

OP don't beat yourself up, it happened.

It's bad but nobody was injured and it's reckless rather than intentionally violent, so you have something to work with.
He's already 15 and in 3 years, he will not jeed your permission to drive. His behaviour might not have improved spectacularly in 3 years.

As for the idiots asking how he can drive, it's probably an automatic and with children playing so many simulation games these days, it's not hard at all. Of course he can drive. Computer games require more coordination.

I would personally warn the police as you will be liable for tge driving offences he committed, and increasingly parents are being held legally responsible for hiding their children's behaviour.
And it will make him realise just how serious this is.

Good luck, you're actually doing all the right things.

Also: you're right it's clearly not safe at all for a kid who has had some practice at driving in a controlled environment to go out and do it in an uncontrolled one but (to other posters who are implying it's just as bad) it's also really obviously different and less unsafe than a 15yo who has no driving experience taking a car to "have a go".

I'm not saying it makes it right, but it is also "less wrong" if that makes sense? Safety is a continuum not a binary, right? Wrong side of the line, agreed, but closer to it than some other plausible 15yo-goes-joyriding scenarios I can imagine...

For what it's worth I don't think you, DH or your MIL have done anything wrong here.

There's absolutely nothing wrong in going away for a few days and leaving your teens in the care of their nan who they're usually good with. People saying you should have expected he would sneak out of his nans house in the night, sneak back home, take your keys and go for a midnight drive need to give their head a wobble. In a million years that wouldn't occur to the average parent. Likewise in a million years it wouldn't occur to me to take keys out of the door and hide them overnight unless there was some particular history of him sneaking out which you haven't mentioned. In actual fact, I'd be judging someone who locked the doors and hid the keys overnight because that's a massive fire safety risk.

He's a teenager with ADHD, who by the sounds of it has some of the impulsivity associated with that condition. He's done something wrong and stupid, as many teenagers do because their brains are still developing and this is the time in their lives where they're testing boundaries, learning to assess risk, and getting that judgement terribly wrong sometimes.

You now have the horrible situation of needing to decide what to do with it, and I'm sorry you're in such a rubbish position. I personally think you should report him, but that's a hard decision only you can make (FWIW I think it would look good rather than bad to social services if you did).

In the meantime you, your husband and your MIL need to stop blaming yourselves!

Do whatever cosplaying with officers you need to drive the message home but do not report him ffs, he is your son.

I totally agree. My DCs could both drive before they were teens, we lived on a farm and at 12 they could drive tractors ( not on public roads), at 14 they drove an old van all over the farm for jobs to earn pocket money.

Well said. I can’t believe them either, sounds like you are being blamed and you can’t win. My brother did this a few times. There was never much space between him conceiving a bad idea and him carrying out a bad idea. He’s fine now, well liked and respected. Channels his energy into being a paramedic and by all accounts he’s good at it. I’m a mum of boys as well and sometimes I’m scared by how long it’ll take them to have a brain that’s fully mature. They do stupid things and seem to have to make mistakes to realise they are not invincible. Most of the time they seem to think I’m a killjoy.

obviously not totally safe, you yourself said he’d somehow broken the exhaust?

Interested you didn’t think to hide car keys?

I totally agree. I think we just disagree on how to handle it to make it less likely to happen again and it would be interesting to hear back from OP in a couple of years about how she handled it and whether it worked.

Exactly!
I have have experience of a very close family member that pretty much gets away with murder because of his ASD and its done him absolutely no favours. His behaviour is now atrocious and VERY entitled because of this. I fear he will end up in prison one day .....

Report it to the police OP.

He needs a short sharp shock. I would be wary of trusting him around car keys going forward. You need to report this especially as he might brag about it online. Does he have social media?

It’s not just about him. He could have killed someone or could himself been killed. This isn’t shoplifting a bar of chocolate. He committed several crimes. And whilst I’m sure that approach can work, it’s a massive risk to take.