Fed up with my son. Not fair on my other children

[Notoschool]

Ok so there is some history with mental health issues . We are waiting on CAMHS. I often chase them up but its a long waiting list .

I have posted about the situation before under this name. But also once or twice under other names. I can't even remember what names they were . But its my way of trying to stay anon. But trying to give a bit of back ground as well.

So my son has some issues going on which effect his mental health/moods etc. We have had social services involved but they left. Also tried to get him counselling and support whilst we are waiting for CAMHS. But he refused to engage. Social services left because there's basically nothing they can do. So that leaves us waiting for CAMHS.

Today's post is about how fed up I am with walking on egg shells around him and my other children have to suffer as well. He spends most of the nights awake till silly o clock. He gets up about 12.30/1.30 in the afternoon. It's just me and him in the house. Sometimes he's in the living room . Some times in his room. I go to get my children from school at 2pm and get home around 4.15.

As soon as we are home . He gets his ps5 puts it on in the living room . This would not be a problem. BUT every time my 6 and 7 year old make a bit of kiddie type noise. Or interact with each other . Or have a low volume on their tablets or ask a question. He starts on them constantly telling them turn it down. Be quite, stop it. Don't sit there , ds6 playing In garden don't make noise with that. Basically they can't be kids.

Now compared to what it was a few months back he is better . But he is still quite aggressive in his tone and body language to me. Some of it could be me as I have had it go on for so long that I'm expecting it so maybe it's in my head.

I do tell him to leave them alone over and over again. But I get met with the aggressive tone . I don't know how to explain it he kind of trys to shut me down.

Hes not been to school in a long time. He has agreed to go to college in September that is a massive step for him. And he seems positive about it. But im to scared to say to mich to him about how he is with his younger siblings incase I rock the boat to much and we go back to stage one . I just keep telling myself roll on September. And then he might have a focus. And maybe meet friends and things might get better.

I just want my kids to be kids 😔

Ahhh I did wonder how on earth anyone gets this far without having been told that over and over.

OP, social care services are accessed via EHCP. That’s what the C is for.

Your kids are learning that it's ok for aggressive, violent, controlling males to live in their home with no repercussions. It's your job to protect them.

Be clear to the eldest. He changes or he goes. He needs to return to school and you need to get rid of the PS5.

There's no help out there so he can either be a part of your family or he can go. He feels invincible. Like he can treat his family like shit with no consequences. What a nightmare of an adult he will be.

I would not allow a poisonous presence like that to remain in my home damaging my younger children. If he wants to stay, he needs to change.

I'm so sorry that you are in this awful position.

We have some family experience of a similar situation and it's truly awful. Eggshells, underlying aggression, everyone constantly on edge, the furious outbursts and violence that come out of nowhere. Grinds you down, breaks you down.

My advice would be to think of your aim, do you want him to live elsewhere, do you need to get more support etc. And then build the case for this.

You have to keep repeating it and play the game. So it's a safeguarding issue for your youngest children, log concerns with anyone who will listen: GP, social workers, school. Call the police each and every time he is violent. That log and timeline will be useful.

In our situation he was evicted from the family home. It was awful. He went into temp accommodation and now has a 1 bed council flat. He is happier in his own space, although he wouldn't call himself happy. The family home is once again safe and the change in the family is significant.

It can be done but you need to play the game, log all instances, email detailing the violence, your concern, the vulnerability of your other children.

You need to shout loudly to get any support.

Good luck

I'd take it away. Leave it elsewhere e.g. at grandma's. See if you can keep him busy, give him errands to do after school, e.g.bpuck up milk from the shop and pop into grandads etc. Is that something you could do?

You have left the bits out where people advised to deregister. It was a mix of advice.

I have:

Reached out to social services /got ds a social worker.

Agreed to family therapy.

I arranged counselling with 2 sets of organisations. I forget the name of will check later.

School were making threats and refusing to put things into place. Even the social worker. Said they were not helping.

I have arranged for ds to go to college in September. Which he is positive about.

Poor you. There’s no quality of life for you or your younger children. I’d have him removed and put into care. The fact he’s so large, loud and intimidating is incredibly sad.

His life may be exactly the same in care. The lives of you and your other DC would be remarkably improved without him in it!!

I get that it's not as easy as to just 'put him in care' but phone the bloody police every time he's threatening and say he can't be there any more. Every time and they'll have to take action.

I’ve had the exact same with one of mine ,
we had camhs involved and social services involved
social services said they would only help if he put one of us in hospital,or we put him in hospital..so useless
and camhs were only only interested in helping him ,no support for family ,parents expected to just get on with it and manage it .
i fast realised there was no real support and any changes I had to make myself .
he knew I was scared of him ,and that was fuelling his behaviour,he was out of control..he has PDA and autism and mental health problems.
i sat him down and told him our home was a violence free zone ,and any violence would be met by the police coming .
i told him ,the next time he hurts one of us ,the police will be told to take him away ,and I meant it ,I had to mean it ,as he has a sibling 10 years younger who’s life he was making a misery.
I had to get tougher than him ( as in carry through what I promised,be firm but fair ,not sand for violence or bullying) ,I had to stand up and prove to my youngest child I was not scared of him ,and he would be gone if he continued with this aggression.
it was hard ,I won’t lie ,but he realised I meant business and he has backed down a lot ,it’s not perfect by any means ,but we can all live together safely now .he’s 22 now ,so I didn’t think he would still be here by 22 .

No one, not one person recommended deregistering. However you were told over and over and over about applying for EHCP.

You may have thought deregistering got rid of the potential for prosecution for non attendance but you’ve ended up with a bigger problem.

OP this is ridiculous. “Reaching out” isn’t going to get you anywhere. Fill in the bloody forms and send them and then chase them repeatedly. FFS.

Yes, they did, but several posters explained why that wasn’t a good idea and why it would become harder to secure support if you did. As explained on the other thread, the school weren’t the ones responsible for delivering s.19 provision, the LA were.

Sorry, OP. A lot of replies are well-meaning but totally naive about social services' capacity to intervene. Social workers are drowning - they are not going to intervene here, when there are so many children at greater risk. And that's not to minimise your situation at all, which sounds awful, it's just the sad reality.

OP, are you scared that if you take away his playstation then he will lash out violently?

Thank you. He does have a boundary with them. He often plays with them. A bit of rough and tumble . Picks them up so the can touch the ceiling. He has funny conversations with them ect . So there are good bits.

I love him to bits I really do. But how he behaves is awful.

I have lost my trail of thought. Thank you for your non judgemental post 💐

This is hopelessly naive. I grew up with a violent, abusive and useless brother. My parents have pandered to and ignored his behaviour and now he's 28, living at home, never had a job. And they still enable him by talking "gently" to him. Guess what? It doesn't work. Teenagers like OPs son grow into men like this and you don't stop that happening by talking gently to them.

You have to keep repeating it and play the game. So it's a safeguarding issue for your youngest children, log concerns with anyone who will listen: GP, social workers, school. Call the police each and every time he is violent. That log and timeline will be useful.

This - and maybe get in touch with new college see if they have services you could be accessing straight away or first thing September.

My worry is come September, despite his enthusiasm now, he may lack the confidence to get there and his behaviour deteriorate even more - support now could make a huge difference.

You clearly need outside help - and I get you've tried previously but you are a parent and it's your job to advocate and keep advocating - and let's fact nothing going to change for any of you till you do access more help - so keep at it and at some point someone will listen - probably a lot later than anyone wants but you do need to keep at it to get there.

OP,
Sent you a PM.
Please take care of yourself (difficult I know!)

OP this sounds like a very challenging situation. I think there's some good advice in this thread about exploring support through the ECHP process

There's a brilliant charity that has some excellent resources.
www.ipsea.org.uk/pages/category/education-health-and-care-plans

For now; if you can put more structure and boundaries in; that may help all of your children. Having the PS5 in your son's room may be a good idea; if it's balanced out with other activities- eg; having the PS5 in your room is a privilege; you need to complete 5 agreed daily activities (eg showering, undertaking some work on line, cleaning bathroom); and you need to join in with family movie time at the weekend.

There is an excellent book that has some great ideas for putting in boundaries; and having better conversations in challenging situations

The Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible Children by Ross W Greene

Wishing you all much luck 🌸

He sounds like a lovely, fun lad, OP. Just keep that stability up for your sake and his. He needs your strength and love. I know it’s hard, exasperatingly tough at times and we really have to dig deep but these teen years will pass, things will settle down eventually - just keep encouraging him. Actually, I would be tempted to go out swimming or something in evenings to decompress and leave him in charge of the littles ones. Sending you love and strength.

It sounds like whilst he may not be violent to the younger children they are witnessing his aggression towards you and he is coercively controlling them by making them fearful of things like sitting in the wrong seat (whilst presumably never knowing which would be the wrong seat) which is considered emotional abuse and domestic violence. They're so small, my heart goes out to them - they are learning that their home is not a safe space.

Yes, CAMHS I'd say is pretty much a lost cause (3 year waiting list around here) and social services are overwhelmed but the younger children's school will want to support them. They may be able to put things in place or suggest ways of giving them - and you - some respite. If you and the younger children can leave the house when he exhibits controlling behaviours I think it would be good for you all.

He is getting used to behaving like this at home (and I do understand how you feel there's no choice and it's the least worst option) so he'll find it increasingly difficult to change these behaviours but he won't be able to replicate this behaviour in college. How do you think that's going to go? It's easy to be positive about something that hasn't actually happened and where you don't have to put any work in. You definitely need to contact the college now and explain his behavioural problems and look into what support they can offer - this is the only chance of him staying in college.

The college cannot and will not insist that the other students don't make noise or mess around. He won't be able to control that environment.

Sorry but this isn't mental health, it's bullying behaviour. He wants his own way. I have an autistic daughter and I've always been form that it is no excuse for bad behaviour. They know right from wrong. If you do not feel safe insisting he goes to school or studies remotely (he needs an education whether academic or more vocational) or making your home pleasant for the other occupants then it's a safeguarding issue and you need to get him onto social services register, they won't offer it you need to insist. You aren't the first in this position and there's residential facilities for young people in his position, my friends dd went to one at 16-18

In my area, the pathway for accessing child psychology is via CAMHS or school. If a child is deregistered, there's no school to refer them, so if OP lived here, the only way would be via CAMHS. The wait for meaningful input via CAMHS here is so long that I wonder if their strategy is to hope the child gets to 18 before they have a crisis, then they won't be CAMHS problem any more.

A friend ended up absolutely skinting herself to pay for a child psych assessment, and now uses her son's DLA to pay for therapy for him.

Child MH services are woefully under-resourced and imo it's a false economy because it leads to problems later on that are far more expensive to fix.

I really for you, OP, you're in a really difficult situation. Is your DS15 calmer during the day, when his siblings are at school? If so, would it be possible to have a dialogue with him with a view to agreeing some ground rules re behaviour around younger siblings and in the communal areas of the house, and strategies for him to use when he gets angry?

This is another reason why applying for an EHCNA is beneficial. If the LA agree to assess, a psychiatrist &/or clinical psychologist assessment can be part of the needs assessment without the need to sit on the normal waiting lists. And if an EHCP is issued MH therapies can be provided via that, again without the need to sit on the normal waiting lists. If CAMHS can’t or won’t assess or provide the therapies in section F of the EHCP the LA must commission independent assessments/provision.

We do. Do some positive things together. Few examples is that we out all our new beds up together. He put up curtain poles for me. Plumbed in the washing machine put chest of drawers together. He does feel good doing this I can see it in his body language and he looks proud.

We do cook together he enjoys that as well. We often do the gusto meals.

He also likes it when me and him are alone in the living room. When the kids are in bed. We don't always have conversations. He's often on his phone. Or watching TV. That's not to say we don't talk we do that to its a bit of a mix. Then when I need to go to bed. He leaves the room to. He would never admit it but I think he likes us having a bit of quite /chill time together.

I remember some of your earlier posts. This is such a difficult situation and those of us who have experienced similar understand but so many don't. I really would only be posting in SEN as you have to wade through so much poor (even if well-meaning advice here). Even those who have experienced children with autism or mental health challenges may not understand how difficult PDA (as an example) and similar are to live with.

It is bullying of course and your other children mustn't be exposed to this. It is also incredibly sad for your son that he isn't getting the help he needs. There are many resources out there but it can be very hard to implement anything without support and you are clearly struggling. Therefore you really do need to focus on very aggressively pursuing accessing meaningful support, including logging with the police etc. (many good suggestions around this).

Having also close experience of children who have lived with a violent and aggressive older sibling (a situation that sounds very similar to yours) and the (probably lifelong) damage that has caused, you really should re-consider forcing a move from the home if he really cannot or will not regulate better.

So he's now 6ft 3 and physically intimidating. But this behaviour didn't just start overnight following a growth spurt overnight. What were the consequences for his behaviour when he was 10, and wasn't that size? What boundaries were in place on his screen time, when and where he played etc. What consequences were there for him speaking to you in an aggressive tone of voice for eg. This thread should act as a real warning for those who don't remove the power from the games console 'because he'd kick off' when their child is 9/10, those who allow their child to be disrespectful to them 'because you have to pick your battles, don't you'. I've seen lots of kids speak to their mum at age 10 that I'd never accept but their parents just shrug it off and this is what it leads to.
I'm guessing he's not an early riser. I'd get myself and the younger kids into the car at 6 30am take the ps5 with us and go out for the day. I'd leave a letter explaining what is happening and why, and that this is a consequence of his behaviour. Yes he might trash the place but damage can be fixed. At least the OP and younger children would be safe from harm from him, and he might learn something about boundaries.