My 15yo is a rude, uneducated fool. Yes of course this is my responsibility but I still want to complain about it.

[parentingdisappointment]

I went into parenting with such great intentions. At every step, I sought advice and pushed myself to meet my children's needs and as many of their wants as I could. Their dad left when the younger one was born and although he continued to see them weekly, for two hours at a time, has been of very little support. No family help so mostly it has been just me.

Like so many parents, I have been conscientious about their welfare and education. I have tried to give them as many opportunities as possible - music lessons, sports clubs, art classes, theatre school - anything at all they expressed interest in so they could get a wide range of experiences from which to develop interests.

I researched education to great lengths and managed to fund private schooling for their secondary years.

Even though I have long struggled to provide, often down to less than $10 in my bank account by Friday, I busted a gut to take them on holidays - to the beaches, to the mountains, to hotels, to campgrounds - again, trying to give them lots of experiences.

At home I tried to maintain routines to keep them feeling cosy and secure - bedtimes with stories (when they were little), pudding nights, Sunday morning pancakes, eating dinner together every evening, that sort of thing.

And here I am... my youngest is 15 and he is rude, so rude, addicted to vaping and weed, constantly in trouble at school, doing bare minimum school work, and frankly has very few redeeming features. When he doesn't get what he wants, he is quick to anger using violence. He has smashed up the home so many times.

I am not wanting advice or expecting solutions. So long as he is taking drugs he is going to be unreasonable, I understand this. But I just want to write this down. I find it difficult to imagine him emerging from this a. alive and b. functioning well. I have dug deep to try to accept him for who he is, to be patient, to get him to engage with support services, but sometimes I just look at him and think god what an absolute brat, I can only imagine how irritated they must be with him at school and in the wider world.

So yeah, this is parenting. Really over it. The End.

I though she sounded very frustrated that she has really struggled to provide opportunities that she feel DS has then squandered.

I have pushed my/our finances at times to provide things like swimming lessons or school trips or clubs or pushed for family holidays - they've still heard no and I'm sorry we just can't afford it a lot in their lives. My DH who had these things not because his parents were rich but because he was only child and often places less important on them than me who as a child often felt left out by not having them.

Kids aren't always grateful or realise what they think is normal is a struggle though at 15 I'd expect some awareness.

Why is the OP giving the full facts to explain the background considered 'boastful'

It just explains why she's bewildered as to how he's turned out.

I think those posters claiming 'spoiled' are just jealous

Hot pringles hit nail on head, Ignore the judgey rubbish on here, you love your kids and that's priceless.

I'm also a single parent, their father is useless and a terrible example, my ds at 15-16-17 was just vile. So rude and obnoxious I could hardly bear to speak to him, bedroom a pit, failing at school. But no vaping etc., he was never given any money, ever, unless he worked or did chores for it. He knew that anything he broke in temper he'd have to pay for one day, so stopped lashing out. I told him repeatedly nobody's going to save him and nobody's going to do anything for him when he turns 18, his life is now his responsibility. I did the classic 3 healthy meals a day on the table, bare minimum tidying and cleaning up after him, ignored him unless he was civil. Took a while but the penny dropped eventually.
Now he's 18 and has just found himself a part time job, went out bought a suit by himself and is studying for A levels. He even gave me a random hug the other day and did the washing up. Sounds like nothing but it's massive for our family.
I'd focus on getting the addictions sorted, give him no money and hang in there. Feel no guilt, you have done your absolute best.

Agree with others you created this by over compensating and to a degree spoiling and I say this as somebody who also done that and also created a monster. As a single parent I massively over compensated and they ultimately were horrible spoiled brats. I have no helpful solutions just that you aren’t alone and shouldn’t feel bad we did our best we have more than we should and this wasn’t what we expected the outcome to be

No more private school. The money can replace things busted up at home. State school and no privileges will do your child just fine.

I too don't think you've spoiled him. They can be total arseholes at this age. And it totally depends on who they are as people. DS1 was/is the most chilled of kids/ appreciative/ positive/ loving; DS2 is now 16 & still a hormonal nightmare at times.

An observation that the 2 DS I know that have gone off the rails as teens have been to single mothers who have few males in their life, and another who has an alcoholic, ineffectual father. This may not be significant, but I do think that male relationships are key for boys (and girls, but in a different way).

'Raising Boys' by Steve Biddulph is a brilliant book. It's an easy read with lots of theory about how we as a society treat boys. It's totally non judgemental, but talks about how crucial it is to have good, male role-models in boys' lives: an uncle/ grandad/friend/neighbour/ sports' coach/ scout leader etc. It's basically to show them how to be a good man.

I've been so lucky in life with a very, very decent ex-h who's a great father, DP who's known my boys since young, positive rugby/ karate coaches and Scout leaders. I do think they make a big difference- nothing performative, just being good people. Can you have good men in his life?

Lol at the parent of the 7 year old smugly and confidently stating how she's avoiding this 😅. OP the peers are often the biggest factor here. Changing schools a possibility?

OP, I've worked in education/youth offending and social care for a fairly long time.
Firstly - there is such a range of home circumstances to see kids behaving like this. Re the vaping, weed and violence - I'm seeing so many young men behaving this way from various homes. Stop berating yourself so much - you can't second guess if you've tried your best to give love, consistency and attention.

I don't have a final solution I'm afraid, depending on his needs /main issues there is support but he has to be an active participant as well!

I don't mean to put ANY blame on single mums at all- sorry if it came across that way. I was one and know lots of really brilliant single mums. The issue is the shitty men in their lives, not the great mums.

Ah op some kids just are little gobshites despite our best intentions

Stop paying for his weed and everything else apart from essential food and clothing. Call the police if he smashes the house again

I’m sorry to hear this. Sounds really rubbish. Please don’t beat yourself up. You’ve been doing your best.

I wasn’t the best teenager. DH neither. We are both upstanding adults. DHs teen behaviours in particular were not that great. Parenting is a long game. The work and love you put in will come good in the end. It just may not be for a while.

Teen boys need their biological fathers in the home. He is at the age where he should be taking on and challenging his biological father for power and authority, and one of them wins and the other accepts the new situation, and everyone moves on. He cannot move on because his father is not there to meet his challenge and confront him. It's not your fault but you can't replace his father. He shouldn't be smoking weed at 15 but knows he can because you can't and won't stop him.

Letting them do activities and taking them on holiday doesn’t equal spoiling them like some people seem to think. It’s possible he’s depressed (the weed won’t help) and I think getting some therapy might help. I too was a single mum and gave my children as many opportunities as possible, they also went to private senior school and I used to do my best to make them feel they weren’t missing out. I never had any real behavioural problems and they were (are) good kids. The one thing I do have to deal with is one of them suffers from depression and is under therapy. I’m sure the depression stems from his father not being a proper presence in his life growing up, he has deep resentments there even though he does see his dad.

What is the situation with the dad OP?

Is there anything you can nurture there in terms of a relationship between them?

I know it shouldn't be 'your job' but yeah...........it always is!

Correlation does not necessarily mean causation though. The factors here are many!

At 15 surely he's mid GCSE years ie Y10 so really hard to impossible to change schools.

( I do have a just 16 year old waiting for GCSE results so could theoretically be a summer born Y11 here though if it's Scotland with higher's no idea what that situation would be)

Going elsewhere for post 16 education does sound like a good idea- but if he's not doing well he'll have to do that anyway and will need some sort of post 16 plan.

To be fair my brother wasn’t spoiled (far from it) and he’s the same. The only difference is sil is literally running his life so he can (just about) hold down his job with 6 figure salary. He does nothing but drugs/drink, work, and socialise with his ‘friends’ but is an absolute arsehole so you don’t really want him to be around family / his kids. Drugs are a bitch and while he’s taking them he will be unreasonable.

The best thing you can do for him is to call the police every time he gets violent.

@liveforsummer You do young boys no favours at all saying they don't need a father / men in their lives.

It was a really hard realisation for me that I couldn't 'be it all'. I thought I could, but presented with 6ft teenagers who can literally do what they want of they choose, you really understand why young men most often (and almost without exception) need an older authoritative man to keep them in line when they themselves are becoming men

I'm sorry you've had a hard time OP. People like to stick the boot in and congratulate themselves that they are better parents than you.

If it helps, my DS1 at the age of 15 was a particularly unlikeable individual but now at the age of nearly 20 is a wonderful person with a good full time job.

This isn't your fault. Is the absent father an issue? Possibly but how is that your fault?

You gave your DCs every chance and opportunity and you did that without any assistance. Your DCs will not thank you now but they will later on, I promise you.

I don't think advising her son to listen to Andrew Tate will improve his character.

The OP wasn’t boastful. I hardly registered that long list you made. I only noticed she tried to give them as many opportunities as possible, like most Laurent’s tbh.

If you saw that as boastful, it says more about you than about the OP

This is a very white centric view of things. In most Indian cultures fathers aren’t involved in discipline, mothers are, and most Indian boys turn out well.

"At the cellular level, a child’s loss of a ather is associated with increased stress"

The absence of a father — due to incarceration, death, separation or divorce — has adverse physical and behavioral consequences for a growing child. But little is known about the biological processes that underlie this link between father loss and child well-being.
In a study published July 18 in the journal Pediatrics, a team of researchers, including those from Princeton University, report that the loss of a father has a significant adverse effect on telomeres, the protective nucleoprotein end caps of chromosomes. At 9 years of age, children who had lost their father had significantly shorter telomeres — 14 percent shorter on average — than children who had not. The effects were greater for boys than girls.
https://www.princeton.edu/news/2017/07/18/cellular-level-childs-loss-father-associated-increased-stress

That might sometimes be true but the data is far from clear. It's actually pretty complex