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

[Peoplearereallyweird]

Name changed for this as could be outing and don't want it associated with my other posts.

Sorry posting for traffic - basically as the title says. Myself and my husband went away on our first holiday without DS1 (15) and DS2 (10) and MIL was looking after them while we were gone. Just got back and went to go out in my car today and noticed a couple of things felt "off" like the seat felt different, the radio was not on what it was normally and my husband noticed my exhaust was louder. When he checked it, it was broken. My MIL doesn't drive so I knew it wouldn't have been her so we checked the dash cam and to our horror, found our son had snuck out in the middle of the night while she was asleep and taken my car for a joy ride! DS1 is diagnosed ASD, very likely ADHD although not officially diagnosed yet but he knows right from wrong, there's no learning difficulties. He is in an alternative SEMH learning provision as he couldn't cope in mainstream, behaviour was not good at all and got so many suspensions but it took us years to fight for SEN place for him. He seemed to be doing well there to start but the last few months have been awful with his attitude and behaviour both in school and home. I've gone made at him tonight and so far I've removed his phone and gaming consol but he just doesn't seem to realise the seriousness of what he's done - he was lucky not to kill himself or someone else! I haven't yet called the police as I only found out a couple of hours ago so still trying to get my head around him being so stupid and reckless. I have a few friends who are officers - would you ask one of them to come and give him a talking too or make it offical and file a report? We feel like we're failing, even though everyone says we're "doing everything right", so also considering speaking with social services and asking school to see if they can arrange a pyschologist as I need to do something to address the underlying causes to his downward spiral. Just feel so lost right now

I'm not saying you did, I've read through your other replies where people are defending his behaviour because of his ASD. This is the last thing he needs to learn!

I'm not sure what I'd do - but I do think it attitude is worrying as he doesn't seem to see how serious it is and it could easily have come back on you if he's been caught on speed cameras.

I'd would get a lockable key safe - and put car keys in - and while he waited till you were not there - having done it once may try it again - maybe a lockable steering wheel as well. It may at least give you some piece of mind going forward that he can't repeat.

Thank you. I knew I would get a mixed bag of responses posting here and I'm normally thick skinned but admittedly a couple have cut a little deep. I've had some very helpful responses and when my husband is home, we will discuss the course of action to be taken. We will definitely have to inform the school on Monday, they will find out one way or another and I would prefer they hear it from us. The repercussions of that (for all of us) will be what they will be and we, but most importantly he, will have to deal with the fallout

With ADHD his frontal lobe development (the part of the brain that governs impulse control) will likely be be a few years behind his peers. Rather rather than involving the police I would seek professional advice on any strategies that would assist him in decision making

Sorry, I'm a tad sensitive this morning thought you were saying that to me. I agree it's a reason to help explain but it can't be used as an excuse or where does it end?

4 days is a long time to expect someone to look after your SEN child. I would think one overnight max

What a helpful addition to the thread.

Not expected at all - was offered by MIL and we weighed up a long time before accepting

That’s really not helpful, neither is crying about it. You’ve laid the law down, let him know in no uncertain terms that he’s done a really bad thing and given appropriate consequences. One thing you can do is to point out to him that in 2 years he could be legally driving, but he needs to make responsible choices before you will support that.
BTW, an awful lot of teen boys who are placed in AP with other similarly challenging boys fail to end up with improved behaviour as they tend to encourage each other to misbehave.

She knows he didn't speed because she watched the dashcam and said he didn't speed.

The car is important because if he wanted to race around recklessly and put everyone's lives at risk he had a much faster, more adrenaline pumping, more dangerous car at his disposal.

This is a kid who has been taught to drive not someone who has no clue, never had permission and would risk lives by turning the key.

To me the most important thing going forwards is that he never does this again and I think we agree on that.

OP is preventing family cars from being taken by locking up car keys.

OP has made sure he knows he is out of order.

Have you heard of labelling theory - where when you go in too hard or too widely and someone feels that no matter what they do they can't shake the label of their actions. 2 things are probably enough consequences of this. 1. If you label someone they have a high chance of thinking fuck it, everyone thinks I'm doing it anyway/ still gonna do it so I might as well. At least my friends might give me positive feedback for it because mum, dad, teachers all think I'm bad anyway so they are never going to praise me.

1. Rehabilitation (mental health, offending) research on what works found that strengths based working with someone, having faith in their ability to change, listening to them, planning with them on how to work together for a good outcome works. Treatment based (doing to someone, over punishing may work in the short time (or may cause rebellion) but is far less effective in the long term. Also, over punishing, or providing lots of intervention after a first offence has the opposite effect than expected and increases the risk of reoccurrence.

Are you all mad!!!! Someone could have been killed. It is really serious stuff. Yet another situation where being on the spectrum is being trotted out as an excuse. What a ridiculous suggestion that serving police officers should be asked to deal with this informally and put their jobs at risk.
OP, you need to be the grown up here, and make it abundantly clear that this is too serious to be ignored by reporting it to the police now. The Criminal Justice system does all it can to divert offenders from the formal CJ situation whilst taking effective action. If you let this just drift he will certainly do this or something similar again and you will have the possible consequences on your conscience forever.

I was going to say the same. Don't ask your friends to talk to him unofficially, or ask their advice about reporting it. You give them an ethical problem then as they are either in dereliction of their duty not reporting it, or breaking trust with a friend of they do (and I'd be a bit horrified if you told them and they didn't report it - I have no knowledge of policing but I'd expect this to be a sackable offense).

The absolute least I suspect you could do is tell your friend you're about to report something and, if you do, is there any chance (s)he could be the one to handle the case - but be prepared for them to say that's not how it works.

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.

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?

I know it's not and I'm not normally one to cry, I just typically get on with but I'm just so angry/disappointed/frustrated I can't seem to stop the overly hydrated eyes today. It's really serious this time, not just the "typical" challenging behaviour we've been having.
I'm unfortunately finding this now, but sadly 7 other SEN schools refused to take him as couldn't meet need due to defiance at mainstream and the way they worded his reports. Short of giving up work for EOTAS which we can't afford to do, this is our only option

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 .....

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.

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

Interested you didn’t think to hide car keys?

@ecuse my friends don't work for the force in my area and I'm not sure it would work like that anyway? I won't be asking them to speak to him unofficially, it puts them in a terrible position and I won't do that.

@Goodadvice1980 he did but he won't have now. Currently he has no phone and he'll be getting a basic non smart phone for if/when he can be trusted to not have to have constant supervision. If he can't be trusted to not take my car, he can't be trusted with a smart phone as far as I'm concerned.

@Catwalking oh no I'm not saying he was safe at all as clearly this as about as dangerous as it gets. Instructor has previously said he seems a natural, but I don't equal that to being safe. I need to review the full footage when I get the SD card out of the cam, rather than the few downloads to my phone that I have. It would be highly coincidental for it to spontaneously start to blow when it was fine when I left it but, of course, he denies causing anything

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.

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.

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

Equally the kicker is, I went to take my keys with us but was worried about losing them, so left them because MIL would be here to let us in!

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!

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...