Am I losign control over DS? Advice needed, pls!

[StellaBrillante]

DS is turning 12 tomorrow but I am worried that I am losing control? early teenage phase, maybe? He?s normally very well behaved and gets highly praised by other parents and by his teachers for his attitude. However, there was an incident at school where a group of boys (DS included) used their mobile phones to text another boy and basically bully him, with seriously coarse words / language being used. They?ve all been punished and DS has been given his first Saturday detention.

Today, I had a phone call from the coach company (DS catches a private coach that servers the school from our area) to say that they?ve had 3 reports from 2 different drivers complaining of having to continuously tell DS to sit down and put his seatbelt back, DS kept getting up and walking around whilst the coach was in motion. Perhaps knowing that I?d eventually hear about it, DS gave me a very different version of events a couple of days ago saying that the driver had been rude and had shouted at him / accused him of standing up etc for no apparent reason. I took this with a pinch of salt and said to DS what the driver wouldn?t have gone to that extent for no reason and that it was more likely that some of DS? behaviour (cheeky remarks or similar, trying to push the boundaries) would have prompted the driver to lose his temper. I think I was firm enough and clearly stated that DS had to rethink his overall behaviour and that any disrespectful remarks were totally unacceptable. He agreed with me but then today I get to hear the whole truth and it?s just so damn disappointing. I feel embarrassed and I feel that I?m failing as a mother. To top it all up, it appears that a parent spotted DS walking around the bus and raised it with the coach company too.

Right now, I don?t feel that DS deserves the treat that I had arranged for his birthday (friend over at weekend, waterpark, meal out, little shopping spree) so I?m inclined to cancel it. I know it?s his birthday but I can?t thinking that it?s wrong to go about all this pampering when he has not behaved well. I am also going to make a point of getting him to apologise to the driver when I pick him up from the stop today and I want to see it happen. Yes, it?ll be humiliating but hopefully that will teach him a lesson. At the end of the day, it?s dealing with the consequences of your actions.

On the mobile phone incident, the only positive was that he was the only boy to own up to it straight away, admit to what he had done without any further prompting and apologise profusely to the boy in question (not that it makes up for the bullying, mind you!).
Also, although the school assured me that there have been no reports of DS behaving badly at school, I now feel that I need to warn them of what has been happening on the coach and to ask them to let me know if there any issues in class in terms of his attitude towards his teachers.

Please, what do I do? How much worse is this going to get?

cancel the treat till further notice
he is going to have to earn it
do ask him if there is something bothering him though, if he feel pressure from peers to behave that why or if it an urge that come from him
does he think it is funny, cool, whatever?
does he understand and apologises to you?
tell him the next 2 years of his life are way to important and that you are not going to let him f**t it up even if that means taking away some of his freedom or petty money
(hope I am not a toxic parent in the making myself)
I am only projecting here cause I havent got dc of that age yet so I could all well be talking c*p or be naive)

I've cancelled the birthday treat but I now feel really guilty that I've overreacted to it all... He has been punished by the school for the mobile phone incident with the Saturday detention. But then, I still feel uncomfortable with treating him (even though it's for his birthday) when he has so clearly misbehaved.

I also spoke to him at lunch time about the coach incident and his version makes it sound slightly less serious BUT, whichever way he puts it, he is NOT supposed to take his seatbelt off and walk around the coach. Whether it only happened once or twice is irrelevant, he's putting his life and everyone else's at risk by distracting the driver who then has to tell him off. It's serious and stupid so I think I can have a clear conscious that it justifies my decision.

I don't understand it though... He's doing really well academically and he worked so hard to get into the school as well, it's a golden opportunity! Only to then end up labelled as a badly behaved clown...!

I really can't do more than I already do or dedicate any more time so I know it's not because he's feeling overlooked or such. I don't have a life. I don't go anywhere and all arrangements revolved around his commitments etc. The only times when I am not there for him are when I am at work (he's at school) and when I go to college once a week for 2 hrs. That's it.

He's trying to assert himself and be 'grown up'. My ds has just had 12 birthday and I am seeing much of the same (pushing his bedtime, leaving homework till last minute, saying and doing things I'm completely happy about)

I think cancelling the treat may have been an over reaction, but it's done now. DO give him the chance to earn it back or he might think there's no point being good or that it's better to lie and chance getting caught then to be honest.

Personally I would have warned that if anything further happened or you heard that he wasn't being honest with you about everything then the treat would go.

I would have also said that now was an excellent opportunity to tell you all the facts again and if he wanted to alter his story at this point you wouldn't be any further disappointed and upset than you already are. And then if it was different (more honest) say you appreciate his honesty and that next time he'd do better to be honest from the start.

Ds came out of school very upset yesterday because a teacher had shouted at him. Told me he had got angry and shouted at the teacher who had shouted even louder and scared him. When I eventually got to the bottom of it (and I find it helps to ask 'when I speak to school about it are they going to tell me what you are saying or will it be different to how you are remembering it because I will be very embarassed if you aren't telling me the whole truth') it wasn't quite like he had first said.
In my above quote you could change it to bus driver/other children on the bus...

Won't go into the details but after discussing ds's situation yesterday I said he should apologise to the teacher today and he said he was too scared. I explained that teacher's aren't scary, they are only doing their job too and he was probably just as upset as ds by it all and that if he really was a mean teacher he'd have been given detention...
Anyhow I picked him up today and he was much happier. Had apologised to the teacher who also apolgised to him for scaring him.

I feel dc need to feel safe and protected and that they can tell you the truth even if by doing so you will be angry. I've always said that I may be upset by the truth, but if he lies and I find that out it will be a million times worse!

It's never easy knowing how to handle things. They need a bit of freedom now, and I would be the first to say that my ds can get reckless and foolhardy around his peers and maybe pushes things too far at times. I think it's natural for them to try it. But they also need to know it's not acceptable and that rules are there for a reason.

that should have been that I'm not completely happy about....

Stella they are just 2 incidents. You acted on it. It is ok.
He is growing and is a fase, most probably just to re assess boundaries and new rules
I am told that in cycles it happens (seem to be on the odd years, 7 than 9, than 11 )
And he could have a delayed treat.

I think you've reacted really well StellB.
Clamped down hard, which is what you need to do I think b4 they start to get older and misbehaviour can be sooo much more serious.
WRT to the bullying - what's his attitude to it? Is he shamefaced about it? Does he admit it was wrong? I ask because he may fear the bullying turning on him if he doesn't join in? There might be some ringleaders here dominating other kids on the periphery?
My youngest DS is couple of years older and I find it really hard to make these kind of judgements - some of their adolescent male world is just totally weird to me!
Sometimes I worry that I'm being too hard but I am so anxious that, as an lp, DS is not spoilt.
Anyway, hope your DS enjoys the birthday treats eventually!

HI all and thank you ever so much for your replies!

I did give DS plenty of chances to come clean, especially about the bus. When he first told me how the bus driver had been SO UNFAIR, I did probe and encouraged him to tell me the whole story. I also specifically asked whether he had been told off for walking about on the coach before, which he denied. That's why I felt that just a telling off wouldn't have been sufficient. After all, he had already been told off by two different drivers on a number of occasions. Aside the fact that he ignored the drivers, he could cause an accident as the driver is distracted telling him to sit down. There are other people's children on the coach too!

As for the bullying, the school runs a very tight ship hence the fact that they dealt with this one incident pretty swiftly. He was lead on and his text message was rather innocent in comparison to the others so you could argue that he succumbed to peer pressure. I don't know to what extent the boys realised what they were doing. They all get on well with the boy they were picking on so it's not an ongoing occurrence. However, it seems that they took what was initally a joke too far and that was when it became bullying. It started with one of them using the boy's phone to randomly text other people saying "I'm gay" and it escalated from there.

It still comes down to DS having to learn to make the right decision and the fact that he was involved, in my eyes, makes him just as guilty as the person who started it. In fairness to DS, and the head master said so quite a few times, he was ashamed of what he had done and he apologised to the boy straight away. He also said to the head master that he wanted to tell me himself, before I got contacted by the school.
Just like you pickgo, I sometimes do worry that I'm being too hard on him whereas other times I feel that he could easily turn into a spoilt brat.

He'll get his treaty breakfast tomorrow morning and a couple of little things which I had already bought for him. I can see that perhaps by not giving a chance to redeem himself, I'm also denying him an opportunity to be honest or to make amends. I will see how it goes and what he does until Saturday but the sleepover is definitely cancelled. It's me who now has to do a 70 mile roundtrip on a Saturday morning so that he can do his detention so I can't see why I should dedicate my whole weekend to ferrying him and his mate around!

Hi Stella

I think you've handled things very well. Personally The only thing I would do is emphasise how glad you are that he showed great maturity by owning up, taking responsibility and apologising. That's not common at his age.

I think as he grows, knowing that taking responsibility and when to apologise is essential to his maturity.

My eldest is 14 and i've found it's better to know than scare them to the point they hide things from you.

Oh and I've also found giving a long lecture often works way better than screaming/shouting etc. Let boredom be their punishment!!