Not coping all that well... need to vent

[Holly02]

I'm probably inviting a bit of criticism here, but here goes anyway. I posted another thread a while ago about the fact that dh's 16 1/2 yr old son has moved in with us - we also have our own ds who will be turning 3 in July. The decision to have SS live with us was made by dh, even though there were a lot of associated problems with it.

Well... it has been almost two months since he moved here and basically things aren't going that well. DH has been travelling more than ever before which means he's not around a lot of the time, and when he IS here the atmosphere is not very good and we've been sniping at each other and arguing quite a lot. SS also gets up very early in the morning to travel to school (because we live so far away) and most mornings he wakes up my ds, which means that I then have to get up myself and both ds and I are becoming very tired and a bit sleep deprived. SS has been asked so many times to keep the noise down in the mornings but it seems to make little difference, I just don't know what else to do about it. He leaves our front door wide open from the minute he gets up (anyone could walk in), opens and shuts doors constantly and runs the bathroom taps at full capacity, not to mention slamming drawers etc. It may sound petty but believe me it's a lot of noise first thing in the morning, and unfortunately ds' bedroom is close to all of this 'activity'. I wish I had somewhere else I could put ds, but unfortunately there is no other room I can use.

Sometimes SS also goes and spends a night or two with some friends and when he comes home, he is in a foul mood and doesn't speak to dh or I, which then gets dh angry and it doesn't help the already tense atmostphere. I am positive that SS doesn't like all the travelling he has to do and he probably also doesn't like dh telling him what to do after all these years, hence the bad mood when he comes home.

To top it off dh and I went away for the valentine's weekend and spent most of it arguing, because of all the pent-up tension. Our relationship has gone downhill pretty fast in the last few months and even though we have tried to resolve some things, before we know it we are arguing about something else. It seems to be never ending. By the way - none of this 'fighting' occurs in front of SS.

I feel physically tired and just want to sit down and cry at the moment. Thanks for listening, not that I've really achieved anything by writing it down! Oh well, I can always hope for a miracle...

Gosh sounds awful.
Is there a realistic prospect that SS will move out in 1.5 years time (when he's 18?) Could you resign yourself to the thought that this situation won't last forever? Sorry I'm no help, but I'm also up so late, so thought you'd like to know you've been heard by at least one sympathetic ear....

Oh dear, it sounds as though no one is happy with the situation at all, Holly. Do you think SS is miserable staying with you and would prefer to be elsewhere, so is trying his best to get 'evicted'? Are there any rays of hope - do you have some good times amongst all the gloom, in which you/dh could raise the issues? What about getting other family or his friends or their parents involved - maybe they can give another view or even talk to him themselves?

Has your dh made SS fully aware of the effects of his noise and other habits rather than just saying 'Keep the noise down.' or 'Shut the door!' without explantion? Could you change your day so everyone gets up earlier, so the noise doesn't matter? (FWIW, my own 23 yr old DS is noisy and makes a racket even when he's trying to be quiet!) Is it possible to reduce the water pressure on your taps? We have little valve things on ours that we can change. You can buy self-closing things for doors, too.

I hope for everyone's sake you can work this through - maybe it's just teething troubles of another kind and it will pan out ok eventually. Good luck.

I think the noise in the morning thing is a difficult one. When I lived at my parents house my room was next to the bathroom and whenver someone got up early it always woke me up- no matter how quiet they were. Why on earth does he leave the front door wide open?? Could you chain it or use a deadlock so he has to kind of think "oh now i'm opening the door"- I assume he's being absent minded about this.

I don't think you'll get him to be any quieter in the morning- from my experience of living in shared houses- people are just incapable of being quiet once they're up and about- even if they're trying. The noise when your up and about sounds less than when you're trying to sleep if you see what I mean. DS may get used to it though and may start to sleep through it. Work on the front oddr then agt least you don't have to get up to check whether or not the front door is open.

I used to share a house with someone who seemed incapable of fully turning the gas off on the cooker. the number of times I came home to the smell of gas was just ridiculous. Another person I shared a house with left the gas grill on (had been cooking bacon) and went home for xmas (!!!) Luckily I forgot something and had to go back to the house. What I mean is that some people are just frustratingly absent minded- and teenagers are often like this - but there isn't a great deal you can do to change them- you just need to make it harder for them to be absent minded.

Jimjams I do know what you mean. In some respects he does try to be quiet, but mostly he seems to have no idea of the noise he's making. I guess it's frustrating to me and ME ONLY because I'm the one who has to get up to ds, and then put up with a tired & irritable child for the rest of the day. DS does still have a nap at lunch time, but losing that bit of sleep in the morning seems to throw him out of kilter for the rest of the day.

As far as the front door, I have no idea why he does it, but I told him tonight that our neighbours were robbed in broad daylight (which is true, even though it's a good neighbourhood), so we have to be careful about security. I also tried to ask him a few questions to see if everything is ok (dh is away again) and he seemed to come around a bit - I know he likes a girl at school and this could be causing him a bit of grief too. It is so difficult to keep a peaceful momentum going a lot of the time. Much of the problem I think is that dh has his own ideas about parenting (which I don't always agree with), and SS is used to living a very different type of lifestyle.

Anyway thanks for your responses, I will just have to keep praying for some kind of resolution to these problems before everything falls down around our ears...

Coming in a bit late here Holly - but I'm just wondering whether you could appeal to SS's macho side a bit and ask him to take more responsibility - not for real things that matter - but just to make him feel a bit more useful ?

Sounds to me like he's having trouble settling and it must have been a big change for him too - maybe if he felt that he was being useful he might feel more wanted and might settle down ?

Being a teenager is so vile anyway - and he probably feels that you don't want him there and his Dad's never around etc - all I wanted when I was an angst ridden teenie was to be treated like an adult and to stop being told what to do, didn't happen mind you !