Step son doesn’t want to visit

[Waterwater101]

My 15 year old step son hasn’t enjoyed visiting us for a while now, and it’s reached the point he’s absolutely vile for the 2 days EOW he’s here. He sulks in his bed all day and lashes out at our children when he leaves his room. He won’t join us when we go anywhere and if he has no choice he sulks. We got him to sit in the living room with us last weekend and he faced the wall for an hour.

We can understand why he doesn’t want to come sometimes.. his life is at home .. his pc, friends, mum, home comforts and no younger siblings to irritate him (they only need to breathe to wind him up).

He’s pleaded with his mum to let him skip a weekend here and there, or only stay for 1 night sometimes but she will not have any of it. His friends often have things planned (IRL or on PC) he can’t join because he’s coming to us… we live quite a way from him.

We’ve stressed to her how unhappy he is when he visits but she will not listen.

I think forcing him to come is damaging the relationship he has with us all and it’s causing a lot of resentment.

I genuinely think this could be rectified if he could ‘skip a weekend’ here and there so he looked forward to coming? We do this every now and then if we have a holiday or whatever and honestly when he comes after having not seen us for a longer period of time he is much happier.

I also think at 15 you should have some sort of say in how you spend your weekend? I certainly did at that age! He literally spends the two days here waiting to go home, to a point half an hour before he leaves he sits on the stairs with his things.

I feel so sad for him. Any ideas how we could tackle this? He’s so welcome here, we’ve tried so hard with him and I have nothing more I can give.

But wait hold on. Mum also moved away. But only dad to blame right to.

If this was bloody reversed and it was sad not mum I also would be saying the same thing. You kinda should listen to your kid.

I think @lookluv has a point about moving away. I find it quite odd that so many parents decided to live in different towns to each other and are then shocked when teenagers don't want to go between houses. What did they think would happen if teens have to choose between their social lives seeing their dad ? And what about weekend clubs? What if the kids want to stay on a school night?

@hourbyhour101
Absolutely you should, but the op and her dh seem to be putting all the 'listen to your child' on to the mum.
The child staying at home now will result in the mother doing 💯 of the parenting, and the father doing absolutely nothing.
There are other options - buying a computer for their house, the dad going up to take the son out maybe a few times in the week etc, the dad maybe going up and staying in the mums house whilst she goes away for a weekend (if she's happy with that) - are all becoming secondary to the op of the fathers first choice - which seems to be expecting the mother to do ALL the parenting. And, then, bizarrely, complaining about how much time he's allowed on his screen!!

@hourbyhour101 dad moved an hour away 10 years ago, mum moved ‘further’ (not sure how much further) 6 years ago. So it was the dad who moved a significant distance away. The mum moving didn’t really make much difference as dad had been an hour away for 4 years at that point so what benefit in her staying?

But the point is, this is all about the parents and not about the boy who is making what he wants clear and people are ignoring it.

Yes mum should be entitled to a break but currently that means forcing her 15 year old son out of the house EOW when it's been made very clear that he doesn't want to do that anymore.

He's 15. In a year he'll be heading off to college. You can't expect your kids to want to keep to rigid contact schedules forever, they are people themselves with their own wants and feelings, not just a possession to be sent to dad because mum needs a break.

Does that mean I think dad has done everything perfectly? No. But right now there is a 15 year old in the middle of this who seems to be making it quite clear what HE wants and no one is listening.

I didn't say they'd sucked anything up in that sense. I meant what is OP expected to do about the younger siblings? Put them back?

He has younger siblings. He's not the first kid in the world to have annoying younger siblings.

@YourPositionInTheQueueIs10292
No. I don't think the child should be forced out of his house. But, I do think it should be the dad coming up with a solution to solve this that isn't just 'your mother can do all the parenting from now on and I'll do nothing.'

I agree there are other things they could try. But a 15 year old may just want to stay in their primary home too even with those things. If that's the case he should be allowed to do that the older he gets. Are you expecting an 18 year old to go and have contact EOW? what if he lives with mum until he's 30, still going to go to dad's EOW?

There has to come a point where it's okay for schedules to start being more flexible based on the child's wishes, feelings and life changing/growing up.

I think 15 is a perfectly reasonable age for those types of things to start happening.

Of course it's also fine for older children to still maintain the levels/schedules of contact they did as younger children if that's what they want but surely there must reach a point where they are doing it because they want to do it and aren't forced if they'd rather not? They are people at the end of the day, not a pet to be shared between parents.

I don't necessarily disagree, but that might still mean him staying at his mum's more and I don't think there is anything wrong with that. I suggested in my first post that perhaps the DH could go up and take him out for the evening and he could then go back to his mum's if he didn't want to stay overnight at his dad's.

But, computer or no computer, if this 15 year old decides he'd rather spend more time at his main home then why shouldn't he get to decide that?

Bizarrely,@YourPositionInTheQueueIs10292 , we are saying the same thing!!
I am saying the 15 yo SHOULD be able to stay in his house where his computer is and his friends can pop over.

BUT, I am saying it's the fathers job to sort out how to do this, and that isn't by just expecting the mother to do 100 💯 of the parenting rather than the 95% she's done his whole life.

I don't know the situation, the op hasn't been back so can only speculate how that can be achieved. If she's going to a boyfriends house, can the father come and stay at hers to look after his child? If she wants ti stay home in peace, can the father come up and take the 15 year old out more often etc in the week. Maybe out to the cinema, to dinner. Whatever.

Sometimes there isn't a magical solution to them not wanting to come though, and there is no other plan for dad to come up with to see him that would satisfy him. He may just want to stay at his mum's and nothing reasonably afforded would entice him to actually want to go.

No one is saying the teen has to go but the DF needs to make time in his life to see his eldest child which is more than one weekend every couple of months.

@Waterwater101
I think it has to be his decision to be honest

However if he was vile to my younger children but didn't actually want to be there anyway I'd say don't come until you sort yourself out

Have a month off and just let his dad
meet up with him on EO sat/sun and focus on him

It doesn't sound like the current arrangements are any good for anyone unfortunately

But to be honest if he's more bothered about being glued to his computer then that's quite sad 😞

My ds is 17, he is at school all week, he goes to the gym, he has driving lessons and at the weekends he arranges to do events or whatever on his pc with his mates, he would be seriously pissed off if that was took away from him. He is certainly not 'glued' to his pc.

Yes I think we need to accept that this is the new norm for the younger generation now, socialising isn't just meeting up like it used to be, it involves computers/consoles etc.. I wouldn't want my kids to be on it constantly but if that's how they want to socialise with their mates during their wind down/ relaxing time then that's up to them.

Just like I used to come home and spend hours on MSN chatting to friends after school! When my mum wasn't on the phone cutting off the internet anyway 🤣

Does he have a room? I don't know your financial situation but could he not get a lower grade but acceptable gaming PC build for your house?

Sorry just read your other post about it costing 5k.

You can still get a good build for less than 5k as long as the graphics card is up to scratch and some decent monitors.

Or a gaming laptop even that he could plug into some monitors.

I reckon for a grand you could get him a decent enough set up for EOW use, but obviously this is still a lot of money.

But what if, like Op has suggested, he doesn't want to go out with his dad? And what if mum doesn't want his dad to spend time with him in her house? He's out of options, then.

I can imagine if we heard his Mum's side.

Ex moved an hour away when DS was only 5, and consequently his contact has to consist of full weekends, as short visits don't work with the distance. Ex got himself a new wife and they have younger kids now.

DS is 15 and finds his weekends at his Dad's house boring. The younger siblings are annoying, and all family activities revolve around the younger kids.

Rather than address this, his Dad and step mum have decided he should visit less.

I look after DS the rest of the time, I rarely get any time to myself, and I think my ex should make the effort to make the weekends more fun for DS. It seems to me like he's just given up, and wants to reject him totally. Step mum is the same.

AIBU to think that ex chose to move away and start a new family, and he shouldn't just walk away from his first child because it's annoying to having a grumpy teen around?

I agree he shouldn’t be being forced at that age.
why is the mum forcing him to come? Is it because she does something while he is away or she feels she needs respite from caring.

Our situation was similar. The ex was hellbent on preserving every minute of her DSS-free time, and the access schedule was rigidly adhered to until DSS went to Uni. Any hints at changing things were met by threats to get the maintenance reviewed, But it was such an artificial situation - even if DH and his ex had stayed together, a teenage DSS would not have spent EOW doing activities with his Dad, he would have been doing normal teenage stuff with his mates. We were prepared to be flexible but the ex wasn’t, and DH was terrified of rocking the boat. So DSS missed out on a lot

I don't really feel like you have read the replies.

The teenager wants to see his friends and play on his computer at his mums. It isn't that deep really. That's completely normal for a teenager.

I never spent weekends sat with my parents & siblings. Just because his parents split up, he shouldn't be made to.

Once they are older, they can make their own decisions. It isn't up to the mum or dad to force it.

I don’t know why parents think visiting arrangements should be set in stone and never change as a child gets older?

I know. Its obvious that a schedule made for a 3 three year old might not be suitable for a 15 year old.

I bet if the op had posted from the other point view, saying that dss didn't want to come but she thought he should be forced the same posters chastising her would be saying exactly this.

I'm not saying they should change. But OP isn't proposing a change, she's proposing a reduction. A change would be making a suggestion that enables the teen to see his Dad regularly but in a way that is more in keeping with what teens want.
OP is basically saying "he doesn't want to be here, we don't want him here, let's just pass him back so we can have fun with our lovely new family".
No other alternative has been put forward.