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.

Should also mention, he did used to spend more than half of school holidays with us as his mum honestly used to go away with her friends every school holiday… I kid you not. This stopped a few years ago when she became official with her partner and maintenance payments were adjusted accordingly. There is no court order or CMS.

So what I’m saying is his mum hasn’t always done 95% of the parenting.

You were unreasonable to move an hr away. I'm not surprised the dm then decided to move because your dh didn't prioritise him then.

Oh god yes. You must prioritise your child's life above anything else in life.. Much more important than jobs and finances, social life, friends, interests, hobbies, mental health etc.
That way well-rounded, well-balanced adults will evolve.....

FFS.

For what it's worth I grew up in several different countries. Never did me or my siblings any harm.

OP, sorry you're having to deal with this.

One more thing to add to those referring to me as ‘new wife’ ‘new family’… we’ve been together since he was 3 and our eldest is 9 so it’s not particularly new..

arethereanyleftatall · Today 09:31
@Coffeepot72
You keep putting an '!'as if it's an absurd suggestion that child maintenance should be increased if the amount of time a NRP spends with their child is decreased, and thus the RPs increased. The law is that the CM payable is dependent on the amount of time the NRP spends, specifically nights. Do you not agree with that law?

I think its fine to work this way when it's a fixed routine, but when you have a teenager who wants flexibility, you can't keep (or keep being threatened with) recalculating things every time there's a change.

YourPositionInTheQueueIs10292 · Yesterday 15:21
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.

Yes!!! But getting his mum to realise/understand/act on this may be a different matter.

Gotta be honest @Coffeepot72 - I think that's shit. So, you're saying your dh didn't pay any more when he stopped having his son at all. I'm not remotely surprised his mum asked for this. She shouldn't have had to ask.

By ‘lashed out’ at 4 year old I didn’t mean just a push, he literally picked him up and threw him across the room.

Wow, this is alarming. A child who did this in my house would not be taken on special days out or bought a second expensive gaming PC, they'd be lucky to hold onto the tech they've got. I realise that would be unlikely to help with them not wanting to come but frankly that would not be my priority when a 4 year old is being physically thrown across the room. They need to be protected here - there's a lot of talk of feeling sorry for the 15 year old, I feel more sorry for this poor child.

If he has his own room at yours then I'm not seeing the drama about keeping his stuff safe. A lock on his room and he should be able to leave them safely in there, so he's behaving poorly about that. Similarly, if his mum is so keen for him to still come then surely she can compromise and let him collect his PC after school on the Friday.

If there's not going to be any leeway with mum then tbh I would be looking at being less tolerant of his behaviour. As much as he might want to be at mum's, how he's channelling it isn't actually acceptable. Completely refusing to engage and assaulting younger children is not a reasonable response.

By ‘lashed out’ at 4 year old I didn’t mean just a push, he literally picked him up and threw him across the room.

He'd not be coming to my house again.

arethereanyleftatall · Today 10:42
Gotta be honest @Coffeepot72 - I think that's shit. So, you're saying your dh didn't pay any more when he stopped having his son at all. I'm not remotely surprised his mum asked for this. She shouldn't have had to ask.

@arethereanyleftatall where did I say that my DH stopped paying?! DSS often requested flexibility, and we would have supported this but DH's ex was having none of it, we had a rigid arrangement until DSS went to Uni. DH paid each month, he never missed a payment. I should add the ex made it very clear that any variation to the schedule, no matter how minor or one off, would be met with a request for recalculation, but as the variations never happened it was academic.

Maybe I misread somewhere @Coffeepot72, and I don't have time to scroll back, but I got the impression from somewhere that where you're saying 'flexibility' and 'centering the child's needs' what that actually means in practice, (for a teenager who wants to spend more time in his main residence) is that the NRP does even less. So it's quite convenient to talk about flexibility and centering the child's needs, when it actually means the RP doing all the parenting.

Thanks for your reply! The general attitude on here makes me not want to talk about addressing this issue. But it is an issue that needs addressing because while he was massively told off and is under no illusion now that behaviour will not be tolerated which added more fuel to my SS’s fire if not wanting to be here, my DH makes excuses for him and is scared to deal with it properly for fear of making him NOT want to come even less. Which is can understand. Argh!

Why is it that when centering a child's needs means the step mum has to do more then she has to suck it up but when the mother has to do more it's a bad thing?

I've never suggested the step mum should do more. I think the father (or whichever sex the NRP is) should do more.

Lot's of people do but I will trust that you are one of the few who has never told a SM she "knew what she was getting into" so therefore needs to accept everything with a smile.

One more thing to add to those referring to me as ‘new wife’ ‘new family’… we’ve been together since he was 3 and our eldest is 9 so it’s not particularly new..

@Waterwater101 This is just said to diminish your relationship, don't rise to it.

I am really horrified that he threw your child across a room! Did he face any consequences for this?

But it is an issue that needs addressing because while he was massively told off and is under no illusion now that behaviour will not be tolerated which added more fuel to my SS’s fire if not wanting to be here, my DH makes excuses for him and is scared to deal with it properly for fear of making him NOT want to come even less. Which is can understand. Argh!

Realistically though, if the behaviour crops up again, your DH needs to realise that DSS not coming is not as bad an outcome as your 4 year old being attacked like this just to preserve him coming. I hope he recognises that!

I think you are thinking of this from the wrong point of view. This isn't about the parents and who is doing more. This isn't about the mum having time off and the dad not wanting to see his son.

The OP has made it clear this isn't what the dad wants and has tried taking him out for days out etc.

It's about the child and what he wants to be doing at the age of 15.

He should be able to have open discussions with his parents about what he wants to do and how often he wants to visit his dad or if it's just a meal or whatever.

It's completely normal and acceptable to not want to spend all your weekend with a parent or young siblings. He shouldn't be made to go to his dads so the NRP is "doing more"🙄

He was told off and sent to his room where he cried and called his mum to go home (which she obviously said no to). Our 4 year old was given all the love and care he needed in the aftermath and he was absolutely fine after the initial shock. SS had also hurt our eldest and he’d already been told off for that.

Thank you for pointing this out x

This is very true.

You and your husband are very tolerant and far too nice.

There are cheaper ways to get screens etc at your place.

However I would not tolerate a child behaving this way in my home and the mother is also disgraceful as she is central to the issue.

However it is worth noting that he has a step mother and a step father and how this might affect him.

don’t make too many excuses for him being intolerant of his siblings- I can tell you not all boys of that age are.

Does he have any diagnoses?

you know that you do not have to allow him to visit? If it was causing him this much distress I’d think it necessary

on his next weekend you could ask him to come up with a new contact schedule - I’d be inclined to share this with his mother and tell her you’d be using that for the foreseeable!

on his next weekend you could ask him to come up with a new contact schedule - I’d be inclined to share this with his mother and tell her you’d be using that for the foreseeable!

Indeed - don't ask her to agree, just tell her this is the new arrangement!

Thank god some sensibleness has come to this thread.

Teenagers wanting to teenage shouldn't be a shock to anyone. Frankly.

I also think that if my Dd as 15 threw a toddler across a room as a mum she wouldn't have any electrical devices left.

Op you had he called mum- what was mums response to this attack ? I would be mortified.

Only slight issue, SS is rarely allowed back home on a Friday when it’s not ‘mums weekend’ so DH has to collect from school and getting it will likely be an issue.

I'm beginning to wonder exactly what she's doing when he's not there. This all seems a bit extreme.

I'm also wondering if his mum might be worried about people saying she not facilitating the schedule and is allowing DS to decide if he sees his dad or not.

It wouldn't be the first time that the mum gets accused of this, in situations where the child doesn't want to see dad.