Control/boundaries - the battle between an anxious parent vs defiant 14 year old

[Alvah]

I assume there is nothing that is 'normal' when it comes to teenagers, however I am struggling at the moment with a power play between being the responsible parent (setting clear boundaries) and the tornado force my of my son's mood when these boundaries squash his plans. I would really like your thoughts and opinions.

Single parent of two DS 14 & 12 and DD 10. Two youngest go to their dad at weekends, but DS 14 is refusing to go to dad for last 3 months. So I am now having to deal with weekend negotiations for the first time.

I am quite an anxious person by nature (as well as relatively quiet, introspective, calm and patient). I want to please and I like to avoid conflicts as much as possible. With a lively, sociable, streetwise, clever (defiant, angry, moody, 'I'll find a way to get what I want') 14 year old son, this is causing my nerves to completely fray.

He considers me very strict, I won't allow him to go for sleep overs (unless I know them and his friends parent phones me to tell me he is there). This is too embarrassing and leads to endless arguments (although I don't like arguments, I will not let him do whatever he wants). So he has had years of having to leave his friends who are going to sleepovers, and come home alone. (All he has to do is get them to phone me!)

I consider myself very lenient, although with certain conditions. He is allowed out until 10.30 at weekends, but have until 11 to make it home before I freak out. He has been allowed to go out during the Easter Holidays from afternoon until late (this is new! He used to always have to come home for dinner and not allowed to be out from morning until night, although all his friends are allowed, of course). When school is on he has to be home at 9.30 but has until 10 before I freak, and has to have dinner here before he goes out, expect on Friday when he has dinner out.

Bedtime at the moment I have changed from turning off wifi at 10.30 about a year ago, to becoming 11.30 gradually, to becoming his responsibility lately. Easter Holidays he has turned day to night. I am not happy about it but am choosing not to fight about that as I am just glad he is safely in the house. So I would consider myself lenient and flexible and understanding of his needs.... am I?

Last two weeks however, we had an argument, he told me to shut up and so I logged him out of Netflix. When he came home he freaked at me and punched his walls and called be every horrible name under the sun. The next day he went out at lunchtime and announced by text he would be staying at a friends that night for a sleepover (it would be best for the both of us). Last time he threatened to do this I said I would phone the police if he didn't come home + phone round all his friends parents. He came home with his tail between his legs. This time he text me and asked for me to please trust him on this one, I said I don't even know where you are, so he eventually told me. I didn't know what to do, on the one hand he was communicating on the other he was still breaking my rules. I didn't want him to get away with it. But somehow I felt I shouldn't fight this one just now. He ended up coming home on his own accord at 10.30. I was so glad to see him I forgot to be angry.

Last night he asked if he could stay at a friends house, I know who they are but don't have contact details. I said 'if his mum texts/phones me and tells me you are there'. After lots of arguments over text I got a text on my DS' phone 'apparently' from his friends dad. I don't believe it was him for a minute. Later he said 'stop worrying mum, I can look after myself, just trust me on this one, I love you - I'll be home in the morning'.

It is now morning. I have hardly slept. I had a nightmare he and his friends had dumped a body in the river, my son saying that 'if they don't find out we'll get away with it!' My stomach has been churning and I have been in tears. I feel awful. I feel he is slipping out of my grasp, and I don't known what to do about it. Punishing him seems to make things worse. Talking to him calmly seems to work much better, but he still just pushes and pushes the boundaries. I am getting so anxious that I don't know when I am over reacting and when I need to DO something.

Sorry for it to be so long. Just needed to get this off my chest :(

Wow, I think you are doing really well. I don't think your boundaries are too strict, but I can see why you are feeling anxious. Does your ex have similar rules?

I have four teens and your boundaries are more lenient and flexible than mine.

The only area where I think you may be expecting too much is in asking his friends' parents to phone you if he's sleeping over at their house. I regularly have teens sleeping here and I've never been asked to phone anyone's parents - would be a bit irritated if I was asked to tbh - but parents do often phone me. Could you ask for the phone number of where he's staying and call there instead?

IMO he is too young to go out all night and not expect you to worry about him, but it sounds like you need to find a middle ground before he realises that he can just go and actually there's very little you can do about it.

You are also setting out your expectations for younger DC who will be mentally clocking exactly what he gets away with.

I don't really have any answers but I would wait for a calm, relaxed opportunity to tell him your fears and discuss a compromise that will be acceptable. It sounds like he still wants to please you, which is good, and punishment will just make him more likely to stay away from home. I always found that carrot works better than stick anyway.

Your son sounds pretty normal to me. I think you need to let him have more independence on the sleep over thing. Parenting teens is a nightmare and you need to pick your battles very carefully. If your son is generally well behaved and not been in trouble with police etc then I think you need to lighten up a bit. Wait till he's 18 and going to clubs pubs etc, that's far worse IMO! The amount of times I've been awake listening for kids to come in at 3am!

Mumteadumpty - thank you for encouragement and understanding. Ex is much stricter than me, won't let them out at all at weekend evenings.

nequidnimis - I appreciate your advice. Yes that is it as well, the younger ones will think it is acceptable what he does. I will wait for a quiet opportunity to remind him of the boundaries that I expect and the privileges he gets. I am terrified of him just walking out and doing as he pleases as that seems to be where he is heading.

The reason why I stress about guarantee of where he is, is because I am not sure he is with who he says he is with. Which horrifyingly I had confirmed this morning - he spent the night with 16 and 17 teen year olds who regularly do drugs. I feel sick.

Ratfinkandbobo - Thank you. So far touch wood he is fine and not been in trouble with the police. However these boys he spent the night with are regularly in trouble with the police! I don't know why he suddenly is hanging out with them.

I honestly don't know what to do. If I confront him and/or ground him, will he fly off the handle and run off again. If I don't, will it work just to tighten up boundaries and not let him go for a sleepover again. And what can I do if he just walks off anyway. He is only 14 :(

Thanks for all your advice :(

I find it odd he doesn't want you to know where he is.
Why do you now know who he hung out with, why did he only tell you afterwards?
Where is his dad in this picture, why are dealing with all this on your own?

Trust your instincts. I would want to know where my 14 year old is, and it is reasonable for you to have a contact number for where he is staying at this age. He is also staying out later than most 14 year olds I know.

Well I think you are way too lenient about what time he has to be home. My 14 yo is in bed at 9.30 on a school night unless he has something on.

I also wouldn't set a curfew full stop - better to know where they are and what they're doing than just say they have to be home by x time.

The sleepover thing though - I think you are too restrictive. I wouldn't insist on a parent texting me. Besides it could be anyone texting. Knowing which friend and the address should be enough. He probably is quite embarrassed about having to do this.

You seem a bit inconsistent to me - overly strict with sleepovers and overly lenient with his curfew time.

And yes shouting arguing etc is par for the course with a teen - don't blow it out of all proportion. It isn't personal.

Spending time with older teens with drugs is concerning though. Is he telling the truth? Exaggeration to get his own back on you? Or spending time with them as a punishment to you? Do you know his friends? Do they come over to yours?

Sounds very similar to my DS at that age. He's now 17.
At 14 DS was desperate for independence , would rather die than have me contact another parent, we had a lot of conflict over curfews. There was one day when he asked for a sleepover and we said not unless we have full details of where. He said no, and just stayed out anyway. That was the point I realised that ultimately as a parent you don't have 'control '.
All I can say is that you could sit down and try to talk to him calmly about your concerns, try to agree some rules you are both happy with ( this may require compromise from you ) and insist he keeps in touch by text. Also let him know if he gets into any trouble ever ( with drugs for example) that he must call you for help and you won't be angry.
My DS is basically a sensible and studious lad, who highly valued his social life and new found freedom at that age. He tried alcohol and some drugs, didn't like them, but regularly smoked cannabis from age 14.
We have had to give him more freedom that I would have liked, but like your son he effectively bullied us into it. In retrospect I don't think it made any difference what rules we set- he would have smoked no matter to what we did.
Do not under estimate the power of peer pressure at this age. With the drugs issue, do not panic. Ensure you are thoroughly informed and can talk to him sensibly about drugs. Finding out my DS had been to raves and tried ketamine / ecstasy at age 15 was a very stressful time but we could not make him understand what the big deal was.
Now at 17 he self regulates well. When he has exams ( like now ) he rarely goes out and doesn't smoke weed. He has learnt for himself what works.
I truly feel for you, I found this age really tough and I am a united front with DH. If I had been a single mum it would have been even harder.

I think he doesn't want me to know where he is/was because he knows I wouldn't allow it. He had an advantage on me, because last weekend he came home in stead of staying out and I's loosely agreed to maybe let him have a sleepover without speaking with parent. Then this time he did ask, and it was a friend I know, so I kind of said yes. But I wasn't sure if that's where he would be so I felt really uneasy and asked for the parent's to confirm he was there after all.

Although he has blocked me on Facebook, I go through his brothers page and I saw a picture of him and the older boys at the 16 year olds' house (who my son has frequently told me both do drugs). He even made the picture his main picture on facebook! I know he has always been impressed by these boys but never known him to hang with them. It looked like it was just the three of them!

He never told me. But when I did ask him if he really was at his younger friends house he still insisted. I am yet to get hold of his parents to ask, but I kind of already know the answer...His face was a sight when I asked if he was with these other two. He's not going to own up. He looked really rough and freaked out.

His dad and my DS do not speak. He was very inflexible with him and could be aggressive/manipulative. We are not talking at the moment because of this, he wants me to send DS back to him at weekends, but he refuses. This leaves me in a weakened position as I am on my own. Saying that it would be harder to deal with it with his dad, because he thinks force is the best way. Both my family and ex's family both live far away.

Curfew time has extended also over time, from 9 on school nights and 10 at weekends, however I feel more comfortable letting him come home a bit later than letting him stay over night somewhere. As I cannot trust where he would be. He lives furthest away from town/park and so with them walking home together it makes sense that he has a bit longer to come home. Most of the kids here have a set time to come home and I feel it is fair to let him walk home with them rather than leave earlier and walk alone.

I know his 'normal' friends, but lately with the good weather they have been meeting outside mostly. I have no worries about those friends, even if they did something they weren't allowed once in a while, as they are all lovely kids. He has always been a bit more mature for his age though and said the other day that sometimes he gets a bit bored with them (maybe explains him going to the older boys).

Claybury - I cannot thank you enough for your post, it calmed my horrible feeling of dread and fear. Sometimes just hearing someone having gone through something similar and that their DS is still fine, gives me hope. It sounds very similar indeed, and I will maybe just have to brace myself for a 'hell of a ride' for the next 2/3 years. He sounds great :)

He won't tell me even if he was doing something 'bad', even though I tell him that I won't be cross and I'd rather he just talked to me about it. But I have said to him that if something happened or he was in trouble (with drink/drugs or anything that he must phone me) and he said 'Of course I would'.

He came home early tonight, announcing he is going to stay home. He came in and asked if I was okay (tear stained/white faced/little mum sitting in the couch) and I said yes I'm fine. Tears pouring again at the sight of him. I said 'I'm just worried about you, that's all'. He smiles and patted my head and said again 'I'll be all right mum, I can look after myself'. I hope he's right.

Thanks again for all your comments, I don't know what to do if I didn't this outlet for worries! Don't want to tell many friends, or family for that matter.

Maliceaforethought - yes think you are right, hanging out with older kids is the issue. Along with his nature and drive for independence and freedom.

I wish he would admit it at least, so we can discuss it, but he wont. He wants to deal with it himself. I pray hanging out with them was a 'one off' and things settle down again for a while ?? Thank you

I understand why you are very concerned if he is hanging round with older boys who have been in trouble with police and taking drugs. I absolutely agree that you don't want him staying the night with them. I see now why you are enforcing the no sleepover rule with them. I really feel for you, my dd started hanging around with an unsavoury girl and got into drugs with her, albeit very briefly. Thankfully she soon saw sense and stopped, but it a real worry as teens are so impressionable and do things to look cool etc.

When you say you 'freak out' what exactly do you mean?

'So he has had years of having to leave his friends who are going to sleepovers, and come home alone. (All he has to do is get them to phone me!)'

Sorry, but if you want other adults to phone you then you need to tell them that yourself. If you know these people then pick up the phone and call them. Expecting your child to perform secretarial duties for you is unreasonable and making permission for sleepovers dependent on this is not fair. It is incredibly embarrassing and demeaning to him.

'It is now morning. I have hardly slept. I had a nightmare he and his friends had dumped a body in the river, my son saying that 'if they don't find out we'll get away with it!' My stomach has been churning and I have been in tears. I feel awful.'

You have a problem and I urge you to find a doctor to talk about your anxiety with. What you are feeling and doing is not normal and your relationship with your son will suffer unless you make the effort to get a grip.

You don't have healthy boundaries. You have a problem with anxiety and you are using control of your son to manage it.

'He came home early tonight, announcing he is going to stay home. He came in and asked if I was okay (tear stained/white faced/little mum sitting in the couch) and I said yes I'm fine. Tears pouring again at the sight of him. I said 'I'm just worried about you, that's all'. He smiles and patted my head and said again 'I'll be all right mum, I can look after myself'. I hope he's right.'

OMG.
And you say your ex is manipulative?

Parenting teens is as difficult as you yourself choose to make it.

mathanxiety- thanks for your thoughts. When I say freak out I mean I text him/call him and ask why he is not home yet. I don't think it's fair to be late home, considering he has half an hour flexibility to be home.

The reason he needs to get them to call/text me is because I don't have their contact number. If it is a parent I know then I can easily text them and ask if he is there, but since moving up to secondary school I don't necessarily know who the parents are, where they live and don't have their phone numbers. Which means he could be anywhere. I would rather it be embarrassing for him to ask 'could you let my mum know I'm here' rather than him spending the night at parties or at older kids houses completely unsupervised and with no adult in the house.

I would love to be able to trust him, but turning a blind eye to him using drugs etc. is not particularly helpful or responsible. He is only 14, and has a right to be protected from situations that are harmful to him. Peer pressure is huge and older kids can be enticing. It is my job to do what I can to protect him from situations he shouldn't be in. Obviously it is a limit to what I can do, and he will need to learn for himself to make good choices, but to me not caring is not an option.

Anxiety comes easily to me yes, and sometimes it snowballs based on me fearing the worst. In that state it is hard to look at a situation reasonably. My son refused to come home, he spent the night somewhere, I had no idea where and it felt horrible. He can simply refuse to come home or come home as he pleases. It may be that I am manipulating him by showing him that it upsets me and that I worry about him, but it is also the truth. When your child do as they please, they also need to see the effect it has on the rest of the family.

As it turned out I was right, he wasn't at his friends but with these older kids. He was a mess when he came home. It shows that my anxiety is not based on make believe, but rather picking up on the fact that my son is at risk, spending the night in a house doing drugs with older kids who are regularly in trouble with the police. That, I think would be creating anxiety amongst most parents.

So do you mean that I could make it easier by letting him do what he wants to do?

OP I don't think you need to justify yourself to mathanxiety. I know from experience how stressful it is when you have a 14 year old who is out at night and you don't know where they are or who they are with. To the parents out there that say ' he must tell you ' - or how can you 'let him' - maybe they haven't been in that situation.
My DD never ever behaved like this and I can see how posters are baffled by the situation - ragged says it is 'strange he doesn't want you to know where he is'. Well it isn't at all strange. My DS would never tell us where he is, for for we would turn up ( we wouldn't !) or stop him going. ( maybe we would !)
Because I had set tighter curfews than his mates had (we had, say , 11.30pm on a Saturday at age 15) of course he would rather have a sleepover as many other households didn't care what time they came in. Now he's 17 he can come in when he likes it's almost better as he will come in at 2 am and rarely sleep out. Of course at 14 it is all much harder as neither option ( sleepover at unknown place / very late curfew ) is IMO acceptable. For this reason I think 14-15 is a very difficult age, you are very responsible yet ultimately you can't control their behaviour. And they are immature and often susceptible to trying new stuff like drugs.
Any parent who has a child who is dabbling in drugs is likely to be thinking the worst case scenario - so I don't think your anxiety is out of proportion.

How is your son's attitude to school? fwiw my DS never went out on a school night and always took studies seriously, luckily for us.

You speak about this boy as if he were a total stranger whose upbringing you had no hand in and over whom you had no influence.

Why don't you trust him?

Yes there are drugs out there. But if you are waiting for him to come home all 'tear stained/white faced/little mum sitting in the couch' what you are going to look like to him is hysterical, ineffectual, incompetent and immature.

'Little mum' ???

Do you not worry that by refusing to allow him to go on sleepovers with friends for many years you may have managed to drive a wedge between him and his friends, and that that is one reason why he may now be hanging out with other teens who are older? Instead of accepting that he was growing up and branching out and seeking a way around his very normal baulking at your unreasonable demand to get adults to phone you, by perhaps having him check in with you at a designated time, having a family code he could use to ask you to come and pick him up if he wasn't comfortable with what was going on, a policy of picking him up from wherever he was with no questions asked if he called or texted, the two of you had a standoff that he, being the teen and not being shackled to the kitchen table won, predictably.

You need to get a grip and you need to be sensible and flexible, or you really will lose your son, and you won't have any influence over him and when your next two DCs turn into teens the same thing will happen to them.

You also (and this is very important) need to talk to your son about his relationship with his father and how that has gone tits up. If your son is adamant that he wants nothing more to do with his father then you need to stop feeling sorry for yourself and going all 'little mum', and you need to put your grown up shoulder to single parenting and demonstrating to DS that you are an adult and you have his back where his dad is concerned.

I have five DCs, aged from 13 to almost 25. Believe me, they have all done their fair share of socialising. They do not stay children forever, and they meet and mix with new people once they progress to secondary education. This is how they learn to conduct themselves as adults. It is your job to facilitate a social life for your child so that he can do the necessary learning. In order to facilitate that you need to be on top of your game and in control of yourself.

I am a single mother too, divorced from a man whose philosophy was 'my way or the highway'. The three DCs who are now over 18 do not speak to their father any more. He made them continue to go on weekend visitation through their teens by threatening to bring me to court on charges of contempt.

I am not the sort of mother, however, who milks every single moment of parenting teenagers for the last ounce of drama I can squeeze out of it. It doesn't have to be hell or anything close to hell. It can be a very important learning experience for everyone, and seeing your children blossom into responsible young people can be a delight. It doesn't have to be a process of constantly locked horns and endless drama.

Please go and get your anxiety sorted out.

Claybury - Thanks again for sharing your experience and wisdom.

My DS 14 is clever academically and does well, however is not particularly motivated at school, mainly due to him struggling with some teachers (being told what to do/arguing back). Next year, year 9, though it will become more focussed and he will have his chosen subjects, so will hopefully enjoy it more and become more motivated.

He might go out and meet friends for a bit on a week night, but often comes in early or just stays at home.

Mathanxiety - I think you might have taken a bit too seriously my caricature of how I felt the day after he had gone off for the night. Yes I felt anxious and powerless, and small, and yes he came home to see me upset, but I don't think that does any harm. He pushed his boundaries way too far by going off on a sleepover at 'god knows whose house', lied about where he was and tried to argue for coming home almost 36 hours after leaving home in the first place. I don't call that 'branching out'...to allow that, I would call neglect.

Just because I felt small and powerless in that situation, doesn't mean that I am in that state normally. I have raised my children singlehandedly for the last 10 years through hard times and good times, whilst moving forward in my career and completing a degree. I am a very capable human being, although with a tendency to worry about my very independent and will strong teen. Or like he puts it: You just love and worry about me, a little bit too much ??

We do not need a code for him to be picked up, he just phones me when he needs me.

Also, I do not look for situations to despair about, they just happen to come round every now and again. Which makes access to sites like this a Godsend - to have some advice and shared experiences to discuss and reflect upon.

My Ds is (almost) 14 and I'm year 9. Being one of the youngest in his year meant that he always had friends a year or two older than him.

I don't ask the parents to call me to confirm sleepovers. I ask Ds to give me the full address and a contact number in case his phone is dead. Not that it happens but it gives me piece of mind.

I also tell him that I chose to trust him but he never knows when I may show up at the address he gave me and then he needs to take the consequences of his lie.

I think the trust foundations are put in place earlier on when a child understands that you would rather deal with the truth no matter how bad it is than him putting his life in danger.

I also have the numbers of a few of his friends parents, and I do ask him who else is going to the sleepover. Sometimes I check with the parents of his friends that he told me the truth. Last time he asked to sleepover at a friend from school that I have never met before. He told me that his friend "Jonny" was there also and I checked with "Jonny's" mum if she knew the boy. She did and confirmed "Jonny" was there also.

At this age everything we do is embarrassing for them. So I do understand that getting a friend's parent to call and confirm the sleepover is embarrassing when this is not the norm.

Maybe work on building trust and consequences of what would happen if the trust is broken?

It seems odd to me that you are happy to let him out until 10.30pm but won't let him sleep over with his mates, I don't know anyone who lets their 14 yr old out that late, it's all about 8 pm here.

Wrt sleeping over, not crossed that bridge yet, atm it has to be with people we loosely know, I imagine that will change over the next year and we'll have to revise that rule.

Sorry, not a very helpful post

I can't imagine a situation where ds (or anyone else's ds I know for that matter )would inform me that he was staying out and that was that!

That would result in the removal of his phone at the very least if that happened.

2 DSs just entering these difficult years here... I am in the process of reading 'The Teenage Brain' by Frances E Jensen (an American neurologist) and although I have to admit that it is heavy going in places - the message is interesting - have courage that your suspicions could be founded and one of the helpful things she has discovered from her discussion with teens is that they crave parental dis/approval more than anything (because it is so hard to stop, even they can acknowledge this) but it's not really about sanctions but drawing the line and re-inforcing why. Some of the (bad) behaviours teens are capable of relate to their brain development - she gives the science behind this. So basically tobacco and alcohol are pretty bad but drugs are not only illegal but unbelievably bad due to the teenage brain being more trainable - both in a good way but also conducive to acquiring addictions.

My DS stays out until 8,30-9 pm only since the weather has improved and there is light outside till later. This is only during the weekend or half term. If he goes out during the week he needs to be back by 7,30.

Lights off at 9,30 during the week, phone downstairs, not in his bedroom. No restrictions at the weekend.

He generally does what he wants with just a few boudaries which I insist to be respected after explaining it is for his health and safety.

He did one stupid thing around January time when he was at a sleepover and decided to walk home at 6 am (no day light yet) and instead of calling me he just texted. I explained him that was stupid and dangerous and I understood why he did it, not to wake me up. I told him that I would rather be woken up and grumpy than him putting his life in danger, never did it again and I had to pick him up at 5 am from a party last month but I would rather do that.

One more thought regarding trust: don't expect to know everything that is going on.

I had a big shock in the last year or so when I realised that he will start hiding things from me. That he will trust his own judgment to make his own decisions and I'll have to live with it.

I found a text on his phone (yes I spied on him once) from a friend encouraging him to drink. I was devastated that his friends could have such (bad) influence on him. What I didn't fully realise at that point is how proud I should be about the way Ds handled it: send a text back saying his dad was home so he couldn't do it. There wasn't anybody home at that time.

Also recently he asked to sleep over around a friends house. We did the usual, full address, emergency phone number. Something must have happened (God knows what) and he suddenly said to me: I will tell "Jonny" I am not allowed because I don't want to go.

So we as teenagers parents need to build trust in our kids that they will make the right decisions and ask for help when needed. We can't be involved in every step they take and every decision they make.

OP - how often do you find yourself ringing the parents of children sleeping over at your house? As per earlier posters it's a really odd ask/rule and I think it's bound to drive your son away. You could rethink your boundaries and make them a lot more liveable

I hate this 'trust' concept- as if if you've brought them up well, you've got nothing to worry about.
He's in year 8 and thinks he can look after himself - it's not about whether he's trustworthy, he's not mature enough to be out over night without you knowing.
Full stop.
Getting him to accept that is another battle.