Throwing this out there in desperation...
My 16 year old step son came to live with us just shy of two years ago due to a poor relationship with his Mum (think daily shouting matches and him punching holes in walls and doors etc) plus the fact that he stole a vast amount of money from his Mum & Step-Dad. His Step-Dad was basically going to go to the Police if he didn't come and live with us. All well and good, we were more than happy for this to happen as had suggested it previously with his Mum to try and assist with their strained relationship.
Since living with us we have moved to a new area (which is actually much closer to his Mum than where we lived originally, so he gets to see her alternative weekends). Part of this included him moving secondary school. He moved from his original school to come and live with us for a couple of months then had to move again in the summer to start Year 10. We had no choice in the move as was work related.
However, since we moved to the new area the issues have continued and, I would say got worse. He was stealing money from us to begin with which we had to address and to this day he has issues with money and will happily spend all of his Christmas and Birthday money (think £200) in a matter of days with nothing to show for it or any explanation for it. He is massively anti drugs so don't suspect this.
His behaviour at school is shocking. He is in Year 11 and due to start his GCSE exams in May and we are worried about his results. He could be an 'A' student but literally doesn't seem to care. He lies about doing revision and course work, turns up for GCSE module exams having done no work which have resulted in re-sits or poor results, gets detentions or calls home from school on a weekly basis and seemingly has issues with females in authority and now has three notes on his school record for shouting at, being aggressive or intimidating towards various female teachers. We are obviously mortified at this behaviour and have punished accordingly.
He has a behaviour/reward chart that we use but this seems to have little impact. He's barely had use of his phone/ipad since he returned to school after the Christmas holidays and is grounded yet again bar football for his team once a week.
We have worked closely with the school to get him support and he recently completed a set of counselling with the YES team to try and address some of his issues. He also had a referral to the EWMHS team who believed he didn't need their sessions due to other counselling being able to meet his needs. Since he stopped his counselling it has all gone to pot. The YES team can't take him on again for another three months but did refer him to their eating disorder counsellor as they agreed with our concerns over his eating issues he also has. He is just shy of 6 foot and is barely 9 stone in weight. He skips meals, controls what he does eat and would live on sugary sweets only if left up to him. His eating disorder counsellor has worked out he eats less than half his daily calories and is concerned that he doesn't believe there are any issues. She is working out a meal plan to try and support him with this which we are waiting to receive.
Due to some recent shocking behaviour at school towards a female teacher we took him back to the Drs who referred him straight away back to the EWMHS team asking for them to take him on again.
So that is basically where we are up to. I won't lie I am massively drained. We have two other pre-teens in the house who are constantly being sent to their rooms so we can try to talk to the teenager or at the end of his outburst or hearing our frustrated conversations/arguments with the teenager. My husband feels massively guilty and stressed about it all and I'm literally at the end of my tether. I feel like saying I'll get him through the next 15 weeks until his exams start but once they are over if he wan't to stuff up his life then it's his responsibility. It's a huge pressure on our relationship as we question what we are doing (in a weird way it is bringing us closer together); We know we are trying out best to be good parents and do the right thing. Maybe we are too strict on him compared to some other parents but we feel if we didn't enforce the no phone/grounding rules due to poor behaviour it would actually escalate as he has some dubious friends too.
Please can someone say that they have been there and come out the other side okay? No matter how many times he apologises and say's he will change, things never do and it just feels like lip service - this is when he's actually taking accountability for his behaviour and not blaming someone else!
Has anyone got any suggestions of alternative help out there or ideas or how to turn things around?
Sorry for such a long message, no matter how much I talk to work colleagues or friends who agree we are doing the best we can there still doesn't seem to be a solution, so it's over to you lovely lot to try and inspire me or even just commiserate with me and say yes it is shit, but only another two years until his is 18!