My son was like this, he was impossible to parent. If we tried to punish him he’d just laugh and do what he wanted regardless. He was always defiant and difficult but it escalated when he started secondary school.
We’d ground him and he’d climb out of the window at night and jump from his room onto the porch roof and escape, we’d take his stuff off him, he didn’t care, he started smoking weed, we gave him no money but he just carried on and we’d end up having to pay off debts because we were scared of the kind of people he was with.
He refused to attend school and in the end was placed in the internal referral unit because when he did go, his behaviour was atrocious.
He would smash mirrors, throw things in anger and even try and crash the car when I was driving by grabbing the steering wheel. We went to doctors, parenting classes and local agencies who worked with troubled children. We tried to get him assessed for ADHD but they refused because he had smoked cannabis.
Nothing we did worked, he claimed the problem was everyone else not him. His anger was off the chart. He attacked me a few times and I called the police, he just smirked at them.
In the end I withdrew completely. I switched off and let him get on with it, of course I desperately cared about him and deep down was in such turmoil but I could no longer cope with him, So stopped trying to parent him. If he refused to go to school, I’d shrug and say that’s a shame, if he kicked off at home, I’d leave the room and ignore. I kept communication to the minimum.
He left school at 16 with no qualifications to speak of (all F and G grades). He’s now 17 and working at a depot, off loading lorries, driving a forklift and earning plenty of money. He’s funny, charming and even tells me he loves me! I believe it was a mixture or raging hormones, inability to cope with a school environment and personality traits.
It won’t last forever.