AIBU to think my son should forgive my youth.

[AmberBear22]

Firstly I am not here to say I’m the world best mum, I know I’ve made a lot of mistakes but feel that I’ve lost everything.

I have 4 children aged 15, 7, 4 and 2. I had my DS aged 15 when I was 16 way too young. I struggled a lot with raising him, me and his dad stayed together till he was 1 but couldn’t work out. Dad was 18 and I was 17 when we broke up, working full time and always out of the house whilst I was a SAHM.

I had a string of BF as you do when young. I also experimented with drugs, smoked and drank. Unfortunately when my DS was 5 I met a man who physically abused him and my next 2 BFs did the same. I’ll be honest I did also hit him throughout his life until I got pregnant with his brother and realised I needed to grow up. We didn’t have a lot of money and mainly relied on benefits and what his dad gave us. I had a lot of angry BFs so we moved a lot.

Doesn't paint a great picture but I’ve changed. I’m now 31 and an adult.

I still vape and occasionally smoke weed but not like when he was young.

5 years ago he made the decision to live with his dad and stepmum full time and I haven’t seen him in 2 and a half years. He recently posted a video on TikTok which I was shown from his 15th birthday. It was saying how much he loves his mum and dad and I feel like she’s trying to replace me.

I sent him a message saying I’m his mum not her and he needs to forgive me and come home. He ignored me.

I feel he is been pathetic and needs to realise I was a child and I’ve matured. What can I do to get my son back?

Thank goodness that despite the abuse he was subjected to, he has found a place where he feels safe. Let him have that, and at the very least stop intruding into that.

There might come a time when he feels ready to have a conversation with you, but he is still a child. You are (technically) the adult. Give him some space and continue sorting yourself out.

Interesting how the worst parents are often the most possessive.

You are a terrible parent and your son is better off where he is now. He should have been taken away from you sooner and you shouldn't have custody of your younger children.

You are STILL a terrible parent to him by calling him pathetic when he has been abused by you and the men you bring into his world for his entire life.

He is 100% better off without you and you would be hard pushed to find anyone with a moral compass who will disagree.

How to get him back?

Stop calling him pathetic, he’s been through a lot and is entitled to his feelings.

Stop telling him what he needs to do.

Stop seeing step mum as a threat. She is looking after him and he is entitled to love her. It is not an either/or.

Stop smoking weed!

Start showing him you are thinking of him and love him without putting pressure on him to come back. Send him messages to show you love him without expecting anything in return.

Start telling him you are sorry and that you want to spend the rest of your life making changes.

Start asking him about his life

Start talking positively about his step mum to him, to show he never has to make a choice.

Start realising that this may take years of gentle gestures to show you love him before he even wants to communicate back.

Stay calm and consistent, acknowledge what he has been through, accept he may not want to reconcile, but that you will reach out to him and show your love regardless. But no demands of what he should or shouldn’t do.

Finally, get yourself some help to process what has happened. You are minimising what you and your children have been through and the damage it has caused. Until you do this and are still expecting him to ‘get over it’ you will never move forward.

This is not meant to be harsh, I’m just answering your question and I wish you luck.

This cant be real.

You utterly failed that child. A mother is there to protect their child, not harm them or allow others to harm them.
You haven’t changed. You still smoke weed and think he’s the pathetic one.

I pity your children.

Bloody hell. What have I just read? Poor kid 😢

He's made his decision. You're not his mum anymore and never really were. You allowed three men to beat him up, and you yourself did the same. Physically abused by four adults while in your care. Read that again. A real mum would die for their kids. You don't deserve forgiveness, and he's not obliged to give it. Let him get on with the life that he's managed to make for himself.

Unfortunately, MN is becoming ever more filled with rage- bait etc things like this one. The number of similar in the last couple of weeks is appalling.

I'm sorry life was so hard for you. I'm sorry it took you so long to get to a place of stability and peace.

But you physically abused and emotionally and physically neglected your son, and you let 3 other men do the same to him.

You let him down horribly. Completely failed him as a parent.

You can ask for forgiveness, but your son doesn't need to do anything other than find peace, security and love. And the way you framed your post, there's no way that having you in his life will help him.

He isn't being 'pathetic'. He is protecting himself from the woman that abused and neglected him, when she should have put him first. Do you have any idea how damaging it is to a child to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that their mother didn't give a shit about them? The reasons you were unable to give a shit don't change the damage that you've done. Growing up without that bedrock of love and that stability is incredibly damage. You've added no value to his life thus far. All you've done is made it exponentially harder and created the need for therapy. Why on earth do you think he should let you back into his life? Because you birthed him?

You should also be extremely grateful to his step-mum for taking him in and taking the place of mum in his life. His mum is the person who makes him feel safe, secure and loved. Passing through your vagina isn't enough. Being a mum is a job, and for many reasons you weren't up to that job for him.

And you haven't matured at all, because the only reason you approached him is because he's calling another woman 'mum'. There is zero self-awareness in your post. It's all me me me.

The opposite of being a mum.

I am genuinely worried about your other 3 children. You don't seem emotionally aware enough to love children in the way they need to be loved, selflessly.

He was abused by 3 consecutive partners of yours, plus you. I feel sorry for him.

He hasn't done anything wrong wanting to be in a presumably stable environment where he isn't hit. I don't know what the solution is, but sending him messages like that won't help.

Are you genuinely taking responsibility or just saying it? What have you done to get help and change?

This must be a reverse by his step mum surely? If it's not then the one thing you can say in praise of the OP is that she appears to be staggeringly honest even when making herself look terrible.

I could almost follow until nearly the end when after cataloguing years of abuse the poster calls a 15 year old pathetic for not being more mature than his mother was between the ages of 17 and 23, during which time she hit her small child and brought into his home not one but a series of boyfriends who also hit him.

Having a baby at 16 doesn't cause you to hit them until they are 7 and you are 23, nor does it cause you to let multiple different men hit your child.

It can be real. Sadly.

Yeah, he’s pathetic, OP. You should definitely make this all about you and your butt hurt feelings, especially since you’ve done all that growing up.

Age isn't an excuse i was 16 when I had my first and I grew up for my child. There are some excellent teenage parents around who put their child first always

I Reckon there's three on trending today 🙄

This is what I hear reading your posts

“Me, me, me, me,

I have feelings and emotions,

me, me, me,

My child shouldn’t have feelings and emotions that make me feel uncomfortable because in my relationships there is only room for one of us to have them

He needs to grow up but it was fine for me to be incredibly immature even for my age at that same age

I need be loved, be cherished, be supported, be happy but my child wouldn’t need those things”

You have a lot of growing up to do.

Dare I ask, who are the 1% of posters who think OP is reasonable!?
Btw, If you click the wrong answer on the poll, you can correct your answer simply by clicking on your preferred choice.

Jesus Christ I hope the poor lad has some peace - yabvvvu

@MillyMollyMiley
I've reported it. MN don't see a problem with it.

No he shouldn’t, he is the child and always will be. You need to grow up

Your still smoking weed and have young kids, still putting men first for the sounds of it.

@AmberBear22 I can only hope his dad and step-mum have been able to heal at least some of the serious childhood trauma you put your son through. And that you're doing enough of a better job with your 3 other children to avoid the same sort of harm being caused to then.

No no no! Yes you were young, but as are so many other mums! You need to accept that you did wrong, not him. He does not need to forgive you, now or ever. You were his ONE person who needed to stand up for him, and YOU failed him.

Grow up, you say you have now PROVE IT.

OP, sometimes things are too broken to be fixed.

For the many reasons listed in your post you were unable to provide the safety and stability that your son needed. While these are explanations for how you got here, they are not excuses.

He isn't obliged to forgive you or (as I suspect you'd prefer) just pretend it never happened. He has found a space where he can thrive and as his mother you should want the best for your children, even if that is without you in his life.

Focus on the three children you have and on yourself. You can't change the past. It's done and gone. You can choose the path you take in the future though.