I am a single mother of 2 teenage boys (12 & 15) Been divorced for several years Long story short my boys father has been in and out of the system since our divorce. He recently was incarcerated again and my youngest son is angry at the world. I feel he takes it out on me more than anyone. Is this normal? Has anyone else ever gone threw this

it's basic human nature to hurt the ones
you love first and most as they know
they will be forgiven easier,,,

I am his mother he used to have alot of respect for me.

I will dare to assume the 12 year old is nearing 13?
Some teens go nuts when they start pubertizing.
Complicate that with a male example who prefers the company of convicts over his kids and you can have one overly emotional child.
My sugestion.
Instead of asking advice or guidance from disfunctional folks on the internet, I'd seek proffesional counseling for your hurting baby.
JMO.

I agree with KLC - he is pushing his limits as all children do at certain developmental stages. I sympathize with you though because you have some added issues that many don't face.


I think you will have to set limits and educate him to realize that he cannot mistreat you. Do you mistreat him? no. And you expect equal respect in return. If it is possible for you to set some other things in your life aside now to spend extra time with him I would highly recommend it. You may also have the added challenge of setting a more exemplary example that you might otherwise have to because of his father's antics. On the bright side keep in mind that through school, church and other activities he will see other role models who are more positive. Make sure he does.

Things will settle down as time goes on but it is, in my opinion, important to move his life in a positive direction where he basically will not have time to cause trouble....and he will probably have a lot of fun that way too

just some ideas - I am sure you'll figure things out! reaching out is a good start & you are to be commended for that! good luck!

Wouldn't hurt to take him to counseling and get him some professional help and someone to talk to that can help him get through his issues in a healthy manner. Sounds like a normal child, but getting him help certainly won't hurt, even if it's not necessarily needed.

Ok Gone threw this so yea I recognize a hard core problem brewing here and going to give you the hard core answer.

You need to think things through, get some resources and hopefully solutions in place, then set these kids down and have a meeting of the minds. Maybe singularly if the problem is more with one son but collectively might not be a bad idea either because "family" problems are like icebergs the ones you see are only what is above the water. Good news is you can with preparation or even manuvering get around this problem. But it is a BIG problem you need to measure up in somewhat of a Master Sargent Mom way to.

Going to preface that I am not talking about a "my way or the high way" speech but if certain things happen you need to make the consequences clear and follow through. Man training is not "pretty". The bottom line is here is where the rubber meets the road. The single Mom thing has pretty much been a picnic up until now. Mommy is a whole lot easier than Mom and you have to anti up your Mom skills because 12 & 15 turn to 14 & 17 in the blink of an eye. If you have one emanicaption age you pretty much have two even if you and I both know kids need parents on into their middle twenties in most cases. I will tell you a funny that my dear Mother in law imparted on me "tween to twenty somethings are still just two year olds on steroids" and don't give up parenting them when they need you most."

Ok before all you twenty somethings flame the hell out of me as an almost 60 year old broad think how often you do or would like to have a great relationship with your parent so you can turn to them when life sucks rocks?

Actually having a couple of twenty somethings as pals for your family can be helpful. I don't advise having them as your kid's buddies but their imput can help you stay in the "know" and head off some of the "current" stuff or give you a heads up if you are VERY selective. Doesn't hurt having a couple of old busy body neighbors giving you eyes in the back of your head either. I stopped my son slipping out the balcony patio door trying to bird-dog the the bad news chick down the block because my elderly neighbor gave me a tip for dropping off her grocery. He thought I just nailed him for being outside after curfew but when she wasn't around his desire to wander also abated and he didn't know until years later she had been "busted".

What I am getting at is you have to have the Parenting set that stresses developeing coping skills and making personal choices that don't duplicate Mommy and Daddy Dearest's screw ups. Bottom line is you picked him as the biological father but you don't have to pick him for the parenting father and neither do your kids. You don't have to tell your kids he is a looser; they know that, but if you talk about how they can meet theri needs for decent friends, working with good teachers and coaches, making things work with a boss they can learn what they need. Probably feel a lot less over whelmed and angry.

This is still going to be really hard on your Son's though. They look at their developeing bodies, personalities, and skill sets and I am willing to stake my life on the fact that they are having a hell of a time not identifying with their their same sex parent and or his family. Probably doesn't help that at least to some degree you (maybe your family) are banging your breasts in self defense and making them feel even further apart from you than closer. Weaning is painful but necessary so it is not all bad if you just don't through the baby out with the bath. How do I know your kids are having a hard time with the failed parent thingy? Because I have been in your shoes. And I have been in your kids shoes and it is miserable for everyone at times.

Are you being picked on? Yea if you are a good Mom and yea if you screwed up in the early years and now you are tasteing the real punishment. Stinks huh? Got to get past it. And as guilty as you might feel, whoever tells you that you deserve it, you still have to check it. You have to succed as a parent and you can't parent if you are submissive.

Why; because now is when your son's are really going to learn how good women relate to men and how good men relate to women in man woman relationships. I guarantee you how they get to treat you is exactly how they are going to treat their female bosses, wives, and daughters; not just you. So it is a hardcore less you need to take seriously. Remember disrespect and cruelty are unacceptable even if deserved. And that hitting fists follow hitting words. You are person and their Mother and if they are pushing some boundries thay should be running into a brick wall. It is alright for a child to have a different opinion it is not alright for them to defy your limits and or violate your boundries. When they are grown enough that they can suffer the responsibilities/consequences of their own choices then you have to let them do as they please but not until then. And believe me a real friend, grandparent, doctor, principle,cop, or most authority figures would much rather you enlist their help in firm/fair rules early than to late.

What worked for me was relizeing I had to really be the tough Mom because I was the primary parent. Yea I would have like to been the softey at times but it wasn't and option.

I realized I was also not going to grow a set of balls and started fine tuneing my man picking skills and brought better men into the "daddy" role. It doesn't have to be just one but sons learn things from men and men can teach basic skills better than just having a woman trying to mimic being a man. Believe me some times your best effort is always going to be influnced by your core female. Not all bad but needs to be recognized.

Wasn't exactly easy finding Daddy doubles since what you don't need to throw down on your kids is some ******* being a surrogate prick. Even with your best efforts to get good role models in their life you may flubb a couple times. If your kid doesn't seem to be benifiting or resists or some guy seems creepy or just too wonderful ditch them. Great Dad's are Humans not hero's and sometimes being a parent means being a Parent not a buddy.

And sometimes you have to swallow your jealousy that you aren't enough. It is hard to listen to a mentor you are trying to trust tell you stay out of the way or "mind your Mom bussines and let me do the job you ask me to do" but sometimes you have to. I remember a guy fireing my kid and thinking wow what and jerk he's just a kid but my kid learned more from looseing this "kid job" than he ever would have being "forgiven".

A SERIOUS word to the wise these pretender hero's though can also come in the guise of "helping professionals" so don't necessarily buy what ever is out their just because they have a shingle, and in vouge modality, your insurance covers it, is is free, or you might be serving your kid up to an even more epic-ly failed person than your Ex. You would be shocked if you heared some of the crapola that comes out of some so called professionals put out there. If you get a whiff your sons are being fed BS about blameing you, bigotry, or they have and excuse because their lives are somehow "ruined" , or can't help it it is just genetics or an illness you need to fire somebody. And NEVER is it ok for your kids professionals to keep secrets from you. You have the right and an obligation to see their records and watch what is being done, hear what is being said. Having your child in treatment does not waiver your rights as a parent; period.

But there are good people that will help your Sons. Some you may not have thought of are actually convicts. Or the few Ex-cons that have turned things around and actually talk to your kid about what choices got them into the places they have been. A lot of prisons actually have family counseling (victim assistance programs) and it is possible that their dad would avail himself to it himself and for your sons if you told him that this is a family issue. Some convicts and or mental patients actually have written and spoken on media about how they see what their chioces have cost them and theri families and can head off a lot of failures.

I don't know I always think the scared straight stuff is 100% EFFECTIVE but kids do have magical thinking about jail and figure if Dad can do it so can they until they get a serious taste of it. And until they do; they think it is just a big game. My one son was in and out of millions of dollars worth of treatment facilities and thought pitching tantrums was just going to be no big deal until he made the mistake of raising hands on me and he went to real jail for a hundred days and had to set on a felony probation for seven years. About killed me to do it but I figured it was better than him killing someone and spending his life in jail. And he finally straightened up. Has a job and family now he provides for.

Since I would bet good money against bad that their Dad has some kind of substance or mental health issue you have to help your family address to deal with his incarceration I would recommend any of the Kid's of Con's programs, Al-anon, or Alliance for the Mentally Ill programs. You can only do better as a family when you know better. Before you say "Hey wait a minute I am not a drug addict or crazy and neither are my sons." take a step back and see that whatever their father is your son's are and as their Mom you have to deal with his stuff so your kids can. They need to learn how to cope with all the problems he didn't and if you can't they are going to have a really tough time wading through that high water with out a life jacket. People in these resource organizations can be that life jacket for you as a Mom and your son's. Might even be for their Father. Might not seem like your job to fix your Ex (and truely only he can really do that) but if you help it sure would be a blessing for your sons.

One resource for me was school tutoring and job mentoring programs. When a kid has a lot on their plate emotionally school and work (which your sons should be starting to think about ) is going to be harder. Their focus is shot and every failure seems to amplify the misery in their lives. Getting a struggleing kid in a study skills class, into a science, art, or even math club, theater group, or chorus can punch up their interest in school and success breeds success. Even some sports can be really helpful. My preference with any of my kids was something the kid was going to be more than a bench warmer at. My kid was too scranny to play most competative sports but when I put him in a slideing scale WMCA pool and dragged him kicking and resisting every inch of the way at first to coaching Special Olympics and volunteering at Habitat for Humanity and at the VA Hospital he actually went for it and it is still opening doors for him. Having a job can have a real carrot and stick option to it. My kid thought he was too smart to bother with homework and just sliding by with C's a lot of time was acceptable to him. Well when he wanted to work and have a persentage of his paycheck to blow I told him B's or better or I am not driving you to the job and his homework took on a whole new meaning. Picking a job where a kid can move up is helpful. Especially if as a single mom you need employer scholarships to help foot the bill for college.

My theroy which one of my Halfway house residents put into my head early on was A kid can be poor and incarcerated dodging the gangs or educated. That he saw a real Mom is the one that drags her kid to school every single day and is smart enough to show up and make sure nobody get in the way of that diploma even the kid or a lazy teacher. One of the best moves I ever made was to live in a dump of an apartment in the best college preparatory highschool district in Atlanta. If your kid is shooting for the stars it is at least likely that he can land on the moon. At 12 and 15 school is your son's life and you just have to really be aware of how that is going. Chances are good that has more to do with his anger than "Dad" being back in jail.

And you don't always have to pick the most glamourous men to be good mentors for your sons. I picked a mechanic that was a Mason to work on my junk car and twisted his arm a little to get him to show my son's how to take care of some of the maintenance. He grew to like my son's and actually "Popped" for their Tux's for Junior/Senior prom but he also just was a friend that listen to them when they needed to complain about girls that were busting their nuts. A guy that actually ended up marrying a georgous woman a foot taller than he was because he learned to dance and sing and be gracious MC DJ; skills he also imparted on my sons.

So I guess I will close with look for unlikely heros, impart in your son's a no excuses accepted mentality, and just realize they probably have a right to be angry but they are too precious for you to let them fail so you are going to set the boundries and get through this next decade with love and faith in what you know them to be deep down. Good luck. Will keep you all in my prayers.

I agree.

It's normal that the kid is taking it out on you. Even if he did not love you, what other choices does he have? He is too young to join a street gang, he is probably much smaller than his brother, three years his senior, and there is, by default, you, who will take it for a while.

So this is not so much out of his love for you, that he is taking his rage out on you, but that there are no realistically availabel other victims.

And maybe he is angry not due to his dad being in jail at all. He is angry because of the life he lives. He sees his peers in nice clothes, driving iPads and iPods, eating good food at the cafeteria. Are these available to him? You did not say, so I am just guessing.

Do you have the time for him? You know, quality time, talking in the evening, as a closing to the day's hustle-bustle, to channel the frustrations out of the system, quietly. Taking in each other's news for the past day, and mutually ruminating over them. That helps a lot, more than any therapy or drug. Because you are his mother, and this will feel different for him than ruminating over the day's worth and lessons in it, not schoolwork, than if he did it with anyone else in the world.

If you don't, you may have legit reasons, like working at three jobs to keep a family of thee (I am saying you are not at all to be blamed) but a lot depends on your availability to him for quality togetherness. "Pick that pile of mess up, walk the dog, brush your teeth, say your prayers to sweet Lord Jesus, and get ready for bed, or I'll slap you into next Tuesday" is not quality discussions before bedtime.

I am not saying you do these things. I am just saying it goes on in a lot of families, where the kids become delinquent at a young age.