WOW, he is a sixteen year old blinded by pain and too immature to understand. He doesn’t see the obvious, he only knows the pain that he feels and wants to do whatever he can to shed it. When I asked the question of the kids I was working with the look of shock and awe on their faces was quite telling. One girl who had a very combative relationship with her mom and kept saying “why can’t she respect me for who I am and the way I dress?” So I asked her, let me ask you something. You didn’t used to dress this way. You changed the way you dressed and basically who you were to fit in with your friends. Why? Why didn’t THEY respect you for who you were and how you dressed? Why didn’t they accept you just the way you were?
You could see the light bulb go off over her head. The relationship with her mother starting changing slowly afterward. She didn’t change her way of dressing, just her attitude toward her mother.