Reply To: Going off the Derech

aries2756-I have to agree with you, it feels dishonest to buy him cigarettes.

here to help-I’m wondering if ‘twisted parenting’ is for every type of kid, across the board? If the child is manipulative and controling, dosn’t it just reinforce those middos, and not change him? And I’m wondering how many parents can actually put this into practice…

Friday night, my son stayed out the whole night, and came back during the Shabbos morning seuda. What he put me and my husband through that whole night, I can’t describe. Needless to say, we barely slept the whole night, and both of us wanted to just throw him out. He came home drunk (first time), and was EXTREMELY nasty and chutzpadik to us in front of the kids. I’m sure neither of us reacted the way you would have suggested. Motzei Shabbos, he told me he was going out all night again, and to leave the door unlocked so he could come in. I said, ‘if you come home at a reasonable time, the door will be open. Otherwise, it will be locked”. He came home around 2:00am. Last week, some kids and Rebbes from his old yeshiva contacted him, and we were happy that they seemed to be trying to maintain a connection with him. We had also gone to look at a couple of low pressure yeshivos, and he was thinking to go to one of them! On Shabbos, however, after spending endless hours with his chevra, he reverted back to his angry rejection of everything, and told us he’s not going/doing anything. At this point, my husband and I are starting to feel that our priority has to be the other kids. My son is on a downward spiral, and will bring all my other children down with him if he continues to live with us. We are considering locking him out of the house if he doesn’t conform, and letting him find his own way, whatever that means. We have tried endlessly to help him and to close our eyes to things, but his response is so nasty. We are hardly available to our other kids, bc we are always preoccupied,talking, praying, crying, over him. He has threatened to bring down each of our kids, and I don’t take his threat lightly. My husband is worried that we are helping to feed his anger and misbehavior by pulling back on our control, rules and boundaries. If you read my previous posts, you’d know that I never thought I would ever consider throwing my son out of the house. And I’m crying as I write this, but I’m starting to come to terms with the fact that I lost a child, and I just can’t bear to lose any more..