Help a Stepmom out
I need parental advice badly. I met my husband who l’ll call Mark 12 years ago and we got married 2 years later. He had a 4-year-old son when we met who I’ll call Daniel. Shortly after Mark and I met, Daniel‘s mom moved out of state, and Daniel moved with her. Until he was 11 years old, he spent every summer with us and we’d split all the other school holidays. When Daniel was 11, he started having problems at school, was being bullied and had behavioral issues. So his mom and dad decided he would move in with us full-time. Literally the week that Daniel moved in with us my husband started a new job that required him to travel a lot. In the span of one month he might be gone for 2 weeks, be home for a month then be gone for 2 weeks. Daniel and I had a bit of a rocky start because of this. As a brand new full-time stepmom, I wasn’t sure of my role was when Daniel misbehaved. We eventually got to a point where we developed a good relationship, I’ve taken him to Disney just the 2 of us, and we get along pretty well for the most part. But every time his dad would go out of town, Daniel would act like a completely different person. He wouldn’t go to bed at his bedtime, he would break House rules, he wouldn’t do his chores, etc.. I would relay this back to my husband, who basically said “you’re the parent you make the rules he has to follow them”, but the kid just wouldn’t. When Dad was home, he was one person, with me another. I got to the point where I asked my husband not to go on any more work trips and he soon got another job where he stays home most of the time. That said, for the last two years, he’s opted to go out of town the week that Daniel is on fall break from school and that has struck a nerve with me. This time it was an optional work trip, an opportunity that he really wanted to do but given everything else I’m about to lay out it does bother me.
The problem is in the last few years as Daniel is getting older, he turns 16 in 2 weeks, he’s been going through some behavioral issues again. He skipped school multiple times last year, earlier that year he got into trouble for sharing intimate pictures of his girlfriend, had to go through Court mediation, he was on community service and we had to pay fines. Around then he discovered online gaming, and his personality completely changed. He went from being a very outgoing kid to someone who stays in his room from the moment he gets home from school until bedtime, all thru the weekend and sometimes his dad finds that he’s staying up till 2am talking to his friends or being on his phone or on the computer. his mom was able to control how and when he logged on and off and was able to set timers, but somehow he was able to get around it.
During the summer his dad stipulated, he’d have to volunteer at a local nature center and there were multiple days that he called out sick so he could play his video game.
Then his dad stipulated that he would have to get a part-time job. There’s a family owned business that agreed to hire him. Within a month he lost the job because he wouldn’t go to work. He’d tell us that the business didn’t need him and he would tell the business that he was grounded because of his grades. He lied to stay home and play on his computer all day long during the summer. He never faced consequences for lying. His dad basically said that him losing the job was consequence enough.
He also began lying. A lot. Daniel is a tenacious and very charismatic kid which could be a good quality if he applied it to good use, but instead he uses it to get what he wants. He will have no problem telling one parent that the other parents said that he could do something just to get his own way. He lies very easily and that concerns me. It’s gotten to the point that you can’t really believe anything that he says. When he gets caught in a lie he acts like it’s just a silly little thing. Or he’ll just lower his head and say sorry but it’s obvious to me that he’s trying to play us. He goes right back to doing the same things over.
We offer to pay him $30 a week to do his chores which he only does half of the time, if that. We have a very hyper pitbull mix who really needs to go on a walk every day so we’ve asked him repeatedly to make sure that at the very least he does this chore. When she doesn’t get walked, she gets aggressive and hyper and destroys everything in the house. He neglected to do it for so often and for so long that his dad finally just started taking it on. but even his dad doesn’t have time to do this every day so the dog just destroys our house. But other than him saying “you no longer have to do this”, there was no other consequence. No loss of privileges, nothing.
Sidenote, it’s my personal belief that teenagers should have to do their chores not just to get an allowance but because they are a participating member of this family and House. Our roles as parents are to prepare them for being an adult, prepare them for being on their own as a functioning member of society. The teenage years are where you learn to do hard things. That’s where you learn about community and responsibility. His dad and I go to work and we bring the money and we do 95% of the cleaning/ chores. Daniel goes to school, he doesn’t have a job because he’s only 15, so his responsibility should be the few chores we’ve assigned him: Making HIS bed, keeping HIS room tidy, doing HIS own laundry, taking out the recycling, walking the dogs, and brushing one of the dogs. These chores take less than 20 minutes every day. I can’t remember the last time he’s brushed the dog, he stopped walking the dogs altogether, and every weekend we have to constantly remind him to wash his clothes, then constantly remind him to move his clothes to the dryer, and half the time I end up having to do it for him because he is so lost and locked up in his bedroom, playing this video games and the weekends are when I need to do my laundry as well. It’s pathetic. This boy has no sense of responsibility.
In my opinion, they should be non-negotiable. The reward for that is that he gets $30 a week, but in my opinion chores- like good grades -should be non-negotiable and not doing them should result in losing some kind of privilege. The reason I think that this is nonnegotiable is, I don’t want to raise children who are entitled, selfish, and who have no sense of responsibility or integrity. we give this child everything he could possibly need, he’s never wanted for anything. Apparently, his dad and I disagree on this because he says that if he doesn’t do his chores, he just doesn’t get paid. The problem with that is that if we don’t pay Daniel his allowance, he just asks his mom for money and she gives it to him or he finds another way.
I worry that Daniel is growing up to be irresponsible and entitled and every time I try and bring it up, his dad tells me that I’m being way too hard on him. He once used the word “step monster” which haunts me to this day. He agrees that Daniel has some growing issues and every now and again he’ll sit him down for a heart heart and tell him that if he doesn’t do X he’s gonna get X privilege taken away and it might work for a week or two but nothing changes.
He’s got a new girlfriend, probably the 50th one he’s had in the last two years who lives an hour away and he’s been begging everyone to drive him there and back to visit with her for the last 3 weeks and we’ve all said no because we’re busy. He has concocted every scheme in the book to get to this girl. Last night, he casually informed his dad that he created an Uber account, lied about his age and planned on using money that he won from a game (certainly not his allowance because he’s not been doing his chores) to go and see her. His dad informed him that no he wasn’t, he was not going to take an Uber an hour away to meet someone that we had never met.
Now here’s the kicker…we just found out that this week he skipped school AGAIN this week multiple times, also, he’s failing one of his classes, has been lying about where he’s been and instead of full on grounding him, his dad is letting him go out with her to some festival tomorrow, where another family member has to drive him an hour there and an hour back. So the same day he finds out that his son has been skipping school and lying to him also, while failing some of his classes he’s going to reward him by giving him the one thing that this kid has been begging for. He says after that Daniel‘s not allowed to have his computer, but he can still have his phone and tablet. He says that Daniel has to do all of his chores.. at which point I had to coax his dad into adding back in walking the dogs and to my utter shock, his dad rolled his eyes and acted like I was being overbearing and made another claim that I was “throwing the book at him “ but again he is leaving me to deal with all of this and I have a full work schedule next week. I don’t have time to watch over Daniel like a hawk to make sure he’s actually doing the things that he’s supposed to do while he’s home from school and my husband’s yet again out of town for it.
Can someone tell me am I overreacting? Am I being an asshole or too hard my son? I would really appreciate an outside perspective here.