u/RegularSpecific788

Original: https://www.reddit.com/r/breakingmom/comments/1tk7mlc/all_of_my_sons_are_in_prison/

Hello everyone!

My daughters have a three-day weekend because of a teacher's workshop and are at friends' until tomorrow afternoon. So I found myself with some time for the first time since god knows when!

Anyway, I was messing around online when I remembered about this account, and so much has happened since my post that I felt you all might like an update.

Gosh, where to begin? Well, my daughter Molly turned 8 with none of her brothers around to celebrate, but Sarah, my parents, and I did our best, and it ended up being a pretty good time, although before bed, she cried about her brothers (the younger two, my oldest has hardly been around her at all) as she did not understand why they could not be there. So that was tough. Other than that, I have made a very big effort to focus more on my daughters and spend time with them as often as possible. My daughter had an amazing time and did a wonderful job in her end-of-year play that I finally got to see in June!

As for my sons, it is all over the place. I ended up telling the older two that unless they were making demonstrated progress, that I was done with them, they could write me and I would respond, but no more comissary, and no more visits that take all weekend until they figured it out.

Todd and Jacob have responded in totally opposite ways. Joseph decided to threaten to kill me when he gets out and try to guilt me into giving him more money, making me think that he has dug himself into a hole while in adult prison. I wish I could be surprised, but he has done nothing but self-destruct for a decade now, and I find it harder and harder to keep up hope every day.

By some damn miracle, it had the opposite effect on Todd. While he was sad about it, he told me he understood, and guess what? Actually started TRYING to get better! he started talking to his PO about what was bothering him and talking to me over the phone about what he was feeling. And on August 7th, he completed his Juvenile program and was released from Juvie! I was, and am so, so proud of him. But nothing can be easy in my life.

He has actually been able to stay on the straight and narrow pretty well so far; he has stayed clean and passed all of his drug tests. He has been attending his classes at his high school and actually seems like he is gonna graduate if he stays on this pace. I even decided that he could come home last month and live here because I got nothing but good things from his group home. It seemed like I actually lit a fire under his ass, and he is thriving!

Yeah, turns out he was hiding A LOT from everyone. A couple of weeks ago, he suffered some kind of panic attack/mental breakdown from all the stress he felt like he was under, and was in the ER. He has been really having a rough go and feels super guilty. We have spent a lot of time just hugging after the girls go to bed, and he has been doing a lot of crying. I am proud to say that he is still passing drug tests and doing his best at school, and actually getting support because he is advocating for himself there!

All that to say it has still been emotionally exhausting on all of us, and the other day I finally got him to agree to talk to a therapist and psychologist to see if anything can be done to help him out. Dispite all of it, though, I am really proud of his turnaround.

As for my youngest son, Carter, it has unfortunately been an uphill battle, as dispite me, AND his brother telling him that he needs to nip this in the bud and complete his program ASAP, he is instead dragging his feet, pushing back, and seemingly intentionally messing up to get at me, now he is thinking that he is going to be released to his dad ( he is not, his dad has no custody and his PO says that it won't happen if I don't want it too.) So that has been just wonderful.

Well, that's all for now! very up and down, but that's life I guess.

You heard the title right! All three of my sons have managed to land themselves in either a juvenile prison or prison. For background, I have 5 kids, Joseph (22), Todd (18), Carter (15), and my two girls, Sarah (13) and Molly (7). Joseph has been constantly getting in trouble since he entered 6th grade. He was ditching school, fighting, stealing, and doing drugs. He got expelled from 6th grade, and we sent him to school after school, public, private, alternative, it didn't matter. When he was 15, he managed to get himself sent away to Juvie for the first time, and since then, he has not been able to stay out for more than 3 months at a time. He has broken his probation more times than I can count, and right now he is doing 2 years in prison for drug distribution. Joseph got Todd hooked on Xanax when he was 12, and since then, he has done whatever he can to get any kind of high, including jumping out of a 2nd-story window and running 2 miles on a sprained ankle to get Xanax from his friend's house. Right now, he is in Juvie for failing every drug test he took during his 30-day waiting period after being released on house arrest for possession of narcotics. And finally, Carter, whose biggest problem until recently was being anti-social and quiet, after letting him spend one summer, ONE SUMMER, at his dad's house, his brothers' friends managed to groom him into the same habits as his older brothers, and get himself on probation for multiple different fights, and last week, I finished work to find that he got into another fight at his ALTERNATIVE SCHOOL that is supposed to prevent this and that he was being held at a youth facility and would likely be put into longterm placement. So here I am, and any free time I may have had is spent talking to the courts and talking to my son's probation officers about how they are doing. When I am not doing that, I am talking to them on the phone. To pile on to all of that, they managed to make ALL of my sons' facilities be 2 hours away in different directions, so now I have to pick one of them to visit on their bi-weekly visit days, so now I can only see each son once every month and a half.

I just don't understand how we got here. We are not poor or discriminated against; we are a normal white middle-class family. There is no system in place against them. They have had every opportunity to change. I have done everything I could, Private schools, alternative schools, community programs, AA, none of it has been able to prevent this. I have always told them that I love them and will do anything to help them get over this. But none of it has mattered. And I hate to admit it, but it is so embarrassing, and draining, and depressing. Yes, it's embarrassing when police know you by your first name, yes, it's embarrassing when I have to leave work early because my two oldest sons are brutally beating each other up in my front yard because one stole Xanax from the other. Yes, it is embarrassing when other mom's bring up their son's success when all of mine are locked away. And it's SO painful, it's painful to know that underneath all of their false bravado, they are clearly depressed and ashamed. When I visit them, they all mumble and can't look me in the eye, and it BREAKS MY HEART EVERY TIME. It makes me want to hug them, except I can't because they are incarcerated. Only my middle son, Todd, has ever talked to me about any of his feelings, only over letters, because in his own words, "he can't bring himself to talk about it". And he tells me that he is scared, that he does not know if he can function being free, so he self-sabotages, and now that he is an adult, he has no idea what the future brings for someone like him. I suspect Joseph feels the same way, and I know Carter is trying to emulate his older brothers, whom he has always idolized.

All of this, not to mention the impact on their sisters, Sarah is such a sweet, smart, social girl, who is super into drama, but I can't ever see her plays because her brothers just got caught with a vape, or they got in a fight, and now I have to talk to their PO over the phone for an hour to figure out what implications this has. And telling little Molly, who is SUCH a tomboy and loves her older brothers so so much, that none of them will be here for her 8th birthday in June, or the 4th of July.

I just want to scream and cry, and drink my pain away, but I can't because I signed up for this, I guess. Thank you for letting me scream into the void.

EDIT: It would be a mistake not to mention that my marriage with my ex, the father of all five kids, was an abusive one; he was physically abusive to me. Joseph and Todd and emoyionaly abusive to the rest of the family. I divorced him shortly after Molly was born

Hi everybody! Never posted on Reddit before, but made an account just for this after lurking for a very long time.

You heard the title right! All three of my sons have managed to land themselves in either a juvenile prison or prison. For background, I have 5 kids, Joseph (22), Todd (18), Carter (15), and my two girls, Sarah (13) and Molly (7). Joseph has been constantly getting in trouble since he entered 6th grade. He was ditching school, fighting, stealing, and doing drugs. He got expelled from 6th grade, and we sent him to school after school, public, private, alternative, it didn't matter. When he was 15, he managed to get himself sent away to Juvie for the first time, and since then, he has not been able to stay out for more than 3 months at a time. He has broken his probation more times than I can count, and right now he is doing 2 years in prison for drug distribution. Joseph got Todd hooked on Xanax when he was 12, and since then, he has done whatever he can to get any kind of high, including jumping out of a 2nd-story window and running 2 miles on a sprained ankle to get Xanax from his friend's house. Right now, he is in Juvie for failing every drug test he took during his 30-day waiting period after being released on house arrest for possession of narcotics. And finally, Carter, whose biggest problem until recently was being anti-social and quiet, after letting him spend one summer, ONE SUMMER, at his dad's house, his brothers' friends managed to groom him into the same habits as his older brothers, and get himself on probation for multiple different fights, and last week, I finished work to find that he got into another fight at his ALTERNATIVE SCHOOL that is supposed to prevent this and that he was being held at a youth facility and would likely be put into longterm placement. So here I am, and any free time I may have had is spent talking to the courts and talking to my son's probation officers about how they are doing. When I am not doing that, I am talking to them on the phone. To pile on to all of that, they managed to make ALL of my sons' facilities be 2 hours away in different directions, so now I have to pick one of them to visit on their bi-weekly visit days, so now I can only see each son once every month and a half.

I just don't understand how we got here. We are not poor or discriminated against; we are a normal white middle-class family. They have had every opportunity to change. I have done everything I could, Private schools, alternative schools, community programs, AA, none of it has been able to prevent this. I have always told them that I love them and will do anything to help them get over this. But none of it has mattered. And I hate to admit it, but it is so embarrassing, and draining, and depressing. Yes, it's embarrassing when police know you by your first name, yes, it's embarrassing when I have to leave work early because my two oldest sons are brutally beating each other up in my front yard because one stole Xanax from the other. Yes, it is embarrassing when other mom's bring up their son's success when all of mine are locked away. And it's SO painful, it's painful to know that underneath all of their false bravado, they are clearly depressed and ashamed. When I visit them, they all mumble and can't look me in the eye, and it BREAKS MY HEART EVERY TIME. It makes me want to hug them, except I can't because they are incarcerated. Only my middle son, Todd, has ever talked to me about any of his feelings, only over letters, because in his own words, "he can't bring himself to talk about it". And he tells me that he is scared, that he does not know if he can function being free, so he self-sabotages, and now that he is an adult, he has no idea what the future brings for someone like him. I suspect Joseph feels the same way, and I know Carter is trying to emulate his older brothers, whom he has always idolized.

All of this, not to mention the impact on their sisters, Sarah is such a sweet, smart, social girl, who is super into drama, but I can't ever see her plays because her brothers just got caught with a vape, or they got in a fight, and now I have to talk to their PO over the phone for an hour to figure out what implications this has. And telling little Molly, who is SUCH a tomboy and loves her older brothers so so much, that none of them will be here for her 8th birthday in June, or the 4th of July.

I just want to scream and cry, and drink my pain away, but I can't because I signed up for this, I guess. Thank you for letting me scream into the void.

Hi everybody! never posted on reddit before but made an account just for this after lurking for a very long time.

You heard the title right! All three of my sons have managed to land themselves in either a juvenile prison or prison. For background, I have 5 kids, Joseph (22), Todd (18), Carter (15), and my two girls, Sarah (13) and Molly (7). Joseph has been constantly getting in trouble since he entered 6th grade. He was ditching school, fighting, stealing, and doing drugs. He got expelled from 6th grade, and we sent him to school after school, public, private, alternative, it didn't matter. When he was 15, he managed to get himself sent away to Juvie for the first time, and since then, he has not been able to stay out for more than 3 months at a time. He has broken his probation more times than I can count, and right now he is doing 2 years in prison for drug distribution. Joseph got Todd hooked on Xanax when he was 12, and since then, he has done whatever he can to get any kind of high, including jumping out of a 2nd-story window and running 2 miles on a sprained ankle to get Xanax from his friend's house. Right now, he is in Juvie for failing every drug test he took during his 30-day waiting period after being released on house arrest for possession of narcotics. And finally, Carter, whose biggest problem until recently was being anti-social and quiet, after letting him spend one summer, ONE SUMMER, at his dad's house, his brothers' friends managed to groom him into the same habits as his older brothers, and get himself on probation for multiple different fights, and last week, I finished work to find that he got into another fight at his ALTERNATIVE SCHOOL that is supposed to prevent this and that he was being held at a youth facility and would likely be put into longterm placement. So here I am, and any free time I may have had is spent talking to the courts and talking to my son's probation officers about how they are doing. When I am not doing that, I am talking to them on the phone. To pile on to all of that, they managed to make ALL of my sons' facilities be 2 hours away in different directions, so now I have to pick one of them to visit on their bi-weekly visit days, so now I can only see each son once every month and a half.

I just don't understand how we got here. We are not poor or discriminated against; we are a normal white middle-class family. They have had every opportunity to change. I have done everything I could, Private schools, alternative schools, community programs, AA, none of it has been able to prevent this. I have always told them that I love them and will do anything to help them get over this. But none of it has mattered. And I hate to admit it, but it is so embarrassing, and draining, and depressing. Yes, it's embarrassing when police know you by your first name, yes, it's embarrassing when I have to leave work early because my two oldest sons are brutally beating each other up in my front yard because one stole Xanax from the other. Yes, it is embarrassing when other mom's bring up their son's success when all of mine are locked away. And it's SO painful, it's painful to know that underneath all of their false bravado, they are clearly depressed and ashamed. When I visit them, they all mumble and can't look me in the eye, and it BREAKS MY HEART EVERY TIME. It makes me want to hug them, except I can't because they are incarcerated. Only my middle son, Todd, has ever talked to me about any of his feelings, only over letters, because in his own words, "he can't bring himself to talk about it". And he tells me that he is scared, that he does not know if he can function being free, so he self-sabotages, and now that he is an adult, he has no idea what the future brings for someone like him. I suspect Joseph feels the same way, and I know Carter is trying to emulate his older brothers, whom he has always idolized.

All of this, not to mention the impact on their sisters, Sarah is such a sweet, smart, social girl, who is super into drama, but I can't ever see her plays because her brothers just got caught with a vape, or they got in a fight, and now I have to talk to their PO over the phone for an hour to figure out what implications this has. And telling little Molly, who is SUCH a tomboy and loves her older brothers so so much, that none of them will be here for her 8th birthday in June, or the 4th of July.

I just want to scream and cry, and drink my pain away, but I can't because I signed up for this, I guess. Thank you for letting me scream into the void.