I have had a few days to calm down so hopefully expressing my views will make more sense than it would have three days ago. On Tuesday I get a call from the assistant principle at our son’s school notifying me that he has gotten himself suspended for violent conduct and that I need to come pick him up. This is not the first incident of violent / anti-social behavior or even his first suspension and it was 100% unprovoked, hence why I took a few days to calm down and try to make sense of the situation.
And, to be honest, even after 3 days of reflection and discussion, I find myself still angry, disappointed and embarrassed as we have not raised him to act like this. This behavior either comes from school or from the Internet, Youtube etc. Clearly we need to do a better job of monitoring his Internet usage, not that he will be getting any non-school related Internet usage for an indefinite period of time.
This is our son’s third suspension, his second out of school suspension in 2 1/2 years, all for violent / anti social reasons. To say that the wife and I are disappointed is an understatement, but we need to find out what is happening in his head; our son is autistic, but it’s too easy to blame that diagnosis, we think it’s more than that. Dare I say some of it is genetic, his biological father, who our son has never known has all the same traits that our son has exhibited in recent years, it’s too much of a coincidence to ignore.
This incident happened during recess when our son was playing basketball with some other boys and because our son couldn’t not get the ball from the other kid, he hit the other kid with a closed fist and then yelled “takedown”. Our son claims it was an accident and it was an open hand, but five other kids who witnessed the incident said it was a fist. Our son claims they all hate him and they are all lying to get him in trouble. I don’t like to admit it, but our son is a proven liar, always redirecting blame on others.
Our son even called my wife and I liars when we were talking to his teachers and assistant principle about a pattern of behavior we have observed in and out of school. We are going to have to seek professional help, maybe a visit to his psychologist. Our son is about to turn 12 and will be in seventh grade after the summer. This sort of behavior is going to him in serious trouble should it continue in the future.
I understand that people may think we are being harsh on him calling him a liar, but he has been caught in bold face lies, lying about things when he was caught red handed. We recently allowed him to play computer games again, resetting his computer ban as his poor grades were reset to zero after the change of semester. He knows he has a set time limit of 2 hours, but he sneaks back into his room and continues playing, then tells me he was about to turn it off when I bust him after more than 11 hours of usage.
Then a few days later, on a school night, I catch him watching TV in his room after I told him to turn it off. He tried to turn off the TV like he was was not watching it as I entered his room. Honestly it seems like he doesn’t understand or doesn’t care that there are consequences to his actions. Unlike computer games, you can’t just reset and start over, as things stand, we are back to a complete computer/TV ban.
All my wife and I want is to get a passing grade in school instead of being in the D and F group each week, for him to do as we ask at home, which isn’t much, we don’t ask him to do chores. But he continues to be defiant at home and school then cries like a baby when we hand down punishments for his actions. No matter how many times he gets busted, his behavior never changes leaving us baffled and frustrated.
UPDATE [Apr, 6 2016, 12:04]: SIGH! my son went and got an in school suspension for fighting at recess, I’m not going to go into detail, but I feel we are heading down a dangerous path. I have asked the school if they could keep my son inside away from the other kids to avoid this sort of issue in future.