Here's Our Teen Story
I'm going to give you a bit of a background to my previous post. My children have never been exposed to any type of violent behavior. None of us scream, yell, throw things or hit. Our family doesn't fight. Bobby and I have never even raised our voices at each other. Neither did my ex and I when we were married. None of us have that in us, and everyone has gotten along wonderfully.Flash back to when my son Zack was 8 years old. It was just me and the two kids, as I was already divorced. There was about a 4 month period where my son would express some sort of violent behavior, such as slamming his bedroom door, throwing objects, or screaming at me. One day he was so mad at me, he raised his fist as if to hit me. With a very low, calm voice I said, "you better think about it again, son." To which he quickly lowered his fist, but continued to glare at me with hostility. His dad and I both talked to him, to which he tuned us both out. But after a few months, this sort of behavior just ceased to exist as quickly as it had surfaced.
Now flash forward 4 years. He's 12 years old, just weeks away from turning 13. Him and his sister are picking on each other, back and forth. The end result = he threw a basketball as hard as he could directly at her face, twice. When I started to verbally reprimand him for it, he stormed to his room, slammed the door and punched a hole in the wall. We had a serious conversation after this. I later found out that his girlfriend broke up with him just a few days before, but I never heard this from him.
Here we are, two months later. Over the past few weeks we have had a few episodes with the other kids. Two Saturdays' ago, twice in the same day, he pushed his 6 year old step-sister down. First reason from him was that they were all shooting hoops in front of the house, but when she got the ball for her turn, she kept throwing it away intentionally making everyone else chase it. Ok...typical 6 year old to me. His reason for the second time was that they were play wrestling on the trampoline, and he "tapped" her and she fell down. This same day, my step-son Tyler has a friend over. They were all out in front of the house. Bobby saw Zack shove Tyler's friend to the ground. His reason this time? The boy threw a football at his face. When I reprimanded him for this, he stood in front of me yelling at me at the top of his lungs that the other kids needed to learn when to stop bugging people. When I calmy told him not to yell at me, I received the most hateful glare before he stormed off to his room. Now granted, the other kids do intentionally "bug" him, and from what we've seen, he IS pretty tolerant. But....he does a lot of the "bugging" too, and does instigate quite a bit on his own. Try telling this to that little boys' mom. He's not allowed to come over here anymore because he was left with a bruise. Zack is almost 5'11 and 140+ pounds. This is at least a good foot taller, and 100 pounds more than this 10 year old he shoved down. I understand his mom's concern, but I haven't talked to her. I've talked to Zack several times since, and try to get him to comprehend that he's a lot bigger than the other kids, and what may seem like a "tap" to him can do a lot more damage than he may think. I feel like my child is becoming a bully!
A lot of this may be classified as typical boy behavior, especially between siblings. But not when he's also doing this to other kids. What worries me the most is his bouts of anger. I've never seen anything like it, and I can't even begin to accurately describe the look in his eyes that I've seen on those ocassions. I don't know where this comes from. Most of the time he's your happy go lucky kid, everyone's friend, always joking around and giving everyone a jokingly, teasing rough time. Then, on these rare ocassions, he's just not in the mood to be joked around with. His bouts of anger are always immediately after I reprimand him for the behaviour described above such as shoving people, hitting them harder than he intended... mostly for being a butthead.
Just this past week, there was a 7 year old boy attacked by a 17 year old here. This teen beat the crap out of this little boy, for no apparent reason. He told authorities that he "just went into a rage." This little boy is a friend of Bobby's youngest, and sits on the schoolbus next to my youngest. This story hits just a little too close to home. And with Zack's recent behavior, I keep thinking, "what if it were Zack that beat up that little boy?"
Am I overreacting? Please, I'm open to suggestions. We have three more kids (well, not for a while for the youngest) getting ready to hit the teenage years, and I keep thinking what the heck are we gonna do if we can't handle the first? We are definitely going to have our hands full with 2 boys and 2 girls as teens!
Little Bit of BFL: Still eating clean, no slip ups this week! Whoohoo! Pants feel looser, and TOM is here so I'm bloated AND my pants feel looser! Another Whoohoo! Didn't do my LBWO tonight due to cramps, but will make it up tomorrow so that I have NO missed workouts this week! I'm BAAAACK!
posted by Wolfie @ 7:03 PM
Comments: 8
