Ummm, Yeah, Life with a Teenage Boy......

As y'all know, I have a 14 year old teenage son.....ummm, yeah, that makes life interesting for sure. Why do teenagers have to be so challenging? My poor son, K, is in many ways the typical teenager, but in many ways, he is not. He is a deeply traumatized young man with serious trust issues and no self esteem at all. I know that part of this comes from being the child of a nasty, nasty divorce that was very ugly. While I am not solely responsible for this, I know I played and still play a part in the way things happened. K and I argued, as usual, a great deal today. 


It seems that no matter what I do or say will ever be good enough for him and that he will never believe me no matter what I say. He thinks and says on a regular basis that I should just get rid of him. K thinks and tells me frequently that I do not love him or want him, and to go ahead and get rid of him if he causes me that much stress and worry. Today's argument was a doozy. He told me that he fears of becoming just like either one of his parents. And believe me, the view he has of me and his dad are less than pretty. He fears thinking just like either one of us. K has sadly reached a point that if the courts forced him to choose who he had to live with, he would choose neither one of us.  He talks of suicide every so often and seems to think that I the only reason I would ever miss him if something happened to him and he were no longer around would be because of the free labor he provides. This is complete and total bullshit, but no matter how hard I argue or what I say, he will not change his view on this. Why does he not realize just how much I love him? He hears I love you at least 2 or 3 times I day from me, and I try to show him how much he means to me, but I know I don't always succeed. Am I really that bad at parenting that my children feel unloved and like an unwanted burden? 


I know that K sees how hard I fight to make sure he is taken care of, especially when it comes to the boys' dad. Their dad is less than willing to take care of his sons financially and I had to literally force him thru the courts and the state to pay child support on a regular and consistent basis. I had to get his paychecks garnished in order to make him take care of his sons. Would someone please tell me why this was wrong? K seems to think it was wrong and that the only reason I keep him and his brother is to keep taking money from their dad. This of course being what they hear from their dad and his wife all the damn time. As if I only cared about the money and not the boys. It is not so much the money I care about... I do care about it, but only in that he takes care of the boys as they deserve and need. I do not understand why this is wrong and how someone can be that way about their children. 


I have no idea how to handle or deal with the great amounts of negativity and resentment K holds bottled up inside him. I have thought of counseling, but he is not too fond of counselors and does not trust them. This 14 year boy holds enough anger and resentment inside him to power a city. How do I go about defusing all this before it turns into hatred and total apathy? I worry so much about him and I have no idea what to do. I feel completely helpless and incompetent.... I really don't like feeling that way about my sons. I do my best to spend what free time I can with the boys, but this is not always a possibility, but I do try. Will I ever be enough of a parent or the parent the boys need? Will my sons ever grow up to be decent men?