I Miss My Son

For  few hours last night this was literally true.

Ben had decided that I was punishing out of hate and that I didn't love him.

Of course that is not true but it didn't make it any less real in his had.

He decided to walk home to our house from Walmart yesterday after on top of punishments I didn't buy him a starter pack of cards and he began sulking more.

Now this isn't normally my Son.

He is a Happy, Funny, Responsible, Strong will, Amazing... though sometimes challenging young man.

He has stood up in his school classes against drinking, smoking, and drugs with no fear of what people thought of him.

He has delivered newspapers since he was 9 years old and at the age of 14 is currently working at Little Caesars as a banner carrier.

He hates doing chores and homework and struggled in those areas but we love him anyways and know that one day he will master those two things.

He has been different for the past little month and a half, almost 2 months. 

Unfortunately a lot of what I am unable to talk about involves him and why he angry, but let me tell you no person should ever go through what he has, especially as a teenager just trying to make their way through the most confusing time in their lives thanks to hormones and changes.

He went from someone who would talk to me about everything to a silent, angry person.

I don't blame him but it makes me sad.

He is seeing a counselor at the school about everything going on but he is still angry.

I am going to see about finding him someone else to talk to during the summer or longer if needed, but he is still angry.

This anger and teenagedom translated to a bad decision which made it necessary to punish him for those choices. 

Now to be honest I have struggled with the choice to keep the punishments the same even though I know that there are other personal things going on that are leading to these actions he has taken.

Now I feel that things shouldn't change and get easier just for him just because he is having a bad time as in time I am sure he will be grateful for the consistency even if he can't now.

If you think I am wrong or right let me know in a comment because I am truly struggling with it.

Anyways so he is mad because he doesn't have his cell phone right now and he is grounded which involved me picking him up from school yesterday.

Maybe to much, but since he hasn't stuck with the grounding yet when coming home from school I wanted to make a point of letting him know what the other option would be if he continued to choose to not follow the rules of the grounding.

Too Much? I don't know.. he is my first stubborn teenager with 5 more just waiting to follow him on that path.

So he wants his phone back and he wants his freedom back and I wouldn't budge on either hence him deciding to walk home yesterday.

Now I did let him go because to be honest I needed the cooling off period too because I am 

A) not perfect and do in fact have feeling too and was getting upset because of his attitude and 

B) recognized that he needed some time to think things through and figured I would give him the time to do that. I have never really had reason to not trust that he wouldn't come home in a timely manner.

Well he decided that He needed some time to talk things out with a friend but that I should be made to feel a little suffering as well. He chose not to phone when he got to his friends house so that I wouldn't know where he was. He stayed out later so that I would worry a little bit about him and change my mind about he having his cell phone.

Well it worked in a way.

I worried like crazy and at 9:30 called the police because it was not like him to be gone for over 4 and a half hours without a single word, however when he got back home he was upset because he still didn't get his phone back.

Am I wrong in that decision? let me know what you think because I don't know but didn't feel he deserved a reward for making yet another poor choice.

So here I sit writing a blog post about it as he gives me the silent, anger treatment because I didn't back down. He is moving especially slow getting out to do his papers and hoping that I will change my mind before he has to go to school.

So I am posting a picture of him on here saying that I Miss my Happy, funny, amazing son and hope that we can find him soon. If you do see him around please take a picture and share it with me as I really could use some hope to hold on to that I might see him again some day.