Questioner: Anonymous
Subject: What can i do to help him
Question: Help!! My son is a very smart honor student in the 9th grade who in the last 2 weeks has been in school suspention for the last 8 days for fighting and then when he got out for half a day to return to his class got into another fight and was suspended for 3 days out of school again for fighting all over a girl.
See he went with this girl for over a year and they broke up and now she is going with another boy who was his best friend .
And she keeps calling my son and telling him she still loves him.( i put a stop to that)She is playing these boys against each other .I dont know how to help him ,he hates school and wants me to go back to homeschooling him ,he says he cant handle the problems at school.I have been to the school so many times and they dont want me to homeschool him and they keep telling me what a good kid he is but have no answers to his problems.I just dont know what to do anymore, he doesn’t care about school ,his grades anything.He is so smart he skipped a grade of school and he is letting everything just fall apart over this girl,how do i get him focused on his schoolwork again ?
Do I remove him from the problem and homeschool him again ? We only have 3 months of school left ,he plays basketball and his coach is even gonna kick him off the team if he doesnt stop fighting over this girl. Everyone at the school says this is not my son ,he is always been the one who never ever got in to trouble now all he wants to do is Fight!!! I just dont know what to do !! Please help if you even can!!!
Answer: Dear Anonymous
Something is definitely going on with your son and it doesn’t sound like it is all girl/boy stuff. I suggest you find a nice quiet time to sit down with him. Let him know you are concerned about him and you are there to LISTEN. I know this is tough to do as parents we are geared towards fixing things and mostly this means doing the talking via lecturing. However, it is critical this time he does the talking and you do the listening. Be comfortable with the silence and let him know up front nothing he says is going to shock you or make you love him less.
This is the first step getting to the root of the problem it isn’t just about girl friends this fighting thing tells me something in his world is going terribly wrong and he is in trouble. He needs your ears now more than ever even if he doesn’t recognize this.
Best wishes!
M Kay Keller
