I have been married for 16 years and have a son aged 14 and a daughter of 11. Although we still live together my husband and myself have had many problems in the past but have stuck together. We don't sleep in the same room and have more of a 'mate' relationship.
My problem is my son. He is a lovely, bright, caring 14-year-old boy with a heart of gold and although he struggled for a few years, is now doing really well at school. He keeps out of trouble and teachers and other people have commented on what a lovely polite boy he is. However, at home he is the complete opposite - not all the time, but when he gets into a mood he is like the devil, he calls names and is very abusive, he normally gets himself grounded and loses privileges and after a week or so he is calm again and things go back to normal.
But what I have noticed more and more is that he seems to have absolutely no respect whatsoever for his father. If he is rude to me he will apologise eventually, I have seen the way he looks and know that he feels bad. We have a good chat and get things sorted. We have a good relationship I guess. But he seems to despise his father more and more as he gets older, he has absolutely no fear of him at all and has often said if he lays a finger on him he will hit him back! They argue like mad!
What I will say is that his father has a pretty aggressive manner, he 'barks' at my son rather then talk and his excuse is that he is angry with him - I don't believe in this attitude, as far as I'm concerned he is still a child and needs us so we should try and support him and not take his bad moods personally. They disagree on everything, my husband does not trust him and thinks everything that comes out of his mouth is a lie - even though our son has proved us wrong time and time again, he just wont trust him.
A few years ago my husband was quite a heavy drinker and would often come home legless and there were many times things got out of hand and there would be violence - between the 2 of us rather then on the children. He no longer drinks but is very moody most of the time. He has been out of work for 4 years now and uses every excuse in the book not to work. This puts a tremendous amount of stress on me, I work part time and pay all the bills etc. My son throws the fact that his dad has no job in his face at every argument. I am also now wondering whether my son remembers the 'bad' times when his dad was always drunk, this was when he was up the age of around 8 or 9, the worst being when he was 5/6. My mum thinks this has a lot to do with it and that my son is 'paying him back' for all the bad times.
Even if I am telling my son off and his dad says something out of hand to me, my son will immediately jump in and defend me. Even if we have had a row and he has sworn he will not speak to me or his dad he will always come to me with a kiss goodbye and say sorry but never his dad.
The thing is he is not a bad boy in general; he does well in school and is not one to hang around the streets or with the wrong crowd – as far as I know all his friends are pretty nice kids. But I am now terrified that he will change for the worse – I have visions of him running away from home because of the constant conflict with his father, or something worse. I am just waiting for a phone call from the school to say he hasnt turned up or has got into some sort of trouble.
The thing is I know deep down I should have thrown his father out years ago when things were really bad, he made our life hell and was violent. But he did make an effort and stopped drinking but now he just won't work so the pressure is still there but in another way.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated I’m at my wits end
Is my mum right? Does my son remember things and is paying his dad back?
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