I hate that I feel this way about my own child. I hate the guilt that I feel about counting down the months until he may or may not graduate. We swore that we weren’t going to have another bad Senior year with another child, but here we are.
Bryce was in a group with five other kids that were accused of basically stealing the answers for a semester test. So the teacher (naturally) gave them each a zero and Bryce barely passed the class … a class that he has to have to graduate.
Then Sunday night (the day after Riley broke his arm and I was already super duper stress), I catch Bryce with a mouth full of chewing tobacco. He lied right to my face and swore it was gum. I made him spit it out in front of me … it wasn’t gum. If he wants to smoke, drink, dip, do drugs, whatever after he moves out then that’s his problem, but he is NOT going to do that crap in my house.
He was given money from various family members as a Christmas present. He has none of it left. We suspect that it literally went up in smoke.
He still hasn’t paid back all of the restitution from when he stole things from churches, but we are past the point of caring enough to remind him about it and we sure as heck aren’t going to pay it for him.
I hate hate hate that we feel this way, but he’s eighteen. He’s running out of time.
Was there punishment from you for the cheating or the lying?
Nope – I think that his Marines recruiter yelling at him for the “alleged” cheating and him swallowing half of the chewing tobacco while I yelled at him about him making stupid choices was enough of a punishment.