He has lied to you.

  Because I’m his mom, I will take the time to have that ‘lies are bad’ discussion with him.

  But to be honest, you have placed him in the position where he feels that he must lie to save your feelings. He could tell you the real reasons why he doesn’t want to visit this weekend, but you wouldn’t be satisified with that. You would push (because you always do) and layer on the guilt until he felt compelled to visit simply to avoid upsetting you.

   I won’t tell you that you don’t have the right to be upset, because you do. What you don’t have the right to do is to displace your feelings upon the shoulders of a kid….our kid.

  You created the problem. You HAD to be right…all the time. You made it clear to both of our kids that your way is the ONLY way. You made threats against them and me if they didn’t agree with you. You bullied them until they began to pull away from you simply to avoid confrontation. Now you get lies because, in their eyes, it is easier to lie to you than tell you the truth.

   The truth is, this weekend has nothing to do with you…or with me. It is not us with whom he is choosing to spend the weekend. We, as his parents, do not figure into this equation. He is choosing to stay because his friends are here. He found out yesterday that one of them (who had moved away) has returned to town to live. In teen-world, this is a big development.

   So, on the one hand, you can take comfort in the fact that he loves you enough to lie to you in order to spare your feelings.

   On the other hand…you might take a moment to ask yourself WHY he felt the need to do so.

   You have alienated one of our kids with your attitude…do you really intend to do so with the other? You are already learning just how hard it can be to mend fences with our daughter. While I hope that you succeed in that endeavor, I would also hope that you don’t find yourself in the position where you have to do the same with our son.

   He is a good kid….a really good kid. For both of your sakes, I hope that you come to appreciate him for the person that he is and just LISTEN to him…quit pushing….give him some respect…

…maybe then, he won’t feel the need to lie.

arkmomy