Current Events > My cousin's son has already screwed his life up, and it's really depressing.

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The situation is just...so fucked up to degrees that really depress me, especially since I've known the kid since he was born. He's 16 now and his life is already really fucked.

Basically, a few years ago, he started acting out really hard. Like, telling his mom to fuck off, doing drugs, never listening to anyone, always fighting with his parents and other kids. It got bad enough that his parents disowned him (I actually made a topic about it here at the time) and he ended up living with his grandma for a while.

Well, eventually things calmed down a bit and his parents took him back in. Except, over the past several months, it got really bad again.

As far as I've heard, since I live in a different state from them, the kid became incredibly unruly yet again recently. He recently started dating a chick in the mountains, then told his parents to fuck off, stopped going to school, and moved up to the mountains with this chick. Then she got sick of him, broke some of his stuff, and kicked him out, prompting him to break back into her house and have the cops called on him. He ended up in juvie over that.

Fast forward to this week, and the kid, now back with his parents again, physically assaulted his mother, stole her car, flipped it over in another state, and then stole a different car before getting caught and arrested and thrown in actual jail.

His parents have no idea what to do, because he's absolutely demolishing his own life already but he doesn't do well when he's with them, and he's now potentially in jail for quite a while, and they don't know if they can take him back with how he's acting, especially since they have two younger daughters as well. They've tried therapy and medication, but it isn't working.

Iunno. Shit fucking sucks. There's not all that much point in me making a thread about it aside from just venting, but the entire situation is really awful. My cousin and his wife are absolutely devastated, and my other cousin/the kid's aunt is just breaking down over it all and crying all the time. It's really hard to see the kid wreck his life already while also tearing his family apart at the same time.

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He just sounds like a bad person.

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Just cut him off

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Hes sixteen hes learning, I know I wasnt a perfect kid at sixteen. I hate how society is so quick to abandon people, especially such a young age.

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sounds like he needs help

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twitterfriends posted...

I hate how society is so quick to abandon people, especially such a young age.

While this is fine as a general notion, I think this crosses past the "youth acting out" realm and becomes hardcore criminal behavior just for its own sake:

dotsdfe posted...

physically assaulted his mother, stole her car, flipped it over in another state, and then stole a different car

twitterfriends posted...

Hes sixteen hes learning, I know I wasnt a perfect kid at sixteen. I hate how society is so quick to abandon people, especially such a young age.

JTilly posted...

sounds like he needs help

Yeah, I'd like to help him if possible, rather than just cutting him off or giving up on him.

I have no idea how to really help him, though. Therapy and meds haven't worked, and several people have talked to him and tried to reason with him, including me. I genuinely don't know how to help him out at this point, but we have to do something, because the situation keeps getting worse and worse. It's looking like he'll be in prison for a while at this point, and given how things have gone up until now, it's not unlikely that he'll end up there again afterwards.

It's really hard to figure out how to help him.

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This seems like some heavy mental issues. While I know you said that he as gotten help for that. When he gets out that might have to double down .

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The kid needs serious professional help. Letting him "figure things out" won't help if he gets thrown in prison for decades in the process.

He needs a hardcore therapist immediately or he likely has no shot at a good life at this point. He either has no ability to regulate his behavior or learned all the wrong things from his parents. He could have an undiagnosed disorder or brain damage or something. That needs to be discovered and worked on before society throws him away which it sounds like they're about to do, if they haven't already.

Push for a behavioral therapist or psychologist of some kind.

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twitterfriends posted...

I hate how society is so quick to abandon people, especially such a young age.

I agree but in this case it doesnt seem like theyve abandoned him. Well, society in general maybe has, but not his family at least.

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Eh, he should probably be separated from the sisters at least. My oldest brother was kind of crazy and all he did was make everybody's life worse. He's "reformed" but I literally have no desire to ever see him again. A terrible sibling can do a lot to make your life suck ass.

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This is what happens when you dont discipline children

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Lordgold666 posted...

This is what happens when you dont discipline children

You have no idea what his parents did or didn't do so you shouldn't be making comments like this

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Just cut him off.
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That kid needs to be in prison

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Feline_Heart posted...

You have no idea what his parents did or didn't do so you shouldn't be making comments like this

Youre right. Once he ends up in prison and tries to pull this type of shit behind bars, somebody WILL discipline him and i somehow get the feeling hell stop after that

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It's not like it's impossible to come back from that, but sounds like he's on a straight shot to scumbag for life without some kind of serious rock bottom reality check.

Sadly this is something I deal with every day as a CPS worker.

There are a lot of teenagers in the system who end up in a pattern of misbehavior, acting out, and criminal activity until their parents or caregivers can't deal with it anymore and turn them out of the home.

If I was managing your relative's case, then I'd be asking for the kid to get a full psychological evaluation while in detention, with the hope they'd recommend him for inpatient behavioral health treatment. Unfortunately getting accepted to that higher level of care can be difficult, either because the health insurance denies it (they generally want to see evidence that treatment in a lower level of care was attempted before approving inpatient treatment) or the people running those facilities deny him for being too much of a safety risk.

He will almost certainly be put on juvenile probation, but generally it takes a long history of repeated offenses, or a high severity offense for courts to commit a juvenile to a correctional facility (where they remain imprisoned until 18 years old or they show significant progress with behavioral health treatment). If he does get committed there, then nothing anyone can do about it. If he doesn't, but also gets denied for inpatient treatment, and his parents or other relatives refuse to take him in, then basically the state has to open a dependency case against the parents, and find a group home or boarding school type place for him to stay while getting outpatient treatment. He would have to follow the rules and requirements of his placement and treatment as part of his terms of probation, and if he continues to have problems (violates his probation or gets new charges), then the courts are more likely to look at that and go the route of putting him in lockup until 18.


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Something is going in with him to create so much turmoil. No one is just genetically bad. Try and figure that out and then get him help for that and he could still turn things around.

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Sounds like he might have conduct disorder. Its a tough disorder to manage. Id recommend he go see a psychiatrist then get connected with a good therapist after.

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Conflict posted...

Obviously nobody's perfect at 16 but I can't say a whole lot of people I know were committing burglary, grand theft auto and domestic violence at the same time

this is 100% true the whole statement.
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He still has time but yeah it seems like a really hard situation. He needs serious discipline that his parents might not be able to give
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Bryfang posted...

This may sound fucked up, but I've had people like that in my life, and they need to hit rock bottom so they can decide on their own to be better people.

I think there is truth to this -- you can't just impart wisdom onto other people by telling them what they're doing wrong. Part of wisdom is experience, and just being TOLD the right thing to do doesn't necessarily help no matter how much you're told. And you'll only really learn the right thing by going down the wrong path first and realizing through experience.

But it's dangerous because the things this guy is doing are a big deal and could really destroy him.

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Your cousin needs a mentor. Someone to guide. The relationship with parents seemed to have deteriorated into toxic mush.

Military may be good. Push that for your cousin.

He needs to go live with his auntie and uncle in Bel Air.

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twitterfriends posted...

Hes sixteen hes learning, I know I wasnt a perfect kid at sixteen. I hate how society is so quick to abandon people, especially such a young age.

Bruh, stealing 2 cars, shooting up drugs, ditching school, and assaulting your mom isn't what I call """learning""" lol

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You have to send him to some kind of overseas reform school. Literally a new slate to get right.

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TC it sounds like your cousin son needs professional help, since by the sounds of it he has been getting worse and worse. Maybe it might be good to send him someplace with professionals to help him.

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This reminds me of my brother, except he's just a huge pile of shit to everyone that's ever been close to him, most of all our family. He's never gotten charged with anything thankfully, which I attribute to him deep down being a huge coward.

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We've tried a few forms of help for him without any luck. That's kind of the dilemma right now - his parents in particular have tried a lot of stuff without any luck, so we're not sure where to go from here.

The military might be the best option when he's a bit older, but we're not really sure what to do until then because professional help hasn't been enough thus far.

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What caused him to be this way? What issues from childhood? Or is he just one of those 1 in 100 psychopaths for no particular reason?

dotsdfe posted...

We've tried a few forms of help for him without any luck. That's kind of the dilemma right now - his parents in particular have tried a lot of stuff without any luck, so we're not sure where to go from here.

The military might be the best option when he's a bit older, but we're not really sure what to do until then because professional help hasn't been enough thus far.

I worked in a therapy program specifically designed for children on juvenile probation - it's called MST (Multisystemic therapy) but does involve/need participation by the family. You might see if there are any groups offering it in your area (it's a national/international evidence based model, but provided by different agencies that are licensed to do so)

sLaCkEr408___RJ posted...

Your cousin needs a mentor. Someone to guide. The relationship with parents seemed to have deteriorated into toxic mush.

Military may be good. Push that for your cousin.

Was he convicted for the fights/car jacking/drugs? That could disqualify him from joining.

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He doing meth? This sounds like meth

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DoctorPiranha3 posted...

What caused him to be this way? What issues from childhood? Or is he just one of those 1 in 100 psychopaths for no particular reason?

I genuinely don't know. He had a good childhood overall, so I don't really think that it's anything to do with that, unless his parents were way harsher towards him in private than in public or something. They've always treated him well from everything that I've seen.

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dotsdfe posted...

We've tried a few forms of help for him without any luck. That's kind of the dilemma right now - his parents in particular have tried a lot of stuff without any luck, so we're not sure where to go from here.

The military might be the best option when he's a bit older, but we're not really sure what to do until then because professional help hasn't been enough thus far.

This is something to keep in mind, I knew someone in first school who seems like a good person but then in middle school we went to different school. In high school we went to the same school but he was hanging with the wrong crowd, he became a bully. Although he didn't do that bad things, but as years went he became worse and worse until he got expelled. He threw an egg to a teacher.

Nowadays he is in jail, he done these below:
Kidnapping children
Drugging and raping minor boy
Breaking into people house to rob and assault

I hope your cousin son doesn't end up like him.

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Ruvan22 posted...

I worked in a therapy program specifically designed for children on juvenile probation - it's called MST (Multisystemic therapy) but does involve/need participation by the family. You might see if there are any groups offering it in your area (it's a national/international evidence based model, but provided by different agencies that are licensed to do so)

I'll look into that, thanks.

Unsugarized_Foo posted...

He doing meth? This sounds like meth

I'm not actually sure. His parents just told the rest of the family "drugs" without specifying.

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Assuming this isnt anything mental....is hopefully just a phase of he'll eventually grow out of when hes ready.

But if not and hes just generally a bad person who enjoys these sorts of things should be either cut off from the familys life as a whole, and or locked away for good.

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Yeah, fix the meth issues and everything might work out. If he needs to go to jail to sober up, so be it

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Yeah meth is infamous for turning a relatively normal person into a complete monster. I'd say definitely more so that other hardcore drugs. It's honestly the worst drug there is.

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Im not very experienced but definitely the circle of friends you grow up with impacts how we develop as a person. Specially on teenagers but it is true for all ages.

If all of your friends are doing A, even if you dont like it then it is really difficult to not do A AND still be friends with them.

A good example is drinking. If all your friends like to drink then they will hang out to drink (perhaps at a bar) , while you can go with them and not drink eventually you might get bored because everyone ends up drunk af or they might stop inviting you. Some people start drinking because of this.

The same idea can be applied to meth, drugs, bullying or even good things like study groups, charity, sports.

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Sorry to hear that :(

I have more cousins and cousins' kids than I even know. On my mother's, step-father's and step-mother's sides, I'm the oldest or close to it, but on my father's side, I'm one of the youngest. I have cousins probably near 60 at this point with kids older than I am. Two of them (brothers) died when I was a kid, one being murdered (drug-related) and his brother never got over that and committed suicide a few years later. A younger cousin on my mother's side had been a bit of a troublemaker as a teenager and was caught stealing electronics out of cars. My aunt and uncle sent him to some camp program for troubled teens and he got his shit together following that. He's like I think mid 20s now and I haven't heard of any shenanigans in years. When he was like 15 or so, he wanted to smoke weed with me at a family party and I was like "uhh... I mean I want to and I'm not gonna say there is anything wrong with that but... it just wouldn't be appropriate..." I did smoke with him a few years later though after the reception of another cousin's wedding which was in my city and I got bored and decided to walk home and he was like "I'm bored too. Got any weed?" and I was like "Fuck it... just don't tell anyone else >_>" (I think it hadn't been legalized yet at that point).

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a good therapist or psychologist could help him out.

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unpopular take, but some people just have shit nature and not everybody is reformable

no amount of psychiatric help or whatever else is gonna change the core of this person

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