Question
We have homeschooled our 3 kids for all of their school years. Last year we enrolled our son (now 16.5) in online public schooling because he refused to be cooperative with school work. Online schooling was a struggle, but he made it through with mostly good grades. This year, he is failing & consistently behind in all of his classes. He is so far behind at this point that we don’t see how he can recover before the semester ends. Online schooling doesn’t seem to be a good fit for him as he is on a computer all day long and easily distracted with music, shopping, videos, inappropriate content, perverse humor, etc. He is terrified of going to public school and has begged us not to enroll him there. We are concerned it wouldn’t be a good environment for him as he seems to get into enough trouble as it is.
We have put boudaries in place in our home as to what ratings we will allow with music, movies, shows, entertainment. He refuses to follow our guidelines and listens to music that is filled with extreme profanity and full of negative messages. Any restrictions we put on technology, he finds a work around. His latest thing is reading the Satanic bible & buying shirts with demons on them (which we promptly discard). He recently used our phone to post a message of depression on instagram. It was filled with lies that we were withholding treatment and hiding his medication (he’s not on any medication). Someone reported it to CPS. They came to our home and concluded there were no findings and closed the case. Nonetheless, we have him seeing a counselor in case there are issues with depression.
We are at the end of our rope. We have taken away privileges and technology time after time and he always go back to using it in wrong ways once he gets it back. It seems everything we do, he pushes back twice as hard. Where do we go from here?
