ej3

The other thread regarding this seems to be closed, but I wanted to thank those who responded. I posted that 6 months ago and had forgotten about this forum until I recently got an email about it. We still have my dh's, now 17 year old, nephew living with us, he's been with us for about a year. He did end up getting himself in some serious trouble 4 months ago and spent several nights in custody as a result of that. It involved possession/underage issues/resisting/assaults (including punching a police officer....in his defence that happened before he realised it was a police officer...of course punching anyone is a problem). He had a rather long list of charges.

It's amazing what can happen when you're "watching movies at Billy's" - and the thanks we got for extending some trust to him. Being held in custody was a huge wake-up call for him, he "gets it" now, he came to understand that he needed to make some huge changes in his life. He did come very very close to spending many months in custody (and that scared him) but the judge threw him a lifeline. Legally, he's on a very short leash and he understands that. We are all getting support on this, he has been involved in a few different programmes for teenagers at risk, and dh and I are involved in a group of parents going through similar issues. He struggles at times in making the right decisions etc, but dh and I are going to keep backing him up - we've told him that he has our full support as long as he continues to be completely active in taking responsibility for his behavior. We have many ups and downs still but things are getting better. We're all determined that he's going to make it - he's seen what it's like to lose your freedom and he's told us that he doesn't want that life.

We thought very seriously about sending him away to some kind of program (we had the National Guard programme recommended to us by others aswell) or school, but ultimately we decided he didn't need to move again, he needs a stable home life and that the relationship that he has with us is going to be the one that lasts throughout his life and we wanted to work on that. We have moved him to a new school and that is going better (not...great, but improved), he will take an extra year to graduate because he has messed around too much at school.

So things are better, and continue to get better. He and dh make a good team, they are developing a good bond.