I know that many of you have been waiting to hear exactly what happened to me and my family recently. I tried not to be too vague in my facebook statuses. You all know how annoying it is when someone posts something like, “Oh whoa is me. My life sucks.” And they don’t explain anymore.
Yes, it was a little vague but I just wasn’t ready to talk about it yet, just like I haven’t been able to blog about it yet. I have talked to several friends, including Natalie who listens to my crazy life. They have helped me a lot. Sometimes it helps to talk it out. And now I need to write about it.
I don’t often talk about the issues that burden my family. Some of you who have been reading my blog forever know of our struggles with Jacob. We have a very unique situation. I am not going to go into it here but if you have the time it may help with you understanding our story. Long story short, Jacob was abused by his birth mother. He moved in with us when he was 5 and we have been trying to reverse all of the mess that she did to him for the past 6+ years.
Lately things have been better. We have all been getting along. The kids have been playing together very well. It almost felt like we were becoming the family that I have always dreamed about. We were giving Jacob his space since he is a tween after all. He seemed so much happier. Things had been going really great… Or so we thought.
Jacob started having some behavioral issues at school. He got kicked off of the safety patrol. We couldn’t figure out what was going on. We figured that maybe he was just having a bad couple of weeks. The teachers and school officials were telling us that this was his best year ever, so we were happy.
Jacob had been having a hard time getting up in the morning. He had been forgetting to set his alarm clock too and that aggravates me to no end. He is 11 and a half years old. The kid is old enough to remember these kinds of things. Heck he will be in high school in just a couple of years.
Last Monday I had enough of having to wake him up so I went in his room after I put Paige to bed to remind him to turn on his alarm clock. His room was pitch black when I opened the door yet there was a glowing light coming from Jacob’s pillow. I asked him what it was and he said it was a flashlight. Then he got up and walked over to “throw it in a bag”. My only concern was that his pillow was still glowing and I didn’t hear anything fall into the bag.
I turned back to the pillow and noticed it was still glowing so I walked over to it, lifted the pillow up and about passed out. There, under his pillow, was his former iPod Touch. I say that it was his former iPod Touch because it was taken away from him for good this past summer when he had disobeyed us for the last time with it by jumping into a pool with it in his pocket.
When I looked at the iPod closer I found that he had been texting with a girl. Of course he lied and said that he didn’t know her, which terrified me even more, but he fessed up and said it was one of his friends. I flew out of his room and ran downstairs to discuss this whole situation with Dave.
After further digging I found that he had the following accounts: Kik, Pinger, Skype, Gmail, YouTube and Twitter. He also had a Snapchat account but luckily he didn’t use it (or at least we couldn’t find any activity on it). I was not pleased. I could deal with the texting accounts because I could read the texts and they were not too bad. I could also deal with the other accounts because he mostly used them to play his online games. What I couldn’t deal with was the Twitter account.
I could deal with the Twitter account if it wasn’t for what I found on it. Vulgar language, jokes about raping yo mama, shooting his sister in the face and calling her a f***ing bitch and the cyberbullying. I just couldn’t handle that. What happened to my fun little guy who loved to play Just Dance and hang out and watch those dumb dog movies (Snowbuddies, Airbuddies, etc.) This new personna J-Dawg was not that same kid. This kid was someone ugly. Someone full of hate. That someone is living inside my child and it scares the living hell out of me.
There is so much more to this story that I need to break it up into 2 parts. In the next part I will talk about the consequences that we came up with. Our biggest concern is how do we deal with such a betrayal. The punishment had to fit the crime.
Have you ever had one of your kids betray you like this? What did/would you do?
Oh! This is scary for sure Jayme! Beyond scary. I need to keep closer tabs on my kids….
I have an 11-year old and recently had a similar experience. Oh my GOD were we p-ed off. The app we had a problem with was Kik and then there was some kind of chatting website where you can “chat with strangers.” We found out because my daughter told her friends and one of them told her mom out of concern because she was talking to 18 year old guys (or so they claimed to be), & then the mom called me. It happened at my house with two of her friends, so I had the joy and pleasure of calling their parents to tell them about it. We took away her iPad and iPod for a couple weeks, and now she is not allowed to use them in her bedroom, only in open rooms where we can see what she is doing. We had to scare the crap out of her, telling her pretty explicitly about the dangers of child predators. She was badly shaken up, and I HOPE has learned her lesson. Happens again and her little sister gets her iPod and I get myself a new iPad. It is scary what our kids have at their fingertips. My daughter is a good kid, and we never thought we’d be dealing with something like this at the age of 11.
Wow. I wish I could say I haven’t been there but I have. It is a scary place to be, especially with the bullying part. I think your sweet boy is in there, he has just lost his way a little bit. Abuse in his past can trigger some anger issues and he may have thought hmmm let’s release this here. My kids have no access to computers in my home in secret. Too much they can do. Hoping things calm down for you quickly and him as well.
oh WOW. My husband and I have just started family counseling with our oldest who was just diagnoses with O.D.D. (oppositional defiant disorder) I know a little bit how you feel. unruly teens and or almost teens can give us quite the headaches some days. Counseling has really helped our family…haha not perfect we still have problems but at elast now I know at least how to deal with their crap….Not sure what will will work for you babe…but I hope everything works out for the best for you! Hang in there! Can’t wait for part 2….Consequences are also very important…
Oh my goodness…I don’t even know…I just…that scares me.
Oh, Jayme. I read this the other day and felt for you guys. I was so afraid that you had found something like, god forbid, porn or something. Thank goodness you didn’t, but this is awful. I’m so sorry. I hope you have gotten to a better place with him and can start building some trust back and working on his issues. You are a GREAT mother, a fantastic one, because you care SO much.
FYI – I’m sure you’ve thought about this already. This young man is very internet savy. He’s reading everything you write online. Think about it.
@bev_eth Of course I understand that he is very internet savy but I know he isn’t reading this. He has no unrestricted access to the internet. None. And even if he did read this I could care less. The kid knows what he did and he knows I wrote this. I don’t write about him without his permission.