Reply To: Going off the Derech

here to help-He already feels those things. He said he hates his life and hates us, has threatened to use drugs, join a gang, get a tatoo and become a criminal. He has become the complete antithesis of anything we might have expected he’d become. All my kids tell me that we always ‘favored’ him, gave him more, said yes more..and still do! And they’re right, bc he ‘s the bachur, and we adored him! But for some crooked reason, he never felt it. My husband and I would die for him, and yet he has told us he wishes we would die…

We had an agreement that I would give him my computer, and he would come home at a reasonable hour, and speak to us with derech eretz. After giving in so many times, even though he spoke terrible to us, and cursed, and came home late, I still gave him the computer. But terrible mother that I am, I had a limit. And when he stayed out all night and pranced in cursing us at the shabbos table in front of our kids, and embarrased us in front of our neighbors bc he hangs out sometimes in front of our building with his loud obnoxious chevra, I took away the computer. I can’t write what he said to me, bc the mods won’t let it through. I’ll just hint that if I suddenly stop writing, you’ll know that it’s bc he gave in to his anger in the most extreme way.

Even today, when he told me that he knows that I hate him (bc I am saying no to the computer), I told him that me and his father have been loving him for 16 years, and we are so sad that he doesn’t feel it. I told him that I would do anything to help him, but that this time, he went too far…that even his chevra would not be his friends if he treated them the way he treats us. My daughter just told me that the reason he wants the computer is so that he can put things on his USB, and then give it to the chevra, making him a ‘big man’ with the crowd. I’m not sure I want to make him ‘Mr. Popularity’ with his street crowd. Do you still think he should stay at home? And probably, you think I should give him the computer, right?