January 2023, my stepson was about to become a teenager…the big 13!
A couple weeks after we came back from our trip, it was my stepson’s birthday. Per the divorce decree, my husband and his ex-wife share that day. And this year my husband had his son from dinner time to the next morning. What should have been a happy and exciting celebration, it really wasn’t and took us by surprise.
It all started with picking up on stepson. Before we went out to dinner, we presented him with a birthday gift we worked really hard to get. I had it covered on my vava’s desk, and my stepson joked that we were going to just give him the keyboard. I told him it was something better than that. I first presented him with a homemade card that he absolutely loved and wanted to know where I got it and was shocked and happy when his dad told him that I made it. He thought it was the coolest card.
Once I took the blanket off the desk, my stepson stood there for a second in awe. I could tell he wanted to be excited, and he did for a brief second, but then he went back to his normal self and hid his excitement, started to look sad, and eventually ran up the stairs to his room. Months prior, we had this feeling that he wasn’t allowed to have fun at our house because it would be a problem for his mom. But what we got him was a Podcast Equipment Set. He told us during our vacation that he made a podcast series and we even listened to the first one on the way down to my sister’s. It was really good, and we thought it would be a great idea for him to have something at our place in case he wanted to record. Instead, like I said, his happiness went away, and he stayed in his room until it was time to go.
We found out from DCF a month and a half later that his mom bought him podcast equipment that looked really new and fancy when DCF went to examine her house. So, my husband felt undermined yet again, because due to the court battle, we didn’t have a lot as it is, but we wanted his son to have something special. And that something special got brushed aside because my stepson’s mom knew she could provide something better.
After revealing the present, we then went out to dinner with his grandparents and had a decent evening. My stepson almost ate a hole pizza himself as well. He kept wanting to talk about the trip we just went on and how much he enjoyed it. He didn’t say much of anything on the car ride when we picked him up, but that wasn’t uncommon during this time, so we didn’t think much of it.
The drama began after we got home, and my husband was doing dishes. To start my stepson kept coming down and just staying at the podcast, not saying a single thing. When I asked if he wanted to look at it more, he would quickly shake his head, “no”, and then disappear back into his room. But when he did say something, it was to ask me what type of device it was, or headphones they were, or what type of microphone brand we got him. Turns out, he was communicating with his mom about what we got him and was searching Amazon quite a lot according to our Frontier App.
But that wasn’t all. My husband’s ex-wife texted him and said that their son was thinking about leaving our house on foot tonight, but she was encouraging him to stay there. She then said he was even talking about hitchhiking. We were both taken by complete surprise and at first, doubtful of the accuracy of her text because he seemed to be fine. So, my husband went upstairs twice. The first time asking if there was anything going on, and he seemed surprised and off guard, so my husband let him be. But then, his ex messaged him a 2nd time, so he went back up and confronted him. He seemed completely shocked about what his mom had said that he said. My husband asked him to show him his phone and he did, and my husband even took a picture of it. My husband was suspicious because it showed that they had hardly even talked. Turns out later when we saw certain messages that weren’t deleted, we couldn’t believe different things we read that would say, “you better watch your mouth with what you say to people”.
My stepson started to get tired and said he wanted to go to bed so we let him before the night. We did, however, take precautions and I slept on the couch downstairs since my husband could sleep through a hurricane and wouldn’t hear if he tried to sneak out. The next morning, I let my husband know that I didn’t hear anything. My stepson, however, started his morning by throwing up at 6:30AM, and then told us that he would be staying home sick. We knew it was from the whole pizza he practically ate as well as the soda, and the shocking thing we found out later was, he knew that’s why he was sick too, but still told his mom to text his dad along the lines of saying he told his mom he was sick and that he can’t go to school. Unfortunately, since his mom now knew, the school knew and even though we all knew it was from the dinner last night, the school need to take a 24-hour protocol when it comes to throwing up before he can return to school. And since it happened to be a day with being with his mom, he was able to go home with her and spend the day with her.
My husband reached out to his ex-wife later that morning to clear up the confusion of what took place the night before and she sent screenshots. Now with my stepson deleting messages, we weren’t sure if she deleted any either, but she did send them over. Apparently, my stepson had said all these things and my husband’s ex-wife had tried to convince him to change his mind. This was a serious incident and speaks to his feelings about being in our household, especially when that night as I shared was decent/good.
What it boiled down to was why he doesn’t want to be at our house, and what was going to happen to improve this situation?
What they decided to do was to just escalate things one more time to see if it would finally work for my stepson to just be with his mom. But it would really take them two more times before that would happen. These two things were very unfortunate events.
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