Ask the Therapist
Troubled 13 Year Old
My husband and I live and work in a small town and about three months ago a local 13 year old boy started spending quite a bit of time at my husband's shop. Slowly his presence crept into our home lives, as well, as he discovered our home phone number and began inviting himself along to trips to the store and finally home for dinner. Now he comes by in the middle of the night, doesn't listen when we tell him that we're spending the evening alone, spends all of his waking hours at the store even when my husband asks him to leave. At first, I thought he was just a lonely kid and we felt bad for him as it was obvious that he had no friends his own age. Now that we've known him for some time, however, I think his problems are far more serious than that.
Firstly, his list of physical maladies is a mile long and, to be completely frank, utterly imagined. He has bursts of intense anger when we don't include him in our plans and at other seemingly random times. He's attempted suicide once, though it was completely non-serious surface wounds and threatens to do so again when he is turned away. He does badly in school even though he's a smart kid, mostly because of his very frequent doctor and hospital visits (like his most recent dairy allergic reaction that lasted for 3 days, the hospital turned him away). And he has this strange way of sabotaging himself, being clever and adept one minute and then, nearing completion of a task, fouling it up somehow. His parents are obviously aware of the problem since they take him to therapy every week. I think they're relieved that he spends so much time with us now.
I don't know what his diagnosis is but his attention seeking illnesses and episodes smacked of BPD to me as well as his anger over abandonment and fear of being alone. I'm writing to ask if there is anything that my husband and I can do that could aid him, a way of speaking to him or treating him that would help him modify his behavior and perhaps develop greater self-awareness as well as establish boundaries in a way that he will understand. We don't want to exacerbate the problem by handling situations poorly but we're also beginning to feel exhausted by his mood swings and dependence.
Seems to me there are plenty of guides out there for identifying problems in the people around you but not very much in the way of guidance in daily dealings. Any help you could throw my way would be most appreciated.
Set limits. Draw a line and don't let him cross it. As for 'making things worse'...that's called agency and it is part of the co-dependent dynamic into which the child has drawn you. You cannot be responsible for, nor can you manage another person's emotions.
Remember, you are the adults and he's a troubled kid. It sounds like the style of boundarilessness he is presenting would have any aid you provided make you more vulnerable to his "attentions".
It's extreme and kind of "Hollywood" -- kind of the way Fatal Attraction depicts violent borderlines -- , but rent the movie "Single White Female" and see if anything looks familiar to you. Just a point of reference.
