All good reading from Lilith, SS and silentsoul!

I have just a few things to add about my nephew that touches on things said above. First.......Lilith, my sister does (or I should say did) almost exactly what you do......she hugs Dylan all the time and tells him she loves him no matter what. She tries to sit and talk with him on a level equal to his age...and tells him (and he knows this) that they can talk about ANYTHING! She's let many an insignificant thing pass (like coming in 1/2 hour late or "accidently" swearing when he thought she didn't hear him.....oh hell, she's even bought hair stripper to strip his natural color and dyed it white because he "HAD" to have it) in lieu of taking on the bigger, more significant problems......the absolute biggest right now being his "no care" attitude towards school. He had to go to summer school this past summer in order to move to the next grade. He passed by the skin of his teeth because she took him there....left only enough time for him to complete his class.....and picked him up immediatley following. And before they went home she spoke to his teacher and got his assignments and took him home and sat while he completed them immediately! Otherwise he wouldn't have gone....or if he did he would have told her he didn't get any assignments or that he already did them...or whatever! Now.....he's back in school and failing miserably already...in the first marking period! With everything that's been happening lately...she says she feels like SHE is being punished and he doesn't have a care in the world! He could literally care less about any of this!

To make things worse....she thinks she can trace the start of this behavior back to when he didn't get picked for the basketball team. He'd played basketball from the time he was 5. In elementary school, he played all the time and he even joined a local club to be able to play after school. He loved it and was very good at it. When he left elementary school and went to middle school he was a star player on the clubs team. He was then sent to the highschool.....where he is now and was last year.......and he wasn't picked for the school team. Sis went to the school and told them this was going to crush him and begged them to at least let him try out again. The coach never got back to her and as suspected it did crush him and ever since then (she thinks) it all started going down hill! He quit his club team and discovered girls and all hell broke loose! She's not sure (yet) if he's doing drugs...but suspects he might be and is getting a test kit to test him. She knows the ramifications of what just the idea that she wants to test him will do to her relationship (or whats left of it) with him....but she feels it's the only responsible thing as a parent to do at this point!

I talked to hubby about this and he said he vividly remembers when he was Dylan's age....and all he ever thought about was sex! Well...that and drugs and rock and roll.......and he was serious!

I told her.........get counseling......get help......and if she can think of ANYTHING that I might do to help, all she has to do is ask and it will be done.

Just NEED to say thanks for the insight folks...and for letting me ramble in appearance of hijacking this thread...of which I had no intention of doing.......but it seemed like a good thread to lay this all out on!

So sorry silentsoul! Seems no matter how well a parent might prepare for the best life for his/her child......things can go wrong. I'll not say that the media has no interjection into the upbringing of a child.....but I think it's the rarity that a child will go totally astray from just the effects of a media induced concept! There are so many other "outside" factors to contend with.....not to mention the inner changings that an adolescent endures! One can NEVER be sure if your child will be part of a statistic.....no matter how well he/she is brought up! Seems children will grow and change into themselves regardless of our best intentions! If they "make it".....we take pride! If they somehow "fail"....we blame ourselves.

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Minds are like parachutes. They only work when they are open.

~Thomas Dewar~