Has he witnessed your fear throughout his childhood, your startled jumps, your shrinking acquiescence to his rage or demands, as you try to forget and move on but never quite deal? Did you ever really gain that belief in yourself, in your power and strength? ‘Cause it’s there Lea. You are not a punching bag, or a door mat.

You are a proud mother, a woman who broke away from a long history of uncontrolled anger and misplaced blame, and you will control your children, until they must learn to control themselves. Teach them you don’t shy from asking for help, show them by seeking help. Teach them you don’t shy from the consequences of your past, and they must experience their own consequences. Teach them to be responsible for their actions, and make the most of this life you’ve worked SO HARD to give them.

Here’s my comparison of an experience, so you see the options. Your son is an individual, different from my example, but perhaps you can see in all the murky mess the hope and belief in one another we maintained:

One of my younger sister’s chose a different way than I to deal with our childhood history, mother’s depression and blame towards her past for her ever present unhappiness, constantly looking to her children to rant of her childhood, past failed marriages and the most current one that dismally ended in death which increased her disbelief in relationships, mistrust of men, disappointment in men and loved ones who abandoned her, spiraling downward from a physically and emotionally abusive past, never admitting to herself the need to move onward and heal, to own her past, learn from it, and keep moving, leaning on us constantly to raise my other little sisters, to provide for the family, and prove to mom we weren’t like her past family or past men, we were constant, we were loving, we were supportive but at the same time we resented in are later teen years the burden she guilted onto us so regularly.

Love wasn’t free, wasn’t a gift, wasn’t equally shared and valued. Starting at age 12, my sister got angry, volatile, always blaming others for her mistakes, seeking love and intimacy from the wrong “friends,” desperate for love and acceptance and for someone to just be in control of her life, for she could not be, beating and threatening her family, ripping apart the house, threatened with abandonment, truly suffering at the manipulation of others but truths hiding in years of lies, lying to therapists’ mandated by the court, believed as the victim solely and never as a child who lashes out from disparity and pain and manic depression, 1000 watt smile blinding all counselors, attending Eckerd’s reform camp for “troubled teens” and graduating under a false dedication to heal and take control of her own life. She did not own her mistakes then, she did not own her pain then, she didn’t know who she was and she truly believed some events happening that did not and victimized herself over and over. Everyone else gave up, as she seemed the bad seed of the family. But just one sister became her world, her rock, she knew love, she knew compassion, she knew honesty and the expectation of honesty in return, of hard work, of dedicated reform everyday.

Eleven years later since graduating Eckerd’s Camp, she still works everyday to master her anger, to feel compassion and love first, to not lash out, to not hate, to understand humanity and to love herself and trust in the love of those closest to her. It’s a daily recovery, a daily reform. For any that have experienced violence.

Your son may fool the therapists, may lie, may cheat the system, may fall through the cracks, may tell himself and others it’s all your fault, may fall down repeatedly, Lea, but YOU will always love him, and he must always know this. You may not like all his actions, but you love him, no matter what. For all the treatment or consequences thrown at him, none of it will seem worth mastering and surviving if he does not know someone is at the other end, accepting and loving and knowing there is a light inside him worth delving through the darkness.

Prayers to you.

When you stop him – stop him. It’s final. You take it away and he can scream and punch things and say whatever he likes, but it’s gone and he will only continue to lose the privileges that you provide him. Perhaps there is a male role model in his life, or one that you can introduce to him – it’s more important than I had originally thought.

My brother is 16 now and rarely has any sort of violent outbursts. Lots of it is due to my stepdad showing him what it means to be a good man, but the only person who can stop an outburst is my mom, because he knows that she will do whatever it takes to keep him safe and happy, even if that means making him furious.

Mothers cannot stand aside or back down when faced with violence and abuse from their children. They can only love them, and in doing so, force them to face the consequences of their actions so they may learn from them.

Others with more wisdom have given advice, so I won’t add to that. I only wanted to say thanks for sharing your story and for showing others that getting out of the cycle IS possible!