Patricia Grisafi
Teenagers can be a lot — especially when they’re plugged into their video games. House on fire? Forget about it. This level must be finished.
One Redditor with a son on the spectrum came up against this problem when her son’s friend literally refused to get off the gaming system — and also refused to leave the house. The OP called the police, but was that the right move in this situation?
“My son, Brian [13] has a friend, Tom [13] who I really dislike. To put it in the gentlest possible terms, Tom has never been disciplined a single day in his life, and is under the impression that there are and never will be any consequences for his actions. However, since Brian is on the spectrum, very few other children want to hang out with him. I have tried to tell him that Tom is using him for his Nintendo Switch, but he is unable to process that. Every time Tom comes over, he’ll hog the Switch to play one of the games (often times a single player game).”
The OP says that over the weekend, Tom came over for a sleepover and hogged the game for the entire time. By the next day, Brian reached his limit and told Tom to go home. Basically, it become clear that Tom was not going to leave the house.
“I walked in to find Tom, as usual, mouth breathing at the screen. I told him I had to drive him home, and Tom responded that he’d walk (it’s like two miles). Then I told him that he had to go home, and the kid legitimately looked me in the eye and said, ‘No, I don’t think I will.’ He actually tried to pull off the Captain America line. I then called his mother who didn’t pick up. Finally, I unplugged the machine from the wall causing his game to turn off, but he attached the controller to the handheld part and sat on Brian’s beanbag chair, again impervious to anything we said.”
“At my limit, I went into the other room and called the police. Since we live in a small town, the police officer (a good friend of ours) came right over. He walked up to Tom and said the there had been complaints of trespassing, which Tom responded to by saying he was invited. The officer looked at me, and I assured him that we had asked him to go home. Then the officer asked if he wanted to be charged with misdemeanor trespassing. Tom finally got his act together and was taken home by the police, but on his way out I told him that he was never going to step foot in my house again. I told him not to talk to Brian at school and not to text Brian privately.”
“An hour later Tom’s mother called me and shrieked over the phone until hoarse about how horribly I had treated her son. I stayed calm and told her I had called her, but she said she was busy in a meeting and couldn’t talk. I guarantee that Tom fed her some lie-filled story, but I didn’t have the energy, told her to get her sh*t together as a parent, and just hung up on her. I’ve received dozens of anger-filled texts, both from Tom’s mother and numbers I don’t know. I wouldn’t care what those trashy parents think, but I wonder if they have a point.”
Do they have a point? Or is it a little extra to call the cops?
“NTA. You took all the proper steps. At that point it was down to calling the police or physically dragging the little brat out of your home. Both for the child’s safety and for you not getting sued, calling the police was the right thing to do,” said Memento_Mori420.
“Ah wellllll we’re missing a few proper steps. Let’s remember these kids are 13, and at no point did OP set any proactive expectations or outline possible consequences despite knowing the trend of Tom’s behavior. Curiously the parental role is missing entirely here. Kid did as he wanted for hours on end. And while calling police was appropriate, it’s highly strange not to alert his mother of that plan. Not so she could intervene but because he is a child in OPs home and that communication would be expected. He is not 16, he is 13, and the fact that OP failed to set any expectations or get ahead of this, and instead allowed this for hours into the next day, telling their own son to be assertive when they themselves had been nothing of the sort…Nah. A few proper steps were certainly missed. Kids can be AHs but we still have to be parents, and OP missed a few crucial steps in protecting their kid from this situation,” explained Ladyughsalot1.
“NTA, in my opinion. I have a brother who is also on the spectrum and it would make me very angry if someone he considered a friend would take advantage of him like that. Obviously calling the police seems a little extreme, but Tom wasn’t listening to any reason and he needed to learn that his actions have consequences. You have a right to protect your son and if calling your police friend to give Tom some form of discipline was the only method, then I agree,” said AblazedSapphire.
“If the harassing texts continue from the mother and from numbers of people you don’t know please contact the police again about harassment oh, this woman gave your number out to strangers for the specific purpose of harassing you,” advised FortuneWhereThoutBe.
“I have to vote YTA – you could have prevented this entire situation from happening in 20 ways before it escalated to this. You could have put the switch away before Tom came over. You could have taken the switch away before bedtime. YOU could have been the one to tell Tom the sleepover was over instead of letting Brian be reduced to tears after an hour of begging Tom. You could have taken Tom home yourself. I’m glad you finally put the kibosh on Tom and Brian hanging out, but you should have been doing a heck of a lot more than you already were before you got to the point of having to call the cops on a 13 year old,” said Embarrassing-Fig.
“YTA. I’m sorry, you called the police on a 13 year old for trespassing after calling his mother once? You chose the nuclear option here. The kid wasn’t being violent or destructive, he was just being…annoying? I completely understand the social fallout you’re experiencing over this. Hopefully you’ll get some better coping skills for your son’s sake. You already said he has trouble making friends. Do you really think parents are going be clamoring to send their kids to your house now when all it apparently takes is one missed call from you to get law enforcement involved,” asked sam-mulder.
Featured Image: Unsplash
