Why is he acting like this?

Let’s just say this. Teenagers are hard. Lot’s of hormones, feelings, acting out, defining themselves and defiance. Parenting is tough, period. But what happens when your child’s behaviour is super sudden and really out of character?

My son was in high school when he started acting differently. Don’t get me wrong, I never thought they would stay the same and I remember my teen years so I was somewhat prepared. The thing was that his behaviour was so out of character that I just knew something was wrong.

When he was around 5 years old he had just a couple of instances where he was in bed going to sleep and he would cry out. When I asked him what was the problem, he kept saying “they won’t be quite”, “they keep talking”. No one was around. The hair on the back of my neck stood right up and I was super worried about what was happening. All of a sudden the blind made a sort of rubbing noise when I moved it and he said that’s it. The thing was that the blind couldn’t move on it’s own so what was it really? It only lasted a few nights that I knew of and then he didn’t cry anymore. But it worried me enough to go online and google “my child is hearing voices”. It led me to Schizophrenia and from that moment on I worried about my son. Years went by and he was so sweet and happy although super shy and often stood on the outskirts of play until he was invited in. Such a sweetheart. Mid-teen years hit and all of a sudden he was defiant, his hygiene and messiness became a problem. Worse though was the fact that he started to seek out drugs, starting with weed, and would use it regularly at school while cutting class. He became angry and his life philosophy became very odd. One dramatic thing was that he wanted to become homeless, and he was angry with us that we had so much while others didn’t. We were by no means wealthy but we were comfortable enough and that was too much for him.

We took him to counsellors which he willingly went to, but over and over we were told he was just being a normal teenager. We were at a loss as to how to help him.