Actually I hate to tell you this, but when it comes to teens and cutting it is not abnormal behavior. I had to deal with this in my eldest son last school year. Once I was finally able to get him to talk about it, I had learned that there are a lot of teens who do this every year. His reason for doing this was, and this is his word, “To see how far I (his mother) would go with this.” When I had noticed the slashes on his arms, and there were quite a few, I had taken him to the emergency room. He ended up spending the night, because he refused to speak with anyone about what was going on. Finally the next morning after I showed back up, he still had not spoken to anyone. I asked the doctor if I could speak to him alone, and they granted my request. I asked him why he is not talking, and he told me that he does not like discussing his problems with people. I then told him that he does not answer a few basic questions that they are planning on putting him in a mental institution. I went on to tell him; there he will be forced to talk about this. He did not like hearing that, and knows that what I tell him is the truth. I have always been honest with my children in everything. Once the doctor came back into the room, he finally opened up and told them why. In his case, he just wanted to see how far the adults would take this problem, and he never expected it to go this far.
After that night I learned a few things. There are a lot of teens who do cutting, anyone who is reading this, please check your teen’s arms, legs, and other places that they can hide. Both of my sons wear long sleeve shirts, and jeans even in the summer, and that was how he was able to hide what he was doing to his body. After that for quite a while I locked up all my husband’s knives in a safe, and only just recently brought them back out.
You did well in telling your son to report it to the counselor; because that was the only way it was brought to my attention. If my son’s school did not call me, I don’t know how long my child would have kept doing this to himself.
I have noticed that after this, my son has finally balanced out in his emotions, before they were….well let’s just say very moody and cranky, but with him, he was even like that as a baby.
