Need help. Badly.
A little about me first. 48, M, diagnosed bipolar 1. My son, 16, clearly has been exhibiting behavior that makes me believe he is also bipolar. Found out today he is representing himself on reddit as a 16yr old lesbian. Have NO idea how to proceed. Worried about the duplicity and how long its been going on.
Is he doing this to get more nudes? Could he really want to be a she?
More and more teenagers are acting as somebody else online. We catch my son in lies all the time on the internet, and we have caught his friends as well. I believe it is a coping mechanism to just check out and be somebody else for a while. These kids can not escape people the way we used to be able to growing up. If we had a bad day at school, we could forget about it outside for hours until the street lights came on. Now these children have school issues following them home via chrome books, phones etc... its terrible.
I am constantly catching my 15year old daughter lying to her friends/people on the internet. She has admitted that she does it because she feels like she isn't "interesting enough" for her friends. 🤷🏻♀️You couldnt pay me enough to be a teenager nowadays. I'd ask him why he wants to decieve people in that fashion. See what he says...
As another teenager, your son may be doing it out of fun and trolling on the Internet because he thinks it’s funny. If not, I don’t know if you should really even try to consult to him about it because it would be a heavily awkward topic. Instead of sitting down with him in a serious tone, try to lift up the mood so he feels like he’s not in trouble or stress. But when you do talk about it with him, try not to judge and really listen and remind him that whatever the reason is for him doing things on the Internet, that you still really love and support him either way so he doesn’t feel like he would have to lie.
