w.o.w. – Firstly, you and your husband did the right thing by not locking him out, don’t worry about the result. second, you mentioned in a previous post that “you keep talking, even if you don’t think they’re listening”; that really depends on what you are saying. At this point, the only things you should be saying are words of support and acceptance. Trying to reason with him or show him what he is doing is harmful to him is not going to work; Has it worked so far? so when you say to “keep trying and maybe something will click”, as long as he doesn’t trust you nothing will click. Most people in your situation, including myself, have tried all the regular parenting approaches, the problem is regular parenting usually doesn’t work on broken children. You need to change your game plan completely. You need to be a little “twisted”. I’ll explain with a mashal.
It turns out that when the flimsy cheap cables were made in some third world country, someone twisted the cables and they were backwards.