My cousin is in his senior year in high school, and his younger brother in 9th grade is out of control. His brother has attacked him and threatened to kill him in his sleep.

A few weeks ago, this younger brother’s girl friend broke up with him, and he went beserk and hit himself in the head and started bleeding and went to the emergency room.

Today, I was told that the younger brother had his phone taken away from him from his parents as punishment, and he ended up arguing and attacking his older brother. His older brother now has knots in his head from getting hit, and went to a friends house.

The advice I need is- their parents are looking for a solution to get him under control. He has major anger issues and I fear for the whole family. I heard of boarding school, but really have no clue about them. Furthermore, I’m not sure if he needs psychological counseling, or if that will only make things worse.

Has anyone been in this situation before? Or dealt with boarding school? What other options do the parents have?
counseling and/or youth shelter, residential treatment center, or juvenile detention.

Parents could probably look into having him go to one of those places for a weekend or just 2 days, kind of a "this is where you could end up if you keep doing this stuff". I know it happened a few times at the youth shelter I interned at.
I agree with Matt- see if you can get them the numbers to mental health practitioners and youth centers around their area. This kid needs serious intervention- he’s not going to get better on his own.

As a problem child I can say a few things

1) go easier on the kid. jesus fuck. Quit trying to punish him. Its not working. Give him more positive attention.

2) keep guns locked up. sleep with locked doors if hes threatening that.

3) give him fucking positive attention. theres no reason to try to punish a kid who just gets psychotic. hes an adult @ grade 9 in his mind. treat him like one.

4) Force him to spend some one on one time with his dad / mom…. which ever one he talks to the least. make sure its doing something fun… spring training baseball game, football game, shit like that…..

As far as how big of a problem I was… I got expelled from middle school and been arrested in 3 counties so I can relate.

dont lock the kid up. thats just lazy ass parenting.

truth. when you bar a kid up, all he thinks about is how rejected he feels, and how he doesnt belong, and will use his anger as a tool of self medication, or atleast thats what i did, so i know thats true
thanks everyone for your input. I will relay this message to them, and hopefully things get better.
I don’t know anything about boarding schools but the kid at least needs to see a counselor. Untrained parents shouldn’t be trying to deal with this on their own, they have no idea how to handle things.
untrained parents have been dealing with these issues for centuries.
he has an aggressive form of ADHD, I had it as well as a few friends. He should def. get counseling. I also think he has a serious anger management problem.

.
Violence if this type must be looked at in a large context. Often the family itself is responsible for creating this consequence in younger people, as you read above in the post I outlined.

The entire family must be scrutinzed, but this often doesn’t happen, and the young individual feels punished when sent to get treatment while life continues onward as it always did.

They resist because they often see the hypocrisy.

Parents must be involved themselves in learning how to cope with their own problems and feelings if they expect a young individual to do so.

Something to think about. Most families deny a problem exists and create what is known as a "scapegoat" One child is "The good child, receiving good grades, attempting to win love by being perfect or helping to control the unstable family dynamic, while another child may be violent, which in it’s own way difuses family difficulty, and yet another child may be the "joker" — or the "sad clown" who tells jokes, constantly trying to amuse and take people’s attention away from the dysfunction in the family.

There are numerous patterns and roles. The bottomline, to help your brother means everyone being involved in order to find the common denominator. Maybe his behavior is an isolated issue concerning only him, or — more likely than not, everyone is involved.
Metallic Blue,

I came to the realization that my cousin’s family does really need to step in. I’ll be traveling close to them during spring break, and hope to be able to talk to the "problem child" to see why he’s acting the way he is. I don’t believe he has an "outlet" to talk to, and perhaps this is where I may step in to help- though I wanted to avoid it before because it’s not my intermediate family. It still doesn’t condone his behavior, but perhaps this will be the start of something better.

Thank you.
the cousins family is already stepping it and could be the root cause of the backlash…. they DEFINITELY have to take of the rose colored glasses and look at themselves

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