I Was At My Wit's End.

I was at my wit's end. It just wasn't like Josh to be so secretive. Where was this coming from? Something was bothering him and making him edgy and I had to know what it was.

My son, Josh, had always been straightforward with me about almost everything he did. But about a month ago, things changed. He would close himself off and hardly ever saw his friends anymore. That alone concerned me. But when I got the cell phone bill, I knew something was amiss. In the text message detail portion of the statement, there were a lot of numbers I didn't recognize coming to and going from his phone.

I also noticed that he didn't answer a lot of his friends' text messages and then they stopped coming. I asked about the text messages to and from the unknown number and he got defensive. He had never refused to tell my about anyone he had contact with before.

Since both our phones were a year old, we were eligible for new phones. I took advantage of that to set up a way to find out what was going on. I got one of the latest of the popular phones on the market for Josh with some special software on it and got one for me that would receive his forwarded text messages. I gave it to him and then waited.

I didn't have to wait long. The messages started coming in very soon after his new phone became active and the old one was deactivated. And, boy, did they come!

The first didn't tell much. "Well are you going to meet me". No indication of who this person was. Then the response. "No I've told you a hundred times". It was clear Josh didn't like this person. Why was he even texting with whoever it was? Then it began to unfold what was happening. "I see everything you do and who with". "Meet me in the park or Ill be telling everyone you did anyway" (Josh) "Leave me alone".

The messages continued to get worse. It became clear that this person was stalking him. I thought it was just a girl at school, but the more I read the messages, the more it was clear it was an adult. That made sense because only an adult would have been able to cause the kind of changes in Josh I had seen in such a short time. The message that told me it was time to put the cards on the table was "don't tell anyone wont do any good no one will believe you or do anything".