Not my child!

We as parents are often trying to find a scapegoat for why our children do what they do. The last person we look at is ourselves. It's hard for a parent to realize that their child can do the negative things that they do,things that may involve stealing, selling drugs, and the most heinous of all acts, rape and murder. I hope and pray that my son doesn't travel down that road, but at this point I'm not so sure. So far he's managed to live up to all my fears and shattered all the pleasantries involved with parenthood. I should have actually seen this coming awhile ago, and did whatever I could have to prevent this from happening. I should have seen the warning signs like when he used to do mean spirited things around the house like flushing my contact lens down the toilet. I should have noticed early on in his childhood that there was a problem and killed it right away.

My son has always done mean spirited things, for whatever reason I don't know but honestly I'm sick of people saying "it's only because he wants your attention". There have been a few times when he did get my attention, like the time he flushed my contact lens down the toilet and laughed about it. He enjoyed watching me stumbling around half blind because I didn't have an extra pair. After an extensive grilling, he admitted that yes he did flush them, only because he wanted to see if they could float! Me, myself I'm old school and don't believe in consulting a child psychologist every time I want to discipline my child, so lets just say after I got through with him he realized that wasn't the wisest move he could have made. However the one moment that did crack me up is when he decided to change his own crappy diaper because I was moving too slow and when I walked in the bedroom to find out what that naked streak was running past the doorway, I almost slipped and busted my ass because this kid had poop everywhere! Since I am a very wise man I acted like I didn't see anything(I don't do well with poop), I got my ass out of that room quick, so his mom could discover this mess on her own and let her clean it up!

These events among others should have given me the clues that I needed to see, that this kid was very conniving, and very sneaky. There are so many things I wish I would have done differently with my son, mainly spending more time with him. My son stays on my mind constantly and I feel like I've failed him as a father in so many ways, but it's hard to give what's not in you to give. How do I turn back the clock and undo the damage that I've done?