Tonight at this moment I feel like a miserable failure. Now, for all of those who want to start sending me encouraging emails telling me that I’m great, yada yada yada, you can if you want, but the truth is that tomorrow morning I will wake up feeling better. I always do. The verse, “Sorrow may last for a night, but joy comes in the morning” was totally written for/about me. No matter how bad things seem at night, by morning they always look better. “morning by morning new mercies I see.”
Our first full day together as a family and I feel like I screwed up bad. I am trying SO hard not to be a control freak and trying to give my teens more freedom, but I am caught up in this “gang wannabee” look that John says is his style and I just can’t make myself support it. The baggy pants, bandana in the pocket, hat turned sideways, rap-singer, gangsta look isn’t to me, just about taste. It’s about him putting himself in danger and giving himself an unnecessary bad reputation. In our small town, it is going to be hard for him to get a job or to get back into public school with that image. It just isn’t something that is tolerated much here. So, I have concluded that I will not prevent him from dressing that way, but I will not buy it. That was not good enough. I told him I would buy him a new pair of jeans today as he only has a couple pair. And the only ones in any store that he would settle for were 38 34s. Now, this kid is 5’5“ on a good day and Rand is 6’5” and Rand wears 32s. So there was no way in the world that the 38 34s were going to work. But he wouldn’t take no for an answer and it turned into a power struggle.
The picture above is EXACTLY how John wants to dress, (even the exact same hat), but he says it’s “his own personal style and look.” Very difficult for me to let go when he represents so much of what we don’t agree with.
He has also been told repeatedly, as have all of our children, that we can’t prevent them from listening to music that we don’t approve of, but that we don’t allow CDs with Parental Advisories in our house. Kyle learned the hard way when we threw away some that he sneakily bought when he was John’s age. But apparently, John feels that I should change the rules for him and that he should be able to keep the music that he somehow purchased or received at the Christian Boys Ranch.
This combined with the fact that John thinks that what we have done with MIke is totally unfair has put him in a horribly pouty mood, and of course, I am the target. It is too much to explain all of our reasoning for what we have done to John, but the fact is that John has never been in as restrictive of an environment as Mike was for 10 months for more than 2 weeks, and John needed it more than Mike, so we figure it would all turn out OK.
On top of it all, no social workers are working, I have several families that need answers from social workers who are on vacation, and I can’t get the information. I have too much work to do and not enough time. I am getting a cold, have a headache and sore throat, and haven’t gotten nearly enough sleep.
In addition I have several appointments tomorrow that I do not look forward to, and I still have bedtime tonight to deal with.
I guess my biggest frustration is that I knew this was going to be hard, but I figured we’d have a couple days of honeymoon, and the very first day has been OH SO HARD. It was tiring to be a control freak trying to prevent everyone from making mistakes that would hurt them, but it is taking me ten times more emotional energy not to be one. NO FAIR! NO FAIR!!!!
2 comments:
I've had some difficulty accepting the way my son dresses, too, for some of the same reasons you mention--that it puts him in danger, that it's not accepted by our community, that he'll have trouble getting a job. I haven't refused to buy the clothes he wants, because basically it's just jeans and t-shirts (mostly black) but I wouldn't have bought the black leather jacket his dad gave him (which he LOVES). Anyway, I let him wear what he wants to wear, but talk to him about the possible consequences. I also let him own the music he wants to own, and read the books he wants to read (I even bought the Satanic Bible for him several years ago, because he was so interested and I wanted to take the forbidden fruit quality out of it). I refuse to listen to music I find objectionable, and I don't buy it for him, but he can have it in the house. I talk to him about it, and what it means, and how I expect him to be a good person regardless of his style, music, or religious and political views. So far, it seems to be working...
My oldest went through this stage too. Then he went through the multi-colored hair stage. Then back to the baggy pants. Sometimes I purchased his clothes for him -- we compromised and split the difference between the correct size and what he wanted. It really wasn't worth the hassle to fight it more than that. Eventually, he realized how ridiculous it looked and how uncomfortable it was to keep pulling up his pants. He quit that look after getting stopped by the cops. He and a friend were "riding" carts in the Wal-Mart parking lot; security got video of him running and his pants falling off. He almost got an indecent exposure charge out of the deal ... except the cops were laughing to hard about it. I think if you talk to him about your concerns and then leave it be, he will eventually come to the same decision. Now it's fun because it ticks Mom off. Take that fun out of it by ignoring it. As to the music, we went through that as well. We agreed that I would not buy it, and we would talk about whatever he bought himself. He could listen on his headphones but it was not to be listened to by his little sister and I didn't want to hear it either. The rule was if he broke those edicts, all of it would be thrown away. As an avid music lover, he wouldn't dare mess with that possibility and abided by our rules.
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