Update

Nice title, huh?

Well, John called about ninety minutes ago and we had a weird conversation. It went back and forth between him telling me that he wanted my permission to stay out longer and him telling me he that he was hungry and cold.

I offered to pick him up even though he was only a mile away. I suggested that he needed to be home and have his medicine and get settled down.

He finally told me where he was and I went to get him -- more for my sake than his -- so that I wouldn’t have to worry about where he was.

When I picked him up and nicely stated that I was ready to talk to him whenever he was ready. The conversation that we had from then on would make anyone’s head spin. I wish I would have had the foresight to record it because a therapist would have had a very interesting time interpreting the whole thing, if they could have. It was a long hour of back and forth weirdness -- things like “aren’t you going to talk to me?” followed by “stop talking to me.” Or “take me to the psych hospital” followed by “they don’t know anything at the psych hospital.” I was blamed for being a bad parent, told that he was sure someday we would give up on him, told he needed to be in a “normal family.” It was a lengthy up and down back and forth conversation.

When it looked like he finally had calmed down, I came home and found Salinda to be on the computer which she knows she isn’t supposed to do when there is an unresolved conflict. She has the tendency to walk away from issues and pretend that eventually they will go away without dealing with them. So I have to force her to apologize and resolve issues. Often when she finalize does, I will apologize as well, even if I have nothing to apologize for. But when she is being rude to me, acting as if I don’t exist, starting huge issues in this house like John’s blow up and then pretending like she doesn’t have to deal with it, she is not going to be taking advantage of the privileges that our family offers her -- which include electronic stimulation. Unfortunately unless I do this she will never resolve the issue and learn that you can avoid people when there is conflict and hide from them and hope it goes away.

I’m really wishing it was bedtime. There are some days when it just doesn’t work to try to hold to a standard and teach kids things. I wonder how sane it is to try to reason and make sense of things to these kids. It seems futile most of the time. Someday I certainly hope that someone gets something I’m trying to teach them.