The Old Late Night Blogging to Relieve Stress Routine

I'm sitting on the steps in the dark, blogging out my stress.

Bart is on his way home because of an unexpected funeral that I may or may not further blog about. I will say this much: Being married to a pastor, funerals become part of ones life and they usually don't upset me. But this death has.

Anyway, it's 11:15, long after my usual bedtime. About 2 hours and 15 minutes ago Salinda decided to slap Dominyk hard enough that I heard the slap around the front of the house. I sent her to her room for the night. She decided to be a typical 13 year old girl and get very snotty about it.

However, after about 1/2 hour of nasty attitude vapors pouring out the crack in the door, I decided to go into her room to ask her to turn down her radio. Her attitude was so bad that I called her on it and told her that she needed to shape up. When I asked her if she understood what I was saying, she refused to speak, so I sat on her bed to show her that if we needed to talk we could. She left the room, and, according to John, the house. I am sitting waiting for her to come in.

Now I could do several things right now, and I realize it. Sitting in the dark on the hallway steps doesn't have to be my choice of responses. But I have ruled out a few other possibilities.

1) I could hunt her down. I am doubtful that she has gone very far. She is somewhere in the house or the yard or the garage, lurking around. She learned this from a couple of her older brothers. The game becomes much more fun if I chase because then they hide and run. I've done it before and I'm done with that game. If she was my first to do this, she would be having a much better time because I would be calling for her (much like a lost pet), walking all over the house and yard, and she would be slinking off to make sure she wasn't found. Not interested. BTDT, no thanks.

2) I could go to bed. Now, that is a tempting thought. However, when I initially made the decision not to go to bed, I thought Bart would be home by now, and I fully intend to go to bed when he gets home. But he made a wrong turn and was not home at 11:00 as I had anticipated, but will probably be closer to twelve. Now there is no point in me going in and trying to sleep for 1/2 hour to forty minutes because I won't fall asleep anyway.

3) I could be sitting somewhere with the lights on in the house in a more comfortable chair. Now, this is a good idea. Actually, this is a really good idea. I'm not hiding from her. OK. Give me a second......I'm glad I blogged that. Now I'm in a more comfortable spot.

4) I could go to my room and ignore her and pretend this didn't happen. But I don't want her to think it is OK to clearly disregard my instructions, nor do I want her to think she can leave the house without permission at night and be out in the dark.

5) I could get very angry. I could fret and stew and dream up all kinds of ways to punish her and make her pay. But again, BTDT, not helpful. Not going to bother to get angry tonight.

So, instead, I am waiting up for Bart and most likely, once he gets home, we will go to bed. I get up to go to the bathroom 3-4 times every night and my guess is that she'll sneak into her room as soon as she thinks we're in bed. I will check her room to see if she is there and her consequences will be based on what time she gets in.

I'm not really sure what the best way to handle this is. I could come down on her REALLY hard and have her learn for good that this is not OK, hoping she'd only have to learn it once. That's how we parented Kyle and it worked very well. She is a lot like him. However, the boys between Kyle and Salinda either have organic brain damage or lower IQs, so behavior modification didn't work so well for them, thus we've had to change our parenting style for them. But with her, maybe we need to just make it known that leaving the house without permission for a few hours after dark is not OK and find something that will help her to learn.

But, and I realize I'm rambling and some of you have already given up and decided to skim this post, if anything, it's hard to know the right thing to do with some teenagers. Salinda can be nasty mean when disciplined, and it's a high price to pay. The fact that she may be upset about the funeral as well also muddies the waters.

As I was sitting on the steps playing Spider Solitaire on my cell phone for an hour, I was thinking about how tricky parenting teenagers is. Salinda is one of the most "normal" children we have and yet figuring out what the right thing to do with her is very hard. Maintaining a decent relationship with a teenage girl is like walking on a very thin tightrope.

I still don't know for sure what to do, but I do know that not chasing her down like a wandering dog is a good choice. I know that not getting very angry is a good choice. I wish that I could choose not to worry just a little bit on top of it, but I'm not sure I can control that. I'm sure she's safe, but I hate it that she is putting me in a position where I have to wonder.

Tomorrow morning I have to be up early to greet the guys who are going to take the old stove away and then I have an IEP meeting by phone with Mike's new school at 9. Tonight will be the third night in a row that I'm not going to get the amount of sleep that I need.

Anybody out there still up?