Kyle will complete his Junior year of college and, after making all kinds of other plans and suggesting several ideas, will end up living at home for the summer. He will plan to save his money but he will spend it. He will return for his senior year, get a B average, and work a lot of hours at his on campus job. Regardless of my unending reminders to build his resume with leadership experiences, he will not see the need. He will watch between 47 and 57 movies in theatres and will watch 150 movies on DVD during 2007. He will wonder where his time and money have gone.
Well, this boy surprised me. He did complete his Junior year but did not live at home for the summer. And he almost got a 4.0 the first semester of his senior year. However, the rest is pretty accurate, although I think the movie count was higher than I predicted. He's seen 6 in theatres in the last week alone.
Rand will graduate from high school, having done fairly well. He will have made plans to leave home, but when it comes time to, probably won’t. He will spend a great deal of time lying around and spend most of his income on non-essentials (if he has a job). I will either choose not to intervene or to intervene, but either way it will take me to the next level of insanity.
I was right on target with this one. And I have chosen to intervene and I am at the next level of insanity.
Mike is the only one I cannot predict with any certainty whatsoever. WIll he serve time for stealing the car? Will he take off the day he turns 18? Will he graduate? Will he maintain a job? My only accurate predictions are that he will live in the moment, act impulsively, be confused a great deal of the time, and never be sure exactly how he has gotten himself into the current mess he is in.
Well, at least i didn't try to predict much with Mike. I can answer the questions. He went to CD treatment which was unsuccessful for stealing the car. He took off soon after he was 18. He didn't graduate. He never did get a job. And the rest, of course, was very very true.
John will not be allowed to return to our home. He won’t maintain his stay in foster care. He will be in a facility and may not earn the privilege of having contact with us that his social worker is stating he must earn. He will continue to be assaultive and angry and his mental illness will control him. UNLESS, which very well might happen, God intervenes in a major way and to this end we pray.
I was right about several things. John did not maintain his stay in foster care. He was in a facility but did earn the privilege of having contact with us. His mental illness has controlled him off and on. We hope that his new placement will be a part of God's intervention in his life.
Jimmy will take driver’s ed sometime during 2007. He will not pass his driver’s test the first time. He may not pass it at all, but he will be taught to drive. He may get his permit. He might possibly get his license. He will argue with me daily, torment his siblings, and yet at the same time be the most helpful kid in our home. He will charm the socks off of every adult that he meets outside of our home and he will push some of his teachers closer to retirement with his incessant naughtiness at school.
Wow, I was right on target with everything there. He has taken his permit test 4 times. He still hasn't past it. And the rest is exactly as I predicted.
Salinda will be best friends with several different girls and “go out” with several different guys. They will break up, make up, and argue. There will be a lot of drama. She will continue to get good grades and will excel in any sport she tries. She will find me tolerable 3 of every 7 days and maybe love me one out of every 10.
Got all that right -- but didn't predict all the rest of the junk that would happen with her -- breaking the law and most of our rules, changing schools, being in a residential setting and detention. Guess it is a good thing I didn't know that.
Ricardo will excel in soccer and football. He will continue to use his smile to attract every girl within a mile of him. He will refuse to try to read and finish the 5th grade as a 13 year old who reads at a second grade level. He will be sneaky as ever with his misdeeds and always be able to make me smile when his “mayan stoic look” bursts into a big grin.
Everything I predicted here is true -- except that I didn't predict his great success in wrestling, or that he would move up to 7th grade and become a varsity wrestler.
Mercedes will morph from her pleasant and mother-loving self into a teenager, leaving me behind in a myst of hormonal exhaust. She will test everything we say. She will begin to use makeup with our permission and will be drop dead gorgeous. She’ll start orthodontic work. She will (crossing my fingers here) remain thorough in getting her chores done and will save more money than she spends.
Well, she lost her chance to wear make-up in 2007 because of some choices she made, but the rest is exactly accurate. She's still sweet 80% of the time, but the other 20% leaves me shaking my head and trembling with frustration.
Tony will either realize how important it is that he modify his behavior or there will be some kind of upcoming changes for him which may include a psych hospitalization or something. He will go back and forth from being very defiant to very loving and tender hearted. He will confuse and frustrate us and yet somehow do things every once and a while that make us want to hang on.
Well, Tony hasn't changed much, but hasn't gotten worse either, so he remained at home. In fact, there are some days when we think he might be improving, but then we change our minds.
And Dominyk will make me laugh every day. He will say or do something hilarious and provide comic relief to our family. The medication he is on will continue to make him gain weight like Tim Allen in The Santa Clause until they switch him to something else and we go through another upheaval. The school will patiently work with him even though many will have either no or grey hair by the end of the year. He will remain our baby and still give me a hug every day even though he reminds me he is getting too big. And he insists he will be going through puberty.
Well, he hasn't made me laugh every day, but almost. His weight is leveling off, I think, and there have been no med changes because nothing else works. He is in a new school that is doing very well with him, and despite his predictions, he has not hit puberty.
And of course, I didn't predict Leon and Wilson's arrival, though it was about a year ago now that I saw their picture for the first time. Who would have known they would bring such joy.
And Bart and I? I predicted the truth --
that our big God would give us the strength we need, our friends would support us, and our kids would provide us with enough joy amidst the challenges to make it worthwhile.
And thus it came to pass...
No comments:
Post a Comment