Our first child, arriving at 20 months of age is now 13. Tony has been a constant spokesperson, unknowingly, for the "heredity" portion of the "heredity vs. environment" argument. Since he was our foster son, we met his birthmom and got to know her over the years. His personality is so similar to hers, along with other things, and even though he has lived with us for most of his 13 years, our environment hasn't seemed to impact him much. He is volatile, has an incredibly low fuse, a strong temper, and is getting more aggressive by the day. He is hard to redirect and he has this little magnet inside him that is attracted to conflict and stress and is drawn, as if not by choice, into a heated situation.
For example, my office is the "talking place" when someone gets in trouble. There are two chairs in here that face my desk and while we have more good talks than bad talks, many of the children have been interrogated and consequenced in that chair. Many children have had that chair as their home base for a meltdown and a few of them have been "stuck on stupid" in that very chair. When a child is in the office and the door is shut, nobody is supposed to come in. But it is as though Tony can hear my office door shut from anywhere in the house and makes his way down here quickly to open the door if it isn't locked, or bang on it if it is. And in the middle of a stressful argument, the last thing that we need is Tony's 2 cents, which is usually more like $2.00.
As long as this was contained in the house, Tony was doing OK. But lately it is spreading to other settings. If there is roughhousing at school or church he makes a beeline to the center of it. And then he takes things too far, resulting in him being asked to stay home from youth group this next week and having in school suspension in school on Monday. But he doesn't learn -- as yesterday he came home reporting some scuffle where someone's head was getting shoved into a locker but "nobody saw Mom." Grrr.
Dominyk was our youngest for 11 years and if you have followed my blog very long you have read many stories about this interesting kid. But his new habit is very interesting indeed. After supper, around 7 he disappears and without a word to anyone goes to sleep in the closet of his bedroom and stays there until morning. He likes it in there, he says, and we don't really care where he sleeps if he is quiet, sleeping, safe and in his room. it's just a little odd and hard to get used to, and sometimes it makes me forget his evening medication.
I was dragging out some old pictures the other night (much easier now that you just have to drag them with a mouse click) and thought it would be fun to put some pictures here of the kids before I started blogging. These pics are of Tony and Dominyk at Halloween in 2002 -- when Tony was 7 and Dominyk was 6.
1 comment:
One of my brothers likes to sleep in his closet too. We put him to bed in his bed, and almost every morning we find him in his closet with a blanket. I told him I read about someone else who did that and he said, "Duh, it's cool." OOkay.
Post a Comment