A very Stupid Day

Yesterday turned out to be a disappointing and stupid day. It all went fairly well until 3:00 when I went to pick up Salinda from school and she wasn't there. Since her probation had just ended the day before it made me panic. I tried to call her friend and got no answer.

I came home and her friend called me back. Said that she hadn't been in school all day. Then I really started to wonder what was up. I had been home all day except for lunch.... but sure enough, she was in her bed. Her eye was puffy so she didn't go to school. Well, I didn't handle the whole thing particularly well, but the fact that she was furious with ME because now she couldn't go out at night (Our rule is that if you skip school all day, you don't leave the house or have electronics until the next morning). So she reverted back to her horribly nasty self of several months ago and broke every rule -- except leaving the house and using the computer because it is password protected and I refused to log her in. The conversations we had were less than pleasant and she continues to accept no responsibility. It was perfectly fine for her to hide in her bed without telling us she was skipping school and she should be able to go out because not being able to go out is if you're SICK and she wasn't sick. The fact that if she wasn't sick she should have gone to school seems to not register with her.

So she refused to eat dinner with the family, cranked her music -- not super loud, but loud enough to be annoying, helped herself to supper to eat in her room without our permission, and then watched TV nearly all night long.

My theory is that she is feeling guilty about something -- because that is how she acts when she does, but I think it's lies she's telling her friends, not us, at this point.

So we will see if her mood has broken. She wants something, and I purposefully am waiting to see how today goes before deciding what to do about yesterday. I parented her, she tortured me back, typical of a 13 year old. Except she's almost 16....

I'm sure she has big plans for the day, but we'll see what happens this morning. I'm not as interested in giving her consequences as I am in trying to understand what is going on and help her through it. But I am not going to give the other kids the impression that they can skip school and then spend the evening out and about....

And on another not so positive note, Mike had gotten a job about 10 days ago right before he was released from jail. He had Bart give him rides to work on Tuesday and Wednesday. Last night at 5:10 they called from work to find out why he wasn't there. We haven't heard from him since Thursday night.....

Sigh.