We had to pick our son up from Youth Services
the next night. They were only willing
to keep him for 24 hours. No matter what
we said, they would’t keep him any longer and we were very nervous about
bringing him home. As soon as he walked
into the room, it was obvious that he was NOT even remotely happy to see us.
A therapist was supposed to
help us resolve our conflicts before we went home, but not one thing was accomplished during that
hour. Our son was just as defiant as ever and was unwilling to see that the path he was on was not going to get him anywhere in
life. As far as he was
concerned, his problems were not his fault.
If we, as parents, would just give in and let him have every privilege
he desired—whether he earned it or not--he wouldn't be bored. If he weren’t bored, he would not have to get
so upset, we would not have any problems with him, and he would not have to
resort to arguing with us, or smoke pot.
Nothing was breaking through his walls and finally, the therapist gave up
and just told our son that if he kept acting like he was, he was going to end
up in prison someday.
We were on our own again and the first thing
he said to us as we walked out of the building was: “I want to do two things tonight—-go to Ian’s
house to get my money, and then go buy myself a pizza.”
We had never heard the name Ian before. When we asked him who Ian was and why he had
our son’s money, he said, “He is my friend and he has my money because I didn’t want YOU to take it away from me.”
We offered to drive him to Ian’s house,
but made sure that he knew one of us would have to go in the house with him. He said, “No.
I am walking there because I don’t want you to know where he lives.”
He seriously thought we would have to let him go to a mysterious
location to see some kid, who had his “money” and who is probably a drug dealer--because he said so. Not surprisingly, no one went to Ian’s house
that night and Ian still had our son’s “money”.
We did buy pizza for dinner, and he thought he would play Starcraft on the
computer while he ate it. Unfortunately, for him, we had restored our computer to
its original factory settings during one of his recent departures and his game was
no longer installed. He screamed at me
and said that he was going to make me or the person who restored the
computer pay him back for his game because HE certainly wasn’t going to pay to buy it again. This made absolutely no
sense because he still had the original installation discs.
I said, “Look, you weren’t here when we had to fix the computer. If you had been
here, you could have made sure that the game was backed up. Nobody deleted it purposely. If it is gone, it is gone. Reinstall it, play it, and get over it. It is not the end of the world, but it IS the end
of this discussion.”
He began screaming at us about everything
from the computer to every single unfair thing that had happened to him in his
horrible life, lately.
It was like Déjà Vu of the night that we brought him home from
rehab two years before. He did
everything in his power that night to show that he was resuming control and seemed to be doing the same thing this time, too. That night, two years ago, we thought we had
made a big mistake in bringing him home and now, we felt exactly
the same way. This time, he begged us to
take him back to Youth Services because he just couldn’t stand being at our
house with us.
Well, I would have liked to take him back, too. But knew that
wasn’t an option unless things got really out of hand. I told him that the best idea would be for
him to just go to his room, be quiet, and let everything drop for the night.
Needing to have the last word, he demanded
that I drive him to the courthouse Monday morning to get his emancipation
started. This made me want to
laugh. He wanted to emancipate, but he
needed his mom to drive him to the courthouse.
Yes, he was definitely ready to live on his own.
The next day, I did not wake him up. I felt that if he was mature enough to be
emancipated, he should be able to get himself up in the morning. And, there was no way I was going to drive him to the courthouse. He slept until 3:30 in the afternoon. We said about 20 words to each other, if
that, until my husband got home from work.
Suddenly, my son needed
his ear buds and I was supposed to know where they were. He said they were in his backpack and that
since we had taken his backpack from him, we needed to tell him what we had
done with them. Well, we had already given him back his I-Pod and everything that was in his backpack (minus his clothes, a Chapstick,
and a multi-tool) and I seriously could not remember if there were ear buds attached
to the I-Pod or not. In his mind, I
stole them from him because I always take away everything that he loves. He informed me that now I owed him $30.00 for the lost ear buds!
He sure seemed to have a huge need for money. First, the Ian money and then the Starcraft money. Now, I magically owed him $30.00. I always seemed to be blamed for everything that he couldn't find, lost, or caused to be gone from his
life. He said that if I didn’t give him the money, he would take something of mine and keep it or break it to make us equal on what I supposedly owed him. I told him
that he had no right to take or touch anything of mine just because HE misplaced something of his.
At that point, he informed me that I also had
to give him the $2.00 worth of change that the police took away from him when
they took his marijuana, lighter, and pipe. The police also stated at that time that he should obviously not
be allowed to have money and I didn’t really think anything had changed
since then to make him trustworthy with money. But, he made me want to just throw 200 pennies at
him and say, here is your money. Good
luck with it.
Instead I diverted
the discussion away from that money and reminded him that as a minor, living
under his parent’s roof, he does not OWN anything. I said, “Every single thing in this house,
whether it was given to you or bought by you, does NOT BELONG to you. It belongs to your Dad and I. When you turn 18, if you move out, you can
then take your stuff with you. In the
meantime, if you try to retaliate by touching anything of mine, I will call the
police and they will tell you that you don’t have a leg to stand on in this
situation. You will not be allowed to
steal or damage anything that I own without suffering the consequences.”
He finally seemed to feel that he had pushed
the situation with me as far as he could and turned his anger toward my husband,
who had been backing me up on everything. My son said that he wished he could go lock himself in his room so that he
wouldn’t have to look at his dad and want to punch him in the face as bad as he did
right then. He probably really wanted to hit me, but knew that there was no way he wouldn't get flattened by my husband if he did that.
Then, he got a little bit smart alecky and said, "Oh, yeah, but I can't lock myself in my room because I don't have a DOOR! It did you a lot of good to take away my door. It didn't stop me from smoking pot, did it?"
I thought, "It also didn't stop you from getting charged with possession and drug paraphernalia either, Mr. Smart A."
Finally, to show me what he thought about not
owning anything, he threw everything out of his room that wasn’t important to
him. He kept his TV, X-Box, and guitars. We
gathered it all up and either threw it away, or put it in the basement. I guess the next time he wants something that
was in the hall, we will have to remind him that he threw it all away that
night.
And then, around 10:30 that night, he came
into the kitchen and asked
me if we had any French fries. As he
cooked his food, he was animated and conversational as if he hadn’t just been
raging at me a few hours before.
His moods cycle so rapidly, that we
almost never know what to expect.
No matter how hard we try to make
things better, though, it seems like we should always expect the worst.
I am tired of the worst.
Very tired.
