It has been fairly busy this week,even though we try to keep the holidays very low key. On Monday we had Christmas with my oldest daughter and her family,then we had Christmas with my middle daughter and her family.Today my middle son and his family are over for Christmas Eve dinner and we will do our Christmas with them. Tomorrow will be very quiet (and kind of sad). My husband and the two older teens have to work all day. It is their busiest day of the year.It will just be my thirteen year old and myself here for most of the day. That is too quiet.
Youngest son will not be here. He will be spending his Christmas on restriction in his facility. So much for his second Christmas with our family and his first bearing our name. As I said,it will be kind of sad.
The kids at home are doing much,much better this week-even miss “I’m an adult now,worship me” has come back down to earth and has been fun to be around.
Even though this is an odd year for us,it will be a good Christmas. We will still get up and open presents in the morning-just earlier than normal. I will still have too much rich food to eat. The kids came through in the end and tried very hard with everyone’s presents. We work hard on the giving aspect of this day as opposed to the receiving aspect.
My four year old grand daughter asked me why we have presents on Christmas. I answered her it was because we are so happy that Baby Jesus was born we want to share our happiness. We can show Jesus how much we love Him by showing our love to others. That satisfied her.
Her two year old brother is insisting that his folks leave out cat food for Santa’s reindeer. He will not be convinced to leave carrots for them. Reindeer eat cat food. He is alright with leaving cookies and milk out for Santa. Two year old little boys are so funny.
Tomorrow when I am here by myself watching my son play his new video games all day (What else would you do if you were thirteen,and had the Wii to yourself for eight hours),I will write more about the spiritual and emotional aspect of Christmas. Today, I am going to bake the cheesecake for tomorrow when my workers come home and get ready for tonights dinner. I have promised my husband not to stress out. I still have presents to wrap. By tradition I finish up between two and three AM on Christmas morning. We will see about this year.

My thirteen year old decided with less than a week to go,he should earn some money for Christmas. I gave him two jobs. One was to clean out the refrigerator and freezer and the other was to clean the pantry. He did a wonderful job cleaning. I was sure to tell him specifically to throw out any moldy food he found. In the past he has very neatly returned some pretty furry things after cleaning. He cleaned and reorganized my pantry. The key word here is reorganization. I did not tell him to keep like with like. He did a marvelous job organizing-if you understood how his brain worked. Unfortunately,I don’t. I have no intention of having him redo it. He worked too hard and was very proud of the job he did. I am just going to have to do the occasional search to find things.
In any event,he now has money to finish his shopping.
My refrigerator is no longer a scary place and my pantry looks fantastic-as long as I don’t need to find anything.
One other positive thing with this son, I do believe he has not lied to me today. He has had a spat of crazy lying lately which tends to make me crazy after a while.

I lied. We are grieving. We are second and third and even forth guessing how we have interacted with youngest. We are praying for a miracle and wondering where God is. This isn’t the best time of year to be battling grief and feelings of failure.
I know all of the rational answers to our feeing. I know we did do and are doing all we knew/know to do.
I read about kids with severe RAD and how they are making progress. It is progress in fits and starts,but still progress. I wonder for the three millionth time if we would have handled youngest differently,would he be home and healing. I do not honestly know what we could have done differently. I read about kids who can be deescalated and manage to re regulate. Rarely could we get youngest to that point. We tried every trick we knew and then some. They simply were not enough.
The fact he is acting the same way in his second facility since last April (third if you count detention) does not make these feelings any less.
We know our son is a potential Ted Bundy. It is one thing to know it yourself (and be able to tell yourself you are overreacting) and another to hear a professional tell you your son is a danger to society and if he does not heal has the potential to hurt others. He still thinks killing is OK. Jail is not a deterrent. That is pretty scary in a child. There is absolutely nothing that deters him except greater force-even that is negligible.
What is it that allows some children to heal? What is it that prevents others from doing so? My son has a very slim chance of ever healing in an institution . He is not safe enough to come home where he might be able to so.
I really do need to get philosophical about this soon. I am driving myself nuts. I will be fine for a while and then just want to sit and cry.

Youngest called last night. He was cheerful. I asked him why he was calling. It was an honest question. He was exceptionally verbally abusive when I saw him the day before. I was told,quite forcefully how much he hated me and never wanted to see me etc,etc. I am the cause of all his problems, you know.
I asked him what had changed in twenty four hours,that he now wanted to talk to me. He told me “it was different today”. I was “full of sh*t” yesterday. I was trying to embarrass him. I didn’t want him to be” like everyone else”. I was “messed up”. Etc,etc.
Do you notice a trend here?
When he started cussing me in earnest I told him I loved him,but I had no intention of listening to his abuse. I then disconnected.
I honestly do not understand why he bothered to call.
He may want gifts. I will mail him the books we bought him for Christmas. He isn’t going to be thrilled even though they are the titles he asked for. He has moved on to the Twilight series(yes, I know they are romance books) and Mossflower just doesn’t compete.
I have no intention of spending four hours in the car on Saturday to see him just so he can be ugly.
My oldest daughter still at home has had her own version irrational anger at mom. I am assuming her brothers have had enough. They have been almost overly cheerful and attached to us the past twenty-four hours,while she has been surly and ignoring everyone. Her dad finally confronted her on her attitude. She said she was mad at me for lecturing her. She was eighteen and shouldn’t have to listen to the same lectures. Her dad mildly commented that perhaps mom was equally tired of feeling the need to give the same lecture. In effect,she is mad because she got busted and she has consequences. She still does not understand the “why” what she did was wrong. She tends to hold grudges for months. I don’t think I am going to be patient for months of this.
One thing we have noticed, she is not receiving any calls from all her “friends” now she is back to the home phone. The only calls she is receiving are from her one true friend who lives in another state. No one local is inviting her anywhere. Prior to her getting her cell,they did. They are not calling her now. I am afraid I know the reason why.
When the teens fell behind in their school work they lost library privileges. Their dad offered to return any books they had out about a month ago (and every week since). All three vehemently denied having books out. They lied.
Because we are on Christmas vacation,we took everyone to the library yesterday. All three kids had a stack of books to return. My seventeen year olds’ fine was almost eighteen dollars. I did not ask the other two what they had to shell out.
Their stubborn cost them quite a bit this time.
I have no idea what to do about the lying. It comes and goes with their internal stability and occasionally the weather. It annoys me to no end.

It was a very long day. My husband and I did manage to get some shopping in and get a bite of lunch. That was good. Traffic wasn’t very bad so the hundred mile drive didn’t take to long. Also good.
Then we had family therapy. I was prepared to dislike this newest councilor. I don’t. If she is as she appeared, she is very good. The first hour was my husband and I vomiting our life with youngest. The sad thing is,before we even started, she was telling us youngest may never be safe to come home. From what we heard from her he was about mid level for his own behavior spectrum. What she told us we could handle at home.
The second hour was with our son. We brought him homemade Christmas cookies and some books. He ate a few cookies. He was fine for a while. He came in with his pants hanging off his backside. Considering they were elastic waist khakis he looked more ridiculous than gangsterish.
He also smelled bad. I don’t think he has washed his hair or used soap in a while. His clothes were clean-he just wasn’t.
We didn’t make it thirty minutes before he started to get agitated and verbally abusive. He went to about a sixty to sixty five on his behavior scale. The funny thing is when I asked how he was doing he told us he was acting out at a fifty. He really was half way on his scale.
His councilor asked for an escort to take him back to the dorm. She went and got him by herself, but didn’t feel safe taking him back. He was only to the muttering,cussing,finger drumming , showing the whites of his eyes stage. He hadn’t even postured. His therapist told him point blank she would not allow him to be released home if she felt he would be unsafe. It wasn’t our decision. It was hers. She told him we were involved and had made considerable effort to be there. I think she was taken aback by his behavior. She has never seen him turn before. It is a bit unnerving if you haven’t seen it. If he’d been home it would have been fifty-fifty whether he would have escalated to violence,or gone out back to bark at the neighbors. Since he was in a locked facility, he chose to be ugly, but not out of control. While we were waiting for his escort, my husband turned our son’s attention to the illustrations in the books we brought him. He was instantly sane again. Sometimes that switch is harder to see.
I will not be bringing the kids to see him this weekend. I won’t be going to see him either. There isn’t a point. He isn’t going to be civil. We will come for therapy,but that is it.

I think it finally dawned on me my son will not be coming home. His therapist was talking about my son’s issues being too severe before he upped the ante. She was cautioning us he may need long term institutional placement to keep not just him safe,but society safe from him .She has yet to see him truely go off.
I am saddened by my son. I love him. I cannot help him. He is not healing. He doesn’t want to heal. He is bating the other boys (mostly bigger than he) on a daily basis. He is aggravating others and messing with his room mates things. He is punching boys for annoying him and getting upset when they respond to his aggravating them. It isn’t just us. This is how he is.
He cannot come home.
A year ago we were praying for an adoption date. We were full of hope. We thought we were getting a toe hold and he was beginning to settle in-just a bit.
Today we are understanding he will not live in our home-perhaps he will never live in our home again.
I am past the gut wrenching grief. I am beyond bargaining and anger and have settled into acceptance.
My son will not be coming home.
He may not understand or care what he has lost.
We do understand and care very much for what we have all lost.
We are still praying for a miracle.

The three here at home are finally working through their mad. I took them shopping for Christmas craft supplies on Saturday which helped. Both boys are doing much,much better. My husband asked my son what happened on his Chemistry test. My son told him he blanked on his math. He just couldn’t remember any of it. I feel bad because I reamed the kids out for not studying. I still think he gave it a glance and a prayer,but I do believe he forgot how to do the math. It has to be frustrating to loose things in your brain like that.
I had yet another long talk (me talking,her staring at me)about my daughter’s poor judgment,potential outcomes and our now inability to trust her. She is off our cell phone plan. She is eighteen and is welcome to buy her own contract,but I will not risk ours. Facebook and it’s ilk is still forbidden. It is forbidden even if she buys her own laptop.I cannot trust her to keep private things private and I canno1 risk her putting information out there that would endanger the rest of the family. (we have a birth father looking for us,actually two;both psychotic) We have to be careful as our last name is known to them both.
I think she is finally understanding,just a little, how much damage she could have done,not only to herself,but to her family. I hope. She is a good kid,just very naive and will do what anyone asks (as long as it isn’t me). She was subdued last night instead of angry and was more herself by bedtime. It is so hard to separate the unable from the unwilling. It is often a combination of the two.
I am glad the kids are more back to normal. We have to travel and visit youngest for family therapy this afternoon. I am bringing him cookies and a couple three books to read. He told me he is reading the Twilight series. I am bringing some Newbery winners for him to read;hopefully instead of teenage girl romance books with glittering vampires. Sorry,for all you fans. I just don’t see the point. We are in our normal conflicted emotional state when we do this stuff. This is therapist number two for this facility and the fifth therapist we have dealt with since our son was arrested last spring. We really don’t hope for much anymore. We are praying that somehow our son will be able to come safely home. It’s hard to tell where his head is at durring a weekly phone call.
It’s time to leave. At least I get to spend some quality time with my husband during the four hours we will spend in the car today. It’s almost a date.

Today is our last day of school until 2010. My older teens have been taking a fifteen question chemistry test for three and a half hours now. I just informed them I would be pulling the test in ten minutes. They always test slowly,but once we’ve hit the three hour mark,it usually means they didn’t study and are waiting to have magical epiphanies from the heavens. Because they have been on the butt child side of attitude this week,they figured they could rebel by not doing their school work. By the time they figured out this might be self defeating,well…magical epiphanies don’t often fall from heaven.
In earlier years I would have them repeat chapters of failed tests. This year I am just recording the failing grade. They are too far behind to keep repeating things because of attitude.
When I say they are behind,I mean behind in what they are in fact capable of. I do push them beyond the “this is so easy I don’t have to work” level into the “I had better read my chapter and do the practice questions because this requires some effort” level. I am always monitoring for actual overwhelmedness vs not giving a rat’s backside. If the are actually overwhelmed, we will slow way down or change tactics. If they are choosing to not to do their work. I am choosing to let them fail.
Not to be outdone,their little brother is doing almost all of his school correctly-but just not quite. It is amazing how he can divide ten sets of fractions correctly-except for that one problem he does backwards. He wrote nine complete sentences and one sentence fragment. You get the idea. When he was younger he would add half of his subtraction and subtract half of his addition.
Today is our last day of school because I am a little tired of listening to my children not do their work. They are more than welcome to make up the work they are behind on over our extended Christmas break. I am more than certain to go back to textbook grammar the first of the year if they don’t. In any case,the battle will be put on hold for three weeks.
My eighteen year old wants the privileges of adulthood without the responsibility. She also wants to be cared for like she is still ten. It is a bit of an extreem I haven’t dealt with before. I’ve decided to split the baby in half and parent her like she is fourteen. That seems to be working.
My sort-of grown daughter has tacked on to the end of her Christmas list,almost as an after thought,
“the things I need for being an adult”. I might just get her a set of pots and pans. She would be very disappointed If I did,though. What she wants is Rock Band for the Wii,some art supplies,movies and books.Things that aren’t exactly going to help you set up your first place. In our family it is a right of passage to start putting household items on your Christmas list. I’m not sure if the ten year old part of her would resent the pots and pans,the fourteen year old part of her would really resent the pots and pans ,or if the eighteen year old part of herself would feel we were respecting her infant adulthood.
I’ll have to think about it.

I did have to talk to the parole officer to have her talk to the therapist who then called me and apologized profusely for ignoring my many voice mails. My son will be having an eye exam tomorrow and should be in new glasses by next week. I will ignore the fact he will then have been going on three weeks without his glasses.
She (the therapist) told me my son seems to have trouble following rules and experiencing consequences-did he have that trouble at home? I almost laughed out loud. He has conduct disorder,I told her. He always has trouble following rules and accepting consequences. I was able to explain once again that,while our goal is to have him return home,he must be able to remain non-violent. I explained about the homicidal ideation and the escalation of behavior without discernible triggers. I explained that the behaviors she was describing was how he acted when he was “good”. I explained that he was in no way,shape or form attached to us as parents and had multiple placements before we adopted him (less than a year ago). She told me he doesn’t seem to take any responsibility for his own behavior and was on the road to having an Antisocial Personality Disorder.
Ya think?
We will start biweekly family therapy on Monday.

A grandchild story that proves the generational curse (may you have a child that acts just like you ) works.:
My son called to tell my my grandson (two and three quarters) had removed his pants and pooped in his plastic fireman’s hat. He then planted plastic flowers in the humanure and proudly carried his creation to his parents.
I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time.

I have had it with pouty,rude,selfish teenagers who think it is OK to ignore simple requests and out right lie. I have had it with the us against them attitude. I am not going to put up with being glared at for existing. I have had enough adolescent angst and drama to last ten lifetimes. Watching an emotionally twelve year old try and have adolescent angst and drama while telling me she is an adult is no longer even remotely amusing.
I am not feeling therapeutic. I am not feeling sympathy. I have had enough.
I blew this morning. I did the one thing the kids hate more than anything.
I lectured.
I told them they were being disrespectful. I told them I was tired of being lied to. I told them I was sorry for letting things get to this point. I had felt guilty about the chaos of youngest and had done them no favors by letting things slide.
That was the preamble.
The body of the speech included long time favorites such as ” This us against you stuff needs to end. We are a family-a rather extended family-and you are loved and cared for-so deal with it”.
“If you think I home school you for my health I can guarantee I have better things I could do with my time than babysit you as you don’t do your school.”
“It’s an ugly world out there,we are trying to give you the skills you need to do well”
“Stop blaming me because you got busted,I’m not the one who broke the rules-you did”
“If you want to be treated as an adult,I suggest you act older than a spoiled eight year old”
“If you have problems then tell someone-but don’t burden your little brother.That isn’t fair to him”
“You are loved-deal with it
You have a mom-deal with it
You will be called on it when you screw up-deal with it
you have a family that will be around forever;no matter what you do-so deal with it.
Get over yourselves and knock off the attitude.”
You get the idea.
I figure that even if they tune out 99% of what I say, the words still slide into their subconscious;kind of like Chinese water torture with words.
I doubt the experts would applaud my excess of verbiage. I really don’t care.
There are days when therapeutic parenting is simply too much effort. There are days when the old fashioned mom of bratty kids takes over.
Today was one of those days.

My now eighteen year old daughter has returned to the attitudes and behaviors she had when she first came home-with a twist. She was confronted on some decisions that could have serious ramifications,not just for her,but for the rest of the family as well. She is upset she was caught. Even after spelling out the potential consequences of her behavior several times,using small word and frequent comprehension checks,she does not understand why I’m upset. Her actions seem to be socially acceptable within a certain group of teens. Unfortunately, they aren’t legal and they aren’t ethical and they aren’t moral. They also show just how little ability she has to regulate her behavior on her own.
To punish me she isn’t talking to me unless spoken to,and was mean to her two year old nephew last night. Being mean to the small children is not anything I’ve ever worried about with her before. She usually dotes on the little ones and is my right hand when they visit. She told her sister-in-law she wanted to prove to everyone she isn’t like her birth mom. She wants to do that by moving out without finishing high school,without a driver’s liscence or even public transportation,without a place to live and with a part time minimum wage job. Her Sister-in-law is trying to tell her what she needs to become independent. She is telling her what rents cost and utility deposits entail. She is encouraging her to stay home until she can leave successfully. Her dad and I have been saying the same thing to her for the last year or so.
She tells me she wants to go to college. She tells me she wants to go into the military. She refuses to do her school work,yet blames me because she isn’t done. She wants to be independent,but refuses to get her permit to drive.She wanted to go out with friends on her birthday-but no friends called to ask her out.
She is back to wearing her makeup and trying to dress like a hoochy mama-just to stay home.
She is rebelling at home like a spoiled twelve year old.She is actively recruiting her brothers to separate from us and join her. at least I know for sure why her thirteen year old brother is peeing on things again.
I was angry about her trying to destroy her brothers’ security,so she can feel supported in her decisions. She is placing them is the position of being disloyal to her and letting us know what she is up to,or letting her get very badly hurt. I think the seventeen year old understands exactly what she is doing. My thirteen year old does not. She was his mother figure for the first six years of his life. He is confused.
In addition,she has some female type problems that could be serious that she hasn’t told me about for months. (no she isn’t pregnant) She is mad at me for making a GYN appointment as well.
My daughter is developmentally an early (very) adolescent. She is legally an adult. She will do anything for male attention and she has no discernment about people. Everyone is her friend. Every guy who gives her attention “loves” her and she “loves” him. She isn’t trying to be immoral. She just doesn’t have the capacity to make moral judgment. We are walking a very thin line with her. We do not want her moving out.
I think she thought the world changes on your eighteenth birthday. Suddenly your don’t need high school to get into college (or rent an apartment). Suddenly money just falls from the sky. May be she still thinks she can “age out”.I honestly do not feel like I have a handle on what is going on in her head at all. I am very much afraid of her being victimized.
I also can’t trust a single word that comes out of her mouth. The last time her lying was this complete was when she was twelve. It is like a switch has gone off and she has returned to where she started from.
There is so much she can accomplish if she will let herself. There is very little I can do to keep her from self destructing.
I think this child may just break my heart.