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Another day, another drama

Christmas is coming and I’m almost in the mood for the holidays – at least my brother is coming for a visit and it will take my mind off all the crap that’s going on around here right now.

Here’s the number one issue. It seems that young Derwood has been removing certain articles of ours from the house, possibly to sell them. Missing are several DVD’s, 20-30 Cuban cigars and possibly an unknown number of his dad’s CD’s – and these are items that were all accounted for since the break-in last summer. Stuff has been missing from his mother’s house too, so we’re pretty certain he’s the culprit.

He’s already grounded until 2008, his computer taken away and he’s not getting an allowance, due to another whole sordid incident involving a staple gun and a hosepipe which resulted in his being fired from his co-op job. He doesn’t seem to care about any of that, shows no remorse for the damage he caused, and if anything he’s delighted that he no longer has to go to his co-op job.

Due to the fact that he’s currently seeing a counsellor, who says we need to be showing some compassion towards him owing to his history, we have not openly confronted him about this because we’re not sure how to address it in a way that won’t be “harmful”. (Personally, I want to strangle him!) We’ve only brought it up it with him in a very round-about manner. He neither confirmed nor denied our suspicions and I’m not even sure he understands what we’re driving at. It’s quite perplexing, really. Around the house he’s cheerful and co-operative with tasks like doing the dishes and shovelling snow, and seems to be completely oblivious to the fact that he’s a constant source of concern for us – it’s like he’s living on another planet than the one where he steals our stuff and sells it, trades it, or gives it to his girlfriend.

Oh yeah, then there’s the girlfriend. She’s from town, but when he met her she was living in a group home in Grimsby. We have no idea why she was in a group home, but teenaged girls don’t usually get to live in one of those unless there’s been a problem. She’s back at home now, they are on the phone constantly. Even though he’s grounded he gets to see her every day while waiting for the bus, and I guess he sees her when he skips school also. Not sure how often that goes on but there have been various reports of skipping classes from the school. Brother, if we get one more phone call from the school this year I don’t know what else to do with him. Take way the network connector for the PlayStation, I guess.

We have an appointment to meet with his counsellor – with him – next month. That should be interesting. We’ve met with her a couple of times on our own, and he goes on his own. The fact that he was agreeing to go at all, and make his own appointments with her and keep them without being reminded, was huge. She thought he was doing great and wondered if he still needed to be coming. Then the co-op incident, and now this. Maybe at this meeting, we we can address the thefts more openly.

You could say he’s acting out because we don’t pay enough attention to him. I have to say, we pay as much attention to him as is possible. But the minute he gets home from school he’s off to his room, and stays there, so really the only time we see him is at breakfast and dinner. And the rare times when he does talk to us about anything besides video games, which is all he seems to care about (and I have no earthly idea what he’s on about.) I do try to engage with him. But the conversations, if you can call them that, are never about anything real, or important. I guess it never is, at that age. He never seems to want to do anything or go anywhere with us, so it’s hard to spend time with him. Short of sitting him down and forcing him to talk, what do you do?

Lloyd’s a great kid but not exactly an overachiever these days, jobless and moping in the basement as he is. That’s another story. I’m so jealous of parents who have these wonderful children – you know, the prodigies, the A students – who they can be friends with and support in their interests and have great relationships with. I never particularly wanted kids but I admit, that would have been fun. You know - something happy to write about in your Christmas Newsletter.

Filed under Parenting, Dec 19, 2007
 

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