Cue the crazy…

Last weekend the kids had Friday and Monday off from school. I liked not getting up at five thirty, but dealing with a child who doesn’t know what to do with himself is difficult. Andrew always does better with structure and though he wants free time, he usually spends it asking others to entertain him or getting into trouble. So I figured I would try to put a little structure into today. Fat lot of good it did me.
We all slept in and after the kids were up and had eaten, I had them come sit with me at the kitchen table and help me make a list of household chores that needed to be done today. Then we divided them out. They did a great job of helping decide what needed to be done and they did a good job of working. I remembered to thank them for their efforts and compliment them on good jobs. I was thinking of something fun we could do afterwards, although I knew Andrew wanted to “hang out” with his friend so I was planning to be flexible.
Andrew asked if his buddy to come to our house. I said yes. He asked if they could play with the Kinnect. I said yes. Haley asked if she could play with them. I told her she could ask but if they said no then she needed to leave them alone. She did and Andrew said no and she accepted it. But she did ask them if they wanted to go to the pool. Andrew said no. But fifteen minutes later Andrew came and asked if he and his friend could go to the pool. Cue the beginning of the big melt-down. I told him he could go to the pool if he took Haley along. He threw a fit ( yelling, arguing that Haley would make him mad, that he just wanted to spend time with his friend alone). I told him I understood that, but since it was Haley’s idea to go to the pool, it would be mean to leave her out. I told him if he didn’t want to play with Haley he was welcome to do something else.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
He very grudgingly agreed to let her come which I know is code for, ” Haley, as soon as we are away from mom I’m going to hassle you and passively aggressively get physical with you so that you will get ‘accidentally’ hurt”. So I told him I didn’t think it was a good idea. More yelling and very loud attempts to convince me that he was going to get along but “Haley just does stuff to make me mad!”
I wanted them to go. I figured they would have a good time if he could just let go of the idea of going without her. I asked him to go think seriously about whether he thought he could have fun with Haley there or whether he would be better off doing something else with his friend on their own. He came back trying to convince me that the swimming would work. But he could not get his stuff together. He was fixated on the idea of having his friend to himself and making sure Haley got left out and knew she was being left out. He couldn’t let this go even though it ultimately meant that they didn’t go swimming and I finally had his friend go home because he was yelling and slamming things around and talking about how he hated Haley and didn’t want her as a sister. Meanwhile she’s hiding out in her room. She hasn’t asked me to make them let her go, and she hasn’t been involved in any of my conversations with Andrew.
I had him go to his room. He screamed, sobbed, threw things (I think there is another hole in the wall – that is eight now) and generally was out of control. Then he came out and told me to find him another family to live with, that he didn’t want to live in this family anymore, that he hated his sister and she “made his life a living hell!” Writing this I have to grin because he is so dramatic, but I’m also really sad because he truly believes that, even though she is pretty good sister to him most of the time. Unless she is willing to do whatever he wants whenever he wants her to, she is being rude and mean. No matter how crazy or annoying or mean he is to her, in his mind she should take whatever he dishes out and be happy about it because in his head she exists to give him attention and to be a source of entertainment.
I really wanted to throw a bag at him and tell him to pack and get out. But instead I told him that I wasn’t going to find him a new home, that this was his home and it’s where God put him. When he began ranting about Haley again, I just told him that this was the family he had been given and he should go yell at God. I also reminded him that Haley didn’t have anything to do with the consequences he had gotten (his friend going home) because I was the one who had imposed them and I was the one who had made the conditions about going swimming.
He went back to his room, but came out fifteen minutes later with a bag (he spent the time yelling, crying, and I guess packing). He headed downstairs towards the front door. I asked him where he was going. I told him I really didn’t want him to go in answer to his declaration of “I’m getting out of here”. I told him it was a foolish thing to do and suggested he give one of his uncles a call to talk about it. Back to his room he went for more raging. Though he did call and eventually got through to one who somehow talked him down.
He comes into my room more subdued and apologizes and then starts up again on how he hates Haley and he just wanted to be with his friend. I just listened and tried to be neutral. And then the kicker. He asked if I would take him to buy a hamster. Then he asked if I would kick Haley off the tv so he could watch. Then he asked if he could go hang out with her. And then he acts like none of the last two hours even happened. He’s back to his chipper, oblivious self. I feel like I’ve been through the wringer. I imagine Haley feels about the same. We didn’t do anything fun today. We were in a battle zone. This is what mental illness looks like in our house. Sometimes I can head it off and sometimes it’s going to happen no matter what.