The Difficult.

For the past while, Oldest One has been.. difficult.

Now, I know there are reasons for this – but I’m not going to get into them here. I’ll simply state that it’s a combination of being 12, his own life ‘stuff’ (past), and the fact that Coffee and I are clearly the most unreasonable people on earth and we’re determined to RUIN HIS LIFE.

He views it all in terms of that last one, by the way.

I am sympathetic to him in many ways – I am also patently unsympathetic about many of the choices he makes that ultimately end in him being miserable. If you’re warned not to do X because it results in Y, and then you choose to do X, you’re telling me you’re fine with Y. I have no sympathy for you when Y isn’t much fun. In fact, I probably warned you that Y wouldn’t be fun.

There are many things in life that don’t bother me. There are also several things that I absolutely cannot tolerate and which will push me into shrieky territory. The kids all know these things – we’ve discussed ‘em before on many occasions because they form the basis of all the rules in our house.

I will not put up with people bullying other people in this house and I expect a certain level of respectfulness to each other (whether sibling or parent). This translates to the expectation that everyone will do their best to get along OR go hide out in their room. You start bullying your brother and there is no guarantee you won’t spend the rest of the day in your room – so why not just go there when the bullying urge appears? No one is required to be Stepford happy, but you are expected to work really hard to control yourself. Home is s’posed to be a safe place.

School is everyone’s first priority. If it takes you 3 hours to do your homework at night, and you’ve done your best (i.e., not dancing around singing while telling me you were doing math questions) I have no issue with any chores you didn’t get a chance to do. I don’t expect straight “A”s from anyone; I expect the report card to say you tried your best.

I will not hesitate to call the school and speak to a teacher if I think there’s an issue. I verify anything that sounds ‘off’ and if you lied, well, let’s just say that lying is another of those shrieky things.

Chores come after school work. Oldest One only has what we call “personal chores” right now – emptying their lunch containers, making school lunch in the morning, packing his backpack at night, showering, brushing teeth, cleaning his own bedroom. He is also responsible for checking those tasks off on a chore chart (so we know what’s been done each day and what hasn’t). He doesn’t have any “family chores” – those that help out in some way with other aspects of living here (for example, feeding the cat or clearing the table after dinner).

Oldest One’s difficult has encompassed home and school, according to communications with teachers. He’s being miserable to his brothers, ignoring rules and skipping chores, and basically being a jerk to everyone in the family. And then complains that we won’t let him do whatever he wants.

A few weeks ago he brought home a permission form for a book club. I signed it and it was returned to school. A few days later he came home and said he didn’t want to participate in this book club but that the teacher was “forcing” him (and “some other kids who i can’t remember..”) to participate in it anyway. He asked if we’d write a note excusing him from the whole deal. I asked him a few questions and his responses seemed.. off.

Coffee gave him the benefit of the doubt, however, and wrote a note in Oldest One’s planner stating that if he “doesn’t want to participate, please don’t make him participate”.

The teacher called and left us a message stating that, clearly, Oldest One hadn’t mentioned to us that the “forced” participation in the book club was in response to Oldest One breaking school rules. He was given the choice between the book club or a trip to the office. Then he came home and asked us to write a note excusing him from that consequence.

Later that night we called Oldest One into the living room for a “chat” and feigned confusion about the whole book club thing. He explained that he “didn’t know why” he was being forced to participate in a book club and that it wasn’t fair and that he didn’t want to, ever, and blahblahblah.

We mentioned that his teacher had called. He got surly.

He claimed that he barely broke the rule at school and it wasn’t a big deal and so he shouldn’t have to be in the stupid book club.

His teacher confirmed that it was a BIG rule break AND that he had done it before AND had been warned about not doing it again.

He claimed he wasn’t lying – he just didn’t tell us all of it.

Nice try. It goes without saying that he’s now participating in the book club.

Add in a few days of being a jerk to his brother. “Forgetting” his homework. Breaking rules in the house.

Add in a few brief periods of niceness when he wanted something. Throw in some anger when he realized he wasn’t getting it.

Last weekend Oldest One went for a sleepover at a friend’s place and returned home difficult. He very obviously had not had enough sleep (duh) so Coffee warned him that he might want to work REALLY HARD on being nice and respectful to the rest of family for the rest of the evening and then get some good sleep.

Yeah.

By the end of Sunday night he had pretty much eliminated any possibility of ever leaving the house again as far as I was concerned.

Later that night, after Oldest One had gone to bed, I had a bit of a freak-out over the difficult. I noted that every single day brings some new form of conflict with Oldest One and that I was feeling tense all the time and that I was beginning to have a hard time with all of it. Coffee offered to fully handle things for a while. I agreed. I figured if I wasn’t the one putting “X” on the chore chart or checking the planner for the missing homework/assignments/etc every day, I could spare myself some of the frustration.

(Just to be clear, Coffee and I both do an equal share of the parenting here – but the way our days are structured are such that I’m home a few hours before Coffee and thus am the one who was looking at school planners, what chores were(n’t) done, listening to the after-school fighting, watching the bullying, etc. I’d end up angry and tense and frustrated and emailing Coffee deranged messages. Coffee generally sees the later evening hours, around dinner time or later, and all of the weekend stuff – which is a different ball of difficult but quite often difficult nonetheless.)

For much of this week Oldest One has continued his streak. Surly and miserable and bullying his brothers and breaking rules. I handled only what needed to be immediately handled; I left the planner on the counter for Coffee to sign and I ignored the chore chart. I pointed out a few things to Coffee later in the evening, when needed, but left all the miserable conversations to him.

Last night Oldest One asked Coffee if he could invite a friend over on Friday night. Coffee said that we would discuss it and get back to him on Friday morning (which is today). Oldest One went off to bed.

We briefly discussed it last night and I was leaning toward “no” because of the insanity of last weekend’s behaviour and the continuation of it throughout the week. I’m not big on rewarding people for shitty behaviours.

I was also concerned because I have a bunch of school work to do this weekend and wouldn’t be able to easily do the “parent loiter” thing that’s usually necessary when kids have friends over. My kids know that when I’m doing homework there are certain things they can interrupt for and many that they can’t. They know the house rules and follow them, generally. But when friends are over, people get kinda’ silly and forget things and it’s good to have a parent right around the corner “just in case”. I was concerned that I’d spend all of Friday afternoon/evening reminding Oldest One and his friend to stop doing X or please don’t do Y or whatever and would end up frustrated and angry AND not get anything done.

Coffee leaned toward “yes” because he thinks Oldest One needs to (continue being encourage to) socialize. I agree with that in principle.

This morning we discussed it again, sitting in the living room, and decided that the answer would be yes, but only after Coffee got home. It was a compromise – Oldest One and his friend would be well supervised (by Coffee) while I was getting other things done and, in the event that I wasn’t busy with school work, there’d be two parents to check in on things.

About 30 seconds before we were going to tell Oldest One that he could invite his friend over, Middle One came into the living room to tell us that Oldest One was blocking the sink, wouldn’t move, and was doing it simply to be a jerk because he wasn’t even using the sink – he was making his sandwich to take to school for lunch.

This isn’t a new thing. Oldest One likes to block his brothers, physically, from things they want or need. He’ll block hallways and doorways just because he’s bigger. He’ll prevent his brothers from getting chores done, from getting a snack, and then deny it. If he’s in the kitchen and one of his brothers enters, for any reason, there’s a big freak out 90% of the time.

In this case, Middle One had been, at the request of Coffee, wiping up spilled milk in the dining room and he needed to rinse the sponge and finish up. Oldest One didn’t need the sink but resented his brother being in the kitchen while he was making his lunch… so he refused to move.

The kicker is that Oldest One gets up about 15 to 20 minutes before his brothers so that he’ll have a clear path to get ready. If he moves at a consistent pace (not rushing) he can be finished eating breakfast before his brothers come downstairs; he can have his lunch packed before his brothers are rinsing their cereal bowls. Then he can lounge in his room for 15-20 minutes before he has to leave for school.

But lately he’s been taking his time getting ready, dawdling upstairs for a long time, and then exploding at his brothers when they’re trying to get ready. Setting himself up to be miserable.

After intervening on the sink issue, Coffee explained to Oldest One that the answer to having a friend over was “no” and that his behaviour this morning had been the tipping point on that. Oldest One got mad. Left the house in a big huff.

This kinda’ means the weekend is gonna’ be a real hootenanny, no?

This is 12. I am not feeling particularly optimistic about 15.