Multigenerational Trauma

As it's summer, Penelope is staying with her grandparents again. Each year gets better and better as she gets older, gets farther in her healing, and takes more accountability in her life. Her RAD and PTSD will probably never allow for a smooth summer but the other challenge is my mother.
Unlike how I approach Penelope, with learning opportunities and faith that she will continue to grow and heal, Grandma is a lesson for me in patience and tolerance and evaluating if my actions will result in a positive outcome. In other words, I pick my battles and try to minimize the chaos the best I can. It is just really hard when it involves your child.
Last Tuesday, my mother had a dentist appointment late morning. My father had committed to my twin brother B, to drive him to a post surgical doctor's appointment. If Penelope was left home, she would have been home alone about 2 hours. She has done that many times this past year, no problem. But my mother insisted she go with her when it was time to leave.
You may think "What's the big deal? She should go." I'd agree under normal circumstances. But my mother insisted, telling Penelope she didn't trust her to stay home. She would take her to lunch afterward. Now if you know my Mom, this is really about her wanting to have someone to go out to eat with. She loves to do it and jumps at the chance whenever my Dad is preoccupied like that day. (He likes to keep a tight reign on the purse strings.)
You might still be saying, "It's still not a big deal. So she is putting Penelope down, saying she can't be trusted, as an excuse to make her eat lunch with her. Penelope gets a nice lunch out for her troubles." Again, I agree. Not a big fan of the apparent lie/put-down but could still tolerate it. But again, this is not a normal circumstance.
My mother's dental hygienist is my sister-in-law, the mother of Penelope's cousins she sexually abused. She didn't tell Penelope that was where they were going until they were halfway there. And my SIL didn't know either.
It's been 3 1/2 years since the incident and Penelope has been all but erased from their family. When the kids all about her, the conversation is redirected. My SIL has forgiven her in her heart, she knows of Penelope's past and mental health issues, but can't let her around her family. My brother B carries even more burden because he was in charge that night, and still has a ways before he will ever forgive her. The kids have not shown any signs of trauma other than missing their older cousin. Holidays and family gathering are always seperate or without Penelope and I. Well, I'm invited but how does that happen? Penelope is far from the same person and carries a ton of guilt on the issue.
With those facts, one would think that my mother would know better than to take Penelope to the dentist with her. There are two versions of what transpired in the car.
Penelope's version: Grandma told her where they were going. Penelope told Grandma that she can't go there. "I can't!"and became very upset. Penelope told her how upsetting it was for her to even go to their house with Papaw to let the dogs or when they were 5 states away on vacation. Grandma told her that they are almost there and she can either go in and sit in the lobby or stay in the car. Not to worry, her Aunt won't see her if she sits in the back of the lobby. Penelope choose to stay in the car and called me at work crying. She felt totally abandoned and unheard. She said grandma said "I've got dark secrets too, and I've learned to deal with them. You need to learn to deal with yours too."
Grandma's version: Penelope never said anything about having a problem. She didn't decide she was going to sit in the car until after they got there. ... That was the version on the day it happened after she learned Penelope called me and that I was going to call her to discuss. She had answered the phone "I don't want to talk to you." So I made a point to not talk too much about it, especially after getting those answers which I felt were complete fabrications. She was sticking to the reason for taking her at all was because she couldn't leave her at home, she didn't know how long she was going to be gone even though she didn't have any errands. But a soon as I realized they were in a restaurant, I knew the real reason why Penelope had to come along. It doesn't help that while Penelope was sitting in the car, my Dad had to drive B there to pick up his wallet from his wife. Penelope, based on my Mom's wishes, could have been sitting in the lobby when B walked in! Penelope would have flipped....out! I don't think B would have done anything except maybe walked out but not one of them needs to be put in that situation. B did end up seeing her sitting in the car on the way out. Penelope didn't know until my Mom told her after the fact. When Penelope told her grandmother she can't see Uncle B, it would be too upsetting, my mother told her "Well, he is my soon so I'm going to see him when I want" referring to the fact she got to see him when he picked up his wallet. Her argument doesn't make sense!
So the issue came back up this past Saturday and she had forgotten her original excuse of not trusting Penelope to stay home by herself and said it never occurred to her that it would be a problem. And if Penelope had said something like "Pull over, I'm getting out" she wouldn't have made her go. I told her that Penelope shouldn't have to go there before she is heard! She tried to claim again that Penelope didn't say anything until they were there and I said, "So you are saying Penelope never said "I can't go there, or explained how hard it was to be at their house with Papaw?" Her response was, "I don't remember, it's been a few days..she might have said something like that but I don't remember..." Ugh!!!!!!!! She continued to tell me what she had told Penelope about her dark secrets. Penelope had told me the dark secret my mother shared and hearing it, made me angry because in my opinion it's nothing compared to what Penelope did. Without going into details, my mother had said something hurtful about her own mother in earshot of her while she was laying in bed dying of cancer. She was a little younger than Penelope. Her Mom died a year or so later. My mother was near tears when she was tip-toing around it internally debating if she would share the details with me. But I already knew from Penelope telling me. I said "If it was something I had done to you, would you have forgiven me. She paused for a second (to put herself in her mother's shoes) and said she would, but didn't know if her Mom ever did. I asked her if she felt like her Mom want a forgiving person? She said she didn't know. The shame in her voice, you could tell how raw and real her self-hate is for what she did. It blew my mind because it was such a forgivable act. To have carried such a burden for over 50 years and feel like such a horrible person for it explains a great deal about her. I just can't imagine a mother not forgiving their child for it. She was a child, grieving her mother's illness, not understanding in a rational way what was going on. I told my mother I feel like she is holding on to the emotions of the child and not processing it as an adult. It's like remembering a scary dream and still feeling scared when you know rationally it's not real.
I know there are other traumas in my mother's childhood that she doesn't talk about that happened to her and to think thus is how she feels on the smaller things makes me feel very sad for her.

Fail Forward

Last week I went to a business seminar on innovation for work. The topic was around business competitiveness and setting the pace in your industry by staying innovative. But a lot of what was said really spoke to me as a parent of a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder. One of the terms the speaker said that became my new favorite phrase is “fail forward.” Accepting failures as part of the process and that you learn from them. Make the failure meaningful and find opportunities to come up with new ideas or opportunities to move forward.
I think, as a general rule, good parents carry around a great deal of unnecessary guilt. I know I do and I’d like to think I’m a good parent. I’m always trying to make sure I do all I can do to give Penelope the best chances at a happy life. Any errors I make are not just a waste of that precious time but counter-productive – a slip backwards that now has to be regained.
We’d like to think we have more control over our kids than we actually do. I came to the realization a while ago that I can’t make Penelope do anything. I can change the way I do things that may make her more likely to do what I want, but that’s the limit of my control. I think that is where some of the guilt lies, in that when our child makes that poor decision, we feel like we are the ones that failed because we weren’t able to prevent it.
With Penelope and her RAD, the hurdles to make better choices are much larger. So I tend to obsess over what I can do to help her. Then I think about how she has to work hard at this too, and then I debate in my head if she is capable or if she is just unwilling. That leads me back to the beginning of this ongoing cycle of what I can do to help her.
The approached I’ve learned works best for Penelope is the Love & Logic parenting model. It makes her own her behaviors and be responsible for her choices. It’s especially helpful for combating some of the developmental delays that are common with RAD. The challenge in this method is giving up the power. Again, power or control we really do not have.  But the premise of this parenting method is that kids need to make mistakes and get in trouble as part of their learning process. Let the action and subsequent consequence teach the child, not the parent.  The parent’s role is to set the boundaries and be the child’s support through these experiences. It applies to your average kid, but also to the extreme behaviors of of child with RAD.
These kids can go well beyond normal mistakes and bad choices. Even with that, I’ve learned that Penelope tends to make the biggest strides when she has to deal with the repercussions of her mistakes. Some of these mistakes are ones I can live with. But there are a few that I wish never happened. Even so, the more severe here action resulting in a larger consequence, the more she has moved forward.
Even though I still struggle with letting go of control and deal with parental guilt, I’ve learned that her mistakes are one of my greatest tools to help her. Looking at these events and challenges that pop up as opportunities. So I like this phrase “fail forward.”

Mutant Child

I use the word mutant because I feel like Penelope mutates every six months into a different child, similar to the one before but with new strengths and weaknesses, new challenges requiring new approaches to parenting. I use this term instead of evolves. Maybe that’s just how I feel at the moment because we are in a step backward momentum right now. And maybe it’s not even a backward momentum she is going, but a revelation of where she truly is at in this journey versus where I thought she was.

A couple weeks ago, right before spring break, she went out with her friend to a teen night club. Her phone was acting up so I switched cell phones with her for the evening. We’ve done it before. I’ve even gone through her phone before. But it’s a smart phone (as is mine) and maybe I just didn’t look through all the apps and all the folders but this time I found close up naked pictures she had taken of herself. Fortunately she didn’t include her face in the photos. The photo album I found it in was titled one of her Apps. It was a chatting App. She had shared these pics with a couple boys she "met" somehow. I do not believe she knows them, they do not seem local. Of course, they had sent pics of themselves as well. On top of that I found porn in her search history.

Of course, she lost her cell phone privileges, and in good RAD parenting fashion, I didn’t punish her or yell at her. All consequences were related to the behavior, removing the phone was primary, and all the freedoms having phone access to her went with it. I told her how sad it was that she didn’t hold herself to a higher standard in her relationships (or attempts at relationships). I love her too much to allow her to hurt herself and her self image that way. She was very angry and said "You don’t understand!" (What mother does?) "Boys don’t pay me any attention at school. I get what I can get where I can get it." Yikes. Not terribly surprising. Her self-concept has always been such a huge challenge. It’s one of the few constants. How it rears its "ugly" head is what changes it seems.

One of the other interesting pieces to this whole thing is that in the past she would volunteer how there are kids at her school who would do this, do that, including what she did with her chat app, and she would never do it, because she thinks it’s gross or she doesn’t want to end up with the same problems her mother did or some very relatable answer. Did I buy it all hook, line and sinker? No. But it gave us the opportunity for us to talk about these topics and try to be on the same page as to why these high risk behaviors would be poor decisions. This is a bit different then her usual RAD lying in that typically it’s Penelope creating a fantasy world (boys that like her and fights that never happened) or telling me about something she wished happened to her or she did.

My initial approach to this problem was to establish some tasks that she must do in order to demonstrate her level of responsibility in order to get her phone back. I fundamentally didn’t feel like it was enough, not really addressing the main issue but also wanting her to have this typical teen accessory. It didn’t matter because this approach went nowhere. She dug her heals in and blocked any discussion about potential tasks but instead started saying how she knows better now and how right I am, and that she is making her BFF stop chatting with boys like that too because it’s wrong. BLAH. Do I have STUPID written across my forehead?

That was about 2 weeks ago. A couple of days ago, we were chatting about something at school and I suggested using Facebook for online came up and she said "It’s not like I am allowed to go on there!" Then she shut to whole conversation down. She feels like she is never getting her phone back. I told her "I’m not sure how you are to get your phone back when anytime the topic comes up, you ‘don’t want to talk about it.’" That night, I couldn’t sleep and went to get some water around midnight. When I passed her room I saw a glow coming from under her covers. When I went in to inspect, I found she had taken back her phone, from my PURSE. It was in my purse earlier that night. I don’t know what she was doing because it was on the main screen when I took it from her. All I could say was "Wow. What am I suppose to say?" And went to bed.. well, after I calmed down a bit I went to bed. After I went through her phone trying to figure out what she was doing. She had been looking at porn. The chat app was gone, as a lot of other things on it. But then I learned she had taken the external SD card from it. I also found out that she had a secret email account and some social media accounts attached to it. Me, not a happy camper.

I took the next day to think about it. I wanted to be strategic about it. Regardless, the phone is gone. Deactivated. But that’s just a speed bump in the bigger challenge.

So that evening, I went home with the mindset that I’m not even going to address the phone. It’s such a pea size issue at this point. We need to look at why this is such a compulsion for her, what she gets from it, and what she can do to replace it that is more rewarding, more satisfying and appropriate.

I began that conversation with her. She said that she got bored with chatting with the boys, that it eventually didn’t do anything for her. She feels like life is boring. Her life is boring. She does the same thing day in and day out. Why can’t demons and vampires be real? She wants to be a demon or vampire (or mutant child). She wishes there was an apocalypse so people can be scared and she could be a leader of a gang and chop people up. I said "Do you here what you’re saying?" I repeated back to her what she said. I wanted to clarify "You want people to be more scared? More scared in general? Or scared of you?" She said "I want them to be more scared of me." When she says this, you can see the shame on her face. By this point, she is sitting on the floor against the wall farthest from me holding a pillow to her chest. She said "Everyone has more power than me, I want to be stronger. I want them to be scared of me."

Basically, she wants to feel safer. She feels that if they fear her, she will be safer. She is tired of being scared of them instead. I told her that it’s a perception she has, and that no one has any more power over her than she has over them. But I get it and want her to feel safe and it’s something we are going to work on together.

Taking what she said out of that context is unnerving to say the least. And I'm still having that type of reaction regardless. I keep thinking "I think I lost a year of my life in that conversation."  It's not something I'd ever hear come from her at this point in our journey. Chop people up? The conversation tore me up, to imagine she feels this way just demonstrates how scared she is and always is at some level. At least I can see that in that conversation. At the same time, I thought lack of wanting to get out and do things was more to being hypersensitive to stressors that cause her to be scared. But that has led her to feel her life boring and monotonous.

I still think it’s all based on her lack of self-esteem. It’s all related. If you don’t have the confidence to put yourself out there because you are scared of what could happen, you are a prisoner within the walls you have built. Life would become rather boring I guess.

The other issue I’ve identified is that she spends way too much with her head in fantasy and sci-fi based shows, videos, books, and just overall thinking. She is trying to escape her reality. This is not new for her and I’ve told her that I can’t allow it. It’s not healthy for her and it won’t fix her problems. So, she has been cut off of anything fantasy or science fiction based. She is also going to spend more time disconnected from technology. I can’t cut her off completely as it’s too much a part of her school work; homework, texts, are mostly electronic. But she is scaling back to the minimum.

This conversation happened on Thursday. That night and Friday morning she was completely sick to her stomach. I ended up keeping her home and having her Papaw pick her up and take her to his house. I certainly wasn’t leaving her home by herself. I hadn’t had time to brief either Papaw or Grandma on the evening prior. Grandma thought it would good for Papaw and myself to sit down with Penelope at their house when I pick her up to cover everything. It’s good to loop Papaw into this even though I’m not sure what he can do beyond just be a reinforcing family member for Penelope. That in itself is a big deal.

Standards

Penelope has come such a long way. In so many ways, she appears like a typical teenager. She has similar teenage dramas and social problems. But RAD is a part of her, regardless of how much try to push it out. How am I suppose to determine the difference between RAD behavior and typical behavior? But that's really not the right question, is it? It's not about the behavior, rather the thinking behind the behavior. Until she just starts spewing every thought that enters her head, the only way I can know what she is thinking or feeling is through her actions. But even then, it still leaves a lot of room for interpretation.
What also complicates this interpretation is my own issues. A fear reaction to the future implications of her actions. An anger reaction to being tricked into giving her too much freedom or responsibility. A guilt reaction for not having the ability to prevent it from happening. A shame reaction for allowing myself to distance my feelings towards her because of her behavior. I've been able to recognize that some if not all of these reactions do not help me address the behavior in the best way, but there is a bit of a delay in getting my mind organized enough to do something.
So, Penelope has had a cell phone since she was 14 years old. I may have written about it in the past because I found this great website with phones for kids that have a ton of parental controls. The downside to this website is that because they only offer monthly plans (as a control feature), you have to pay the full price of the phones. Well, after about 1 year, her phone stopped working. I wasn't going to buy her another phone. Grandma offered to put her on the family phone plan, which was the cheapest option. Because it's through a well known mobile service, there were free phone options. There wasn't one phone with no camera. Her old phone had a camera but a parental control prevented being able to send the pictures anywhere. Grandma talked to the sales rep and set up parental controls on the new phone. The problem is, her new phone is a smart phone giving her access to Apps. I didn't think anything of it, when we were assured.
Well, you know where I'm going with this. She had an app that allowed her to chat with strangers. I had checked her phone over time and nothing but then her battery stopped working unless plugged in. She was going out with a friend so I traded phones with her. I didn't even look at it until the end of the night, going through her photos and found an album with this particular's app title. They were pictures of naked boys and pictures she had taken of herself - close up photos of certain body parts. Nothing identifiable but I know it's her. I went to the app and found conversations with boys, or so called boys, and where they had exchanged pictures.
We had talked about this type of activity, interest teens have in it and the potential consequences - not the punishment kind as much about what it does to your self-image, privacy, and safety. She would volunteer without prompting about other girls that did these high risk behaviors and other high risk behaviors and how she would never do it for this reason or another.
Lie, lie, lie. All lies.
She feels justified in her actions. "No boys at school care about me. At least I'm getting attention somewhere." And things like that. Trying to figure out what I can do to help her as her Mom have higher standards for herself.

No more Attachment Therapy

We’ve stopped Attachment Therapy. Somewhere along the lines, Penelope’s Medicaid was cancelled. I have no idea how or why. She is eligible based on her disability. I sign forms at the therapist office related to her treatment plan and progress that is for Medicaid. But I received call from the billing office saying that their last 6 months of bills were rejected by Medicaid due to no coverage. For 6 months. I haven’t received anything in the mail on this. Now I have to pay for 6 months of therapy on top of everything else I owe them.
This is not the first time this has happened in their billing office. Don’t tell me this far out that there is a problem. I can’t help fix it this far out! In the past it was issues that I had already resolved when Penelope was under her father’s company insurance and they were having company wide insurance problems and switching around every couple of months. Drove me batty. I thought that problem would go away when she went on Medicaid.
Now I’m trying to get her Medicaid reinstated but just like everything else, it’s a slow process. She is uninsured. I hate that! I can’t put her on my insurance because it’s past the 30 day window and my company’s insurance renews January 1. It’s not like I could afford it anyway.  I looked into it and it would be 40% of my pay!
So, we stopped going to therapy. I’m just so glad we are at a place that we don’t NEED therapy for her. I don’t know how affective it was towards the end anyway. Penelope is in a much better place than she ever was. We still have a lot of areas to work on, but I feel like attachment therapy was greatly about putting out fires. When there are no fires, we spent are time being hypervigiliant – waiting for the next fire to put out instead of pushing on. To some extent it made me feel like a complainer, still coming to the couch with areas of need and concern. Not significant ones. More like issues with chores and school work and Penelope not doing anything until being prompted. Penelope just doesn’t want to do anything to help out. Period.
But I will say, it’s not because she doesn’t want to help out. She doesn’t think of it in those terms. I’m not taking it personally – very often. Doing anything at all causes her to get anxious. Sometimes it’s an excited anxious. Sometimes it’s a frustrated anxiousness. But she avoids anything that makes her anxious. I have to read her anxiety level and divert her attention and do things that are mood altering to calm her down so she can get through whatever it is she needs to do.  In the mornings, I have to be silly and energetic to get her to feed off of my energy to get herself ready and to school. I’m not a morning person! When we do chores, I have to keep things fun and care free so she doesn’t stress out about having to do something she doesn’t want to do and just totally shut down. I’m not that kind of person and it wears me out!
She will be 16 this summer. Not sure our momentum towards self-reliance is going to get her there by the end of high school. She said “I know how to do these things. I just don’t want to now. But I’ll do it when I’m an adult.” I told her “It’s not a switch you just turn on when it’s time. It’s a life style. Habit.” Ironically, we were watching a movie later that evening and a similar scenario came on and the character said “It’s not like a switch you turn on.” Penelope looked at me with big eyes. Ha!
Once I get her back on insurance, I think I'm going to shop around for therapist that can be more like a life coach. If that's possible. It will be nice to have the break from driving an hour plus each way to therapy. I do want to say, I love our attachment therapist and will miss her. She saved our lives. I couldn't have done it without her.

Christmas and Bio Parents

Penelope did get to see her Dad at Christmas. Her Mom did not ask or try to see her this Christmas, which is a good thing. I do not take it to mean she didn't want to see her, but has given up on trying.  Though I've told her that she has to be patient and wait until Penelope is ready and that I'm pushing for a reunion, she doesn't believe me. Shocking, right? It's been several years since she has seen Penelope and it's much easier for her to sleep at night believing that I am the evil Aunt who has brainwashed her child into not wanting to see her own Mother because said Aunt wants to blame Penelope's mental illness on her when it's really just biological. Yeah, she could have been a better Mom but little Penelope adored her Mom. So she will just have to wait until Penelope is 18 years old and evil Aunt can't prevent them from seeing each other. Whatever..
Speaking about Harriet and Penelope, nothing ever came up again about Penelope wanting to see Harriet. I tried to bring it up twice and I was immediately shut down. Penelope didn't want to talk about it. I get it, this is one of the hardest times of the year for her. From a severity standpoint, it's similar to a bad dragged-out cold while Mother's Day is like a food poisoning. Short and severe. Birthdays are .. well, can't find an illness to best describe that one. More like an "under the influence" experience. It would be very interesting to see a brain scan during these times of the year.
Her maternal grandmother, Sheryl, and my Mom had been corresponding via email the past few months. That was interesting to learn about, in a frustrating way. See, Sheryl hasn't seen Penelope in as long as Harriet. Not because Penelope doesn't want to see her or anything like that. Back in 2008, the second time Penelope tried to commit suicide and described to the mental professionals her desire to kill Harriet, I recommended that Sheryl not go see Penelope in the hospital. Looking back, I probably should have let her so she could see how truly bad off Penelope's mental state was. But then I think she still would come away with the same opinion that she has had all these years which is it's a result of George telling Penelope her Mom doesn't love her and did bad things to her. She really just doesn't have a clue. Anyway, I didn't let anyone but myself and my parents to talk to Penelope and see her in the hospital. She had a "psychotic break" and it wasn't any longer about whether she could handle a visit from these people, but her ability to come back from this psychosis. Sheryl only visited Penelope a few times a year since she lived about 3 hours away in a different state anyway and told her that I thought it would be best to keep people she communicated with to the people in her daily life. Sheryl is also Harriet's Mom so I didn't know, with her state of mind, if that would be an issue. About 6 months later (I can't remember), Sheryl invited Penelope to come stay the weekend. This was a problem for me because the last time Sheryl had Penelope for a weekend, I found out after the fact that Harriet was there the entire weekend too and that Sheryl left Penelope in Harriet's care for hours when she would go spend some time in her art studio. Then, with all that had transpired with the hospital visits, the conversations about Penelope's RAD and what caused it, and Sheryl's consistent defense of Harriet's parenting, I just didn't feel comfortable sending her down alone. But I wasn't going to prevent her from seeing her grandmother. It wasn't like I thought Sheryl would intentionally hurt Penelope but because she doesn't understand Penelope's needs and didn't take my word for it, Penelope would at risk of getting hurt or hurting herself. What I mean by this is that besides Sheryl potentially exposing her to Harriet, feeling like it's no big deal, she could also assume Penelope knew age appropriate boundaries and leave her unattended to steal, damage or self-injure. George used to visit Sheryl with Penelope, so I took that route and "assumed" I was invited down as well. That wasn't received well. "I have to be supervised too?" I tried to explain that Penelope has unique needs but that wasn't an acceptable answer and the scheduling of that visit was never spoken of again.
Then about a year after that, Penelope was invited to a family wedding through Sheryl. Harriet wasn't invited because this part of her family had written her off. But Sheryl decided not to have Penelope go because she felt it was unfair that she would get to see Penelope when Harriet isn't allowed to. I thought that was stupid but whatever.
Then about a year or two later when petitioning on behalf of Harriet for a visit at Christmas time, told Penelope's therapist that the reason she, Sheryl, hasn't seen Penelope is because I won't let her. I won't let her because she looks too much like Harriet and it would be upsetting. I was floored by this because I said that in the context of visits in the hospital in 2008.
Now Grandma Sheryl and my Mom are corresponding via email and there is some talk about allowing Penelope  and Grandma Sheryl  to visit each other.  I love how I wasn’t included immediately in this conversation and I was told by my Mom “email her.” Grandma Sheryl send Penelope a sterling silver bracelet she made and a gift card for Christmas. The card had a brief note but was long enough to include “We should make jewelry together again some time.”  Understand that Sheryl lives far enough away that this would be at least an overnight at her place in order for that to happen.  Penelope didn’t have any reaction to it or think twice about it, almost leaving me to wonder if she actually read it.
I have yet to email Grandma Sheryl or discuss it with Penelope. I’m sure I’ll get around to it eventually. Need to get past the holidays and illnesses going through our house. Basically, it’s not a priority but on the radar. I will deal with it later.
I didn’t hear anything from Harriet, though she sent a Christmas gift to Penelope through George.  Harriet doesn’t know that George sees Penelope once in a while now, so it’s apparent that they still hang out once in a while. The only reason this bothers me is because its just another demonstration how dysfunctional they are.
George visited with my parents on Christmas morning. The visit started out fine. We had breakfast and then opened presents. George bought Penelope an X Box game and a off brand mini tablet. There some history regarding the tablet. George really wanted to buy Penelope a tablet for Christmas. This started over the summer. I had considered it too, with her starting her freshman year of high school, having all of us go in on a nice one. But seeing how much she avoids schoolwork and how she is always using her android phone to watch videos, play games, use social media and all that teenagers do, I felt like it was only going to make the battle between schoolwork and R&R for her even harder. On top of that, I’d have to be the bad guy and take it away from her when she doesn’t stick to the rules about homework. I told him I didn’t feel she was ready to have a tablet computer and not to get her one. He felt like “as her father” he should make sure she has every tool she could use to do well in school.  It wasn’t like she was even asking for one but it didn’t matter what I said, like it ever does.  About two weeks before Christmas he calls me all proud of his purchase and wanted to tell me what a great deal he got on it.  My Mom tells me later that day that she told him to call me first and make sure it was okay to get. Whatever. Anyway, the Christmas visit was fine  until shortly after opening presents. It’s almost like if it’s too long of a visit, he gets too comfortable and can’t control his ability to be the jerk he really is. I had told him on several occasions that Penelope does not want him in her room when he is over. He had gone in there at Thanksgiving to see the paint job from the redecorating we did for her birthday. Even though I told him she was upset by it, he did it again on Christmas. After breakfast and opening presents, Penelope wanted to get away from the stimulus of it all and went to her room for a break. Nothing bad, just wanted a few minutes alone. I thought this was awesome that she was 1) in tune with her anxious feelings and 2) problem-solved by deciding to go to her quiet and safe room where she could relax for a few minutes. But George followed her. Penelope isn’t strong enough yet to draw that line with her Dad, in the moment. I walked past her room and saw her sitting on her bed facing the door, not looking at him but with a scared/angry expression on her face with her arms crossed. George was sitting in her desk chair that he rolled over to the side of her bed, oblivious to (or ignoring?)   her body language ,and was talking to her.  I walked in and said “What’s going on?” George said “We’re just talking.” I said, “Let’s move it to the living room. I need your guys help anyway” and walked away trying to make it a non-issue. Didn’t work. George was angry with me for interrupting their one on one time.
He came into the living room and essentially tried to pick a fight with me. He decides to tell me “One day when your cat (that hates his guts and has bitten him) bites me, I’m going to pick him up (and motions picking up a cat by it’s scruff) and punch him right in his face (and motions punching really hard) making him fly!” He sees me getting angry and says with a smirk on his face, “He won’t be around to bite me again after that.” Of course this pissed me off, which was his intention I quickly realized. I wanted to say “You better not touch my cat, ever! That will be the last day you’ll ever get to see Penelope!” in the mind frame that I will never tolerate his presence again and he has to see me to see Penelope. But I knew saying that would only be falling into this trap he was setting. It took me a second or two to adjust but I ended up saying, calmly even, “The day you do that is the last day I bet Penelope will speak to you. She loves that cat more than anything.”  Yes, thank you, thank you. I was highly impressed with myself as well.  I attribute my ability to come up with that while extremely angry and deliver it calmly to my years of training through parenting a child with RAD.
As you can imagine, it completely nullified his attack. Penelope happened to walk in the room right at that time and said “What about the cat?” I started to say, “Your Dad said..” and he cut me off and said  with a softer, wavering tone “I was just saying that he better not bite me again because I might accidentally hit him in his teeth and knock his teeth out so he can’t bite me again.” Penelope said “You better not TOUCH my cat, EVER!” That’s what I was going to say! Good for her. Is it bad that I was proud she made a threatening statement to him?  I feel it was appropriate. Now if she followed it with “I’ll kill you” then I’d have issue. George backed down and said he wouldn’t.
Right after Christmas, my parents, Penelope and I went on a mini vacation by renting a cabin at a nearby state park for a long weekend. Of course it snowed the day after Christmas and there was about 8 inches of snow on the ground the entire time we were there. Thursday night she Penelope couldn’t get the tablet to turn on. I tried everything. She said it had been glitch since Christmas. I said “We will let your Dad figure it out when we get back” since it was his purchase. Saturday night, Penelope was getting her MP3 player out of her bag and the tablet fell out onto the floor. The screen shattered. There was a 90 day warranty but.. not for that. She was so upset her Dad was going to be angry with her she cried and cried. She ended up sleeping in my bed with me. I told her he wasn’t going to be mad (or I’d kill him).  It was an accident. I do believe it was an accident. She has never been one to break things purposefully like some kids with RAD. She values her possessions too much.  He wasn’t mad but upset that he gave her a gift that didn’t work anyway and now she is left with no gift. Good for him. One appropriate reaction to a situation.