caerula's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- more on YB I have "Sweet Caroline" by Neil Diamond stuck in my head. Talk about a bad omen to start off your day. Which did have a bad start. I slept in again, and got to work an hour late. Which means I will have to stay an hour late to make up for it, and probably take work home again as I neglected to do much with the stuff I took home over the weekend to catch up on. We gave Sophie a bath yesterday, which would have been quite a humorous experience if it hadn't scared her so badly. Poor thing was shaking by the time we were done, and kept trying to run away. We had her corralled on my parents' deck, and it was hot enough yesterday (over 90F), that we figured she wouldn't mind the cold water. Not true, even though she'd happily been playing w/ YB in the creek on Saturday. Completely different, I suppose, to a doggy mind. Poor thing. And of course it took all three of us, and we were all just as wet as Sophie by the end. I can't get into my email this morning. Aargh. Hate Yahoo. Hate hate hate. So, the aftermath of the custody decision. We left court and met Dad and YB at Cracker Barrell in Lansing. BB and I went off with YB while the parents and parents-in-law went in to get a table; YB knew we'd been to hear the judge's decision and was clearly nervous about it, looking down while we walked and steadfastly refusing to ask BB any questions. BB started out by telling him he would still get to see everyone. Then he told him that he would stay with us through the school year and spend a lot of time in the summer with his Nana and Papa. YB was very stoic, just repeating "ok" everytime BB gave him a new piece of info and not inquiring any further. We tried very hard to get him to tell us what he was thinking; he looked like he was going to burst into tears but was trying to be manly about it. We both told him it was ok to be angry at whoever he wanted; us, his grandparents, the judge, whatever. That was what finally got a reaction. He said, "But Nana & Papa told me I was going back to live there." I've never wanted to murder anyone as much as I wanted to at that moment. The gall of them, to give a confused, insecure 8 year old boy reassurances they couldn't guarantee. Even if they truly believed that was what was going to happen, they couldn't know for sure, and had no business telling YB anything they couldn't know the outcome of. Everytime he asked us this year, we both told him that we didn't know, that it was up to the judge to decide and no one would know until he told us. It was hard to know what to say to YB at this point. BB looked at me over YB's head and I just shrugged. BB finally said that maybe Nana and Papa had made a mistake, that grown-ups don't always say and do the right things. I think this is what really upset YB the most; he just kept saying, "but they TOLD me." I don't think it ever really occured to him before that they might be wrong, or tell him something that wasn't true. That's a big thing for a kid to deal with. He stayed really upset for 10 or 20 minutes. When we went back into the restaurant, at first he walked ahead of us and didn't stop or turn to look when BB called to him to stop. BB ran to catch up to him and picked YB up and put him on his shoulder; YB buried his face and wouldn't look up until we got to the table, where he sat down and put his face in his arms and wouldn't respond to anyone. But in about 10 minutes he started playing with the peg game on the table, and 10 minutes after that he was practically back to normal, teasing, laughing, talking to us. Since then he's been really up and down. He'll be fine for hours, and then suddenly get really upset or throw a fit over some little thing. Saturday we were working on his summer reading homework, and he started crying over a word he couldn't read. And he's been testing us, definitely; not listening, not answering when we talk to him, not doing the things we ask him to do and doing things he knows he's not supposed to. The hard thing to know is how much is on purpose and how much is the ADHD, which always kicks up during stressful periods. Sometimes it's not that he's ignoring us, it's that he's so hyperfocused on something else that he really doesn't hear. Its nearly impossible to tell the difference. He hasn't talked about the decision at all. He's talked to his mom, his grandparents, and one aunt on the phone since then and hasn't mentioned it to them either. We are definitely going to get him into counseling, but like the ADHD treatments, won't have the opportunity to establish any kind of regular schedule until the couple weeks before school starts, which makes it rather difficult. He's going to be at the Dementors for 2 and a hald weeks starting from the 19th, and when he gets back he'll be a monster, I know. He's always more out of control after he spends time with them, and who knows what they will tell him now. Then he's back with us for two weeks, and then back to them for a week and a half. Not until after that will we be able to establish any kind of regular schedule, and then school will be starting. What a mess. There's really nothing else to say right now. We're just muddling through the best we can. 9:13 a.m. - 2001-07-16 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||
|
||||||