And my evening of getting to talk to my husband is gone! Because he and SS11 have been up for over the past hour talking. I really hate him.

So, DH didn't use to make SS clean up after himself if he puked, but he does now. The last time it happened, SS was told that if he did it again, even if it was the middle of the night, he'd be staying up and doing it. And last night he did. The kids do have a bed time. It's pretty flexible but usually not later than 9:30. Last night was a bit later because we got home late and all had to shower (since we hadn't in 5 days!). SS was already asleep in bed when he barfed. In fact, he's usually the one asking and often even whining to go to bed, sometimes really early and we have to keep him up otherwise he's up before 5 am. Anyway, he came out of his bedroom and said that he puked. DH told him he should know what that means, SS said, in a whiny voice, 'I know, I know, I'll clean it up.' DH got up to survey the damage and direct the clean up and SS started to whine, that's when I went to my room. DH stopped the whining, then SS started to cry and said that I hated him (which I did at that moment) and that's why I went to my room as soon as I saw him. DH told him that I don't hate him but that I just don't want to deal with him and his whining right now and he said that he didn't want to deal with him either and that if he didn't stop crying and whining and clean it up himself he was going to join me in the bedroom and we were going to finish our conversation and go to sleep and SS could clean it up without any supervision.

Finally, at like 1:30, when SS was finished cleaning up, DH and I talked. It took him 2 hours whereas it could have been done in 30 minutes, but I guess that's how it goes when you make a kid do something themselves. That's when I heard the full story of what SS had said. DH and SS talked more while they were waiting for some cleaner to work on the carpet. SS said that he thinks that I don't love him because I never tell him that I love him. DH called bullshit because we tell the kids all the time. SS likes to use nevers and always and we often have to call him on this.

Then, SS said that he didn't like the vacation we took him on because he didn't like climbing up the mountain and he didn't like that DH yelled at him while they were kayaking through sea caves. DH told SS that next time we can leave him and not take him on vacation and that he was yelling at him on the kayak because he was telling him what to do to navigate and we were in a sea cave, so duh, it's loud in there, you have to yell to be heard. DH also started crying when SS told him that he didn't like the vacation. Then SS started crying too. I hope he got it.

SS also said that he doesn't like when he's yelled at, swore at, slammed into the wall, or slapped by me. DH asked him to elaborate on each of those things. Slapped was when we were out in the ocean. As for yelled at, SS said he gets in trouble and gets yelled at more than his brother or sister. DH agreed and said that he doesn't listen as much as his brother and sister. SS said he sometimes gets sworn at when he gets yelled at. DH agreed and said that he and I both lose our temper sometimes, mostly me, and that we are trying to control it. SS said that he got 'slammed into the wall' by me when he was just trying to put away his shoes. I was bending over taking my shoes off to put them on the rack, SS grabbed me by my pants and pushed me head first into the wall to get me out of the way to put his shoes on, so I grabbed him by his sweatshirt and pushed him back into the wall. So, when SS brought this up, DH explained again that we can lose our temper but that I just did to him, what he did to me, and that SS often does things to me or him or his brother and sister and we don't do it back but he just gets in trouble. SS says he prefers that, just getting in trouble, DH agreed.

SS also said that instead of getting yelled at, he wants to be encouraged to do something different. DH said that we do encourage him and will try to do it more but that he isn't going to get out of trouble.

So, DH and I talked and we agreed that when SS is acting up, I'm just going to leave him be and call DH. We talked about different scenarios. If we're at home and SS acts up and isn't responding to me. Like, if I ask him to do something and he messes it up from being lazy, I will say, "Look, you messed this up, now fix it." If he starts to whine and I say "Stop whining," and he doesn't, he'll be sent to his room if it doesn't conflict with what the other kids are doing, and if it does he will be sent outside to sit on the porch. I'll call DH and he can deal with him. I think this is a good idea because so often DH stands aside and doesn't parent so that he doesn't have to be the bad guy. If something like this happens while we're out at the grocery store or something, I'll do the same thing. Send SS to the car or outside and have DH deal with him. If DH isn't home or isn't with us, I'll call him, and he'll have to come deal with it. I was very clear to DH that I didn't care if he was at work, in a meeting, etc. If SS isn't responding to me, he has to come deal with it then and there. I will leave SS at the grocery store. My mom would do it to me and I learned quick that she wasn't going to let her day be ruined by a stinking brat.

We also talked about the ocean scenario and agreed that in that case, I would just leave him. If he's not in any real danger, and it's just a matter of getting him to stop being hysterical, just leave him. I feel like I'm dealing with a toddler throwing tantrums. But, like some of you have suggested, he is a bit delayed. Not diagnosiably so, but SS11 is slow. He's obviously way less mature than his peers and has clear issues. But, of course, BM won't see it that way so we're just stuck dealing with him on our own. She gives in to his whining and crying. I don't know how she deals with the guilt of it, like having him say that he doesn't like when he gets in trouble and it makes him feel like she doesn't love him. How could any parent really put up with that? It's such bullshit. If you buy into it, doesn't it leave you feeling terrible?

Oh, and he does do all these behaviors at BM's house, he just isn't made responsible for them there and she pretends like they don't happen, but he tells us, as do his brother and sister that puking in bed and pooing in the shower, etc have all happened at her house and that he gets in more trouble there than his brother and sister as well, especially with his stepdad. Hmmm....... Sounds like REAL mommy and REAL daddy don't want to REALLY parent. I know it's also that you have a softer spot and higher tolerance for annoying behavior with your own children. Evolution made us that way, made babies cute and endearing to us because otherwise we would kill them with all their awful crying and what not. But, it's also part of both of them doing the divorced parenting routine - parenting by guilt. At least DH has gotten better at not doing it, largely because of me. And, imagine this, BM too has gotten better at it, larger because of her new man. Wow. Amazing.

So, yeah, DH and I are going to counseling and will be talking about what to do with SS11. We've been before and we're going again, woohoo! We'll see what my counselor has to say. I would definitely leave DH if he wasn't open to counseling. I hope that our decision for me to just disengage with SS is good. I think it is. It's what I would do when I worked with kids, it's just so much harder to disengage from your own kids. Or, at least it is for me, DH seems to be able to let them walk all over him. But I guess that's different than disengaging yet remaining firm, if that makes any sense.

Just writing and venting here makes me feel better. I'm getting hungry now so I guess I'll have to emerge from my cave. DH took SS to the grocery store to get a carpet cleaner to finish the job and he got some groceries so now we can have breakfast. We returned from 5 days of island camping (pit toilets, no showers, no campfire, only a little gas stove, no cooler, all non-perishable foods) to find that our fridge and freezer were not working. DH, bless him, cleaned it all out himself and I took out the trash. But, yeah, things like that are always lovely additions to the stress.

Oh, and I think I do love my SS. I don't think that feeling this way about him sometimes means that I don't love him. Honestly, for the most part, he's good. He has manners and is sweet. He listens to his teachers and coaches and other adults, he's just a pain in the ass with us, partly because he's emotionally/developmentally delayed and partly because of poor parenting. My DH says all the same things about him - save the hating him right now part. He says, he's lazy, pathetic, disappointing, immature, no common sense, only does good in school because of 'A for effort' teaching - he's gonna be in 6th grade next year and we only hope that he gets the same teacher his sister had because he'll whip him into shape for middle school. Yeah, in moments of desperation, DH has even said, 'SS11 sucks. He can't do anything right.' Now, of course, we don't actually believe that, but when you've had a particularly rough time, it sure feels that way. DH has even apologized to me specifically for SS11, like when he pushes me or whines that he didn't like the day I spent doing fun things with him. DH knows that it's partly poor parenting and I think that's a bit of what comes out when we say he sucks, it's more like, he sucks because his mom and dad don't deal with it properly, and that's why DH feels bad about it.

I think it's OK to feel like you really don't like your kids sometimes, like they just suck, because I think that's reality, and if we pressure ourselves into thinking that if we don't have infinite patience for our own children, we are bad parents, then we fall into a bad guilt trip, one that can even make us be worse parents. When I worked with kids with developmental disabilities, parents would come in all the time in tears because they felt so bad because they just couldn't stand their kids anymore. We also had parents constantly joking about how awful their kids were. And, we had parent support group meetings every other week. Each one was a different topic. One week that the parents always loved the most was venting about how much their kids suck, and turning it around into how great parents are for putting up with their children. It was so funny and enlightening to watch those meetings. They start off reserved. No one wants to say anything bad about their kids. Some of the moms say something like, 'Sometimes he can get off track.' Then some more comments like that. Then, someone just rips in with, 'I can't stand his stupid voice when he doesn't get his way.' And then it's like the flood gates have opened. Parents of kids with disabilities get so used to dealing with everything so clinically, that they forget that they have feelings too, that it's ok to feel raw about it.

So me and my husband and any other parent who sometimes feels like their kids are awful are in fact themselves awful and unfit parents?