Its Sunday afternoon now and we've only had one 'incident'.
I kept out of the way yesterday by staying in bed with my cold and a good book! I've been taking these 3000mg Vit C tablets and I don't know whether I can attribute it to them but I feel MUCH better!! The feverishness has passed, likewise the tiredness; the stuffy nose is just that...not a running tap like Fri and the throat has stopped burning. Rest is a wonderful thing!
Anyway, being 'out of the way' was a good thing. Father and son watched a movie together and played with some toys apparently. There was a fair bit of nagging and one whingy, crying moment but Himself managed to avoid taking him to the football. He did come in and ask me about it at one point. "Surely if I rug him up....its not like you move around much......" I just shook my head and looked at him. I think the reminder that SB had already thrown up twice that morning might have cemented his resolve. I know my husband and, lovely and loving as he is, he doesn't want to be dealing with vomit at the football!!! :-D
I dragged myself out of bed to take Baby Angel to netball, and, dosed up with Codral, I coped quite well. On our return SB spoke to me briefly for the first time this weekend so I wondered if things were going to be ok. Over dinner he ate........a teaspoon of mashed potato.........but was reasonably chatty. His big brother then did a typical mean big brother trick by giving him one of those unsolvable lateral thinking puzzles and promising him $5.00 if he could crack it in 5 minutes. Needless to say he didn't and rapidly began to descend into hysterics "I'm stupid, I guess I just won't do it then, give me one more minute, its not fair...." Resilience is not his long suit.
I managed to calm him by explaining that of course he couldn't do it, adults can't do it, that's why his rotten brother (18y/o) had offered him the money in the first place because he knew he couldn't do it. It was touch and go for a minute but he calmed down enough to start demanding things off his father. I beat a hasty retreat.
This morning I lost my cool though.
He was coughing incessantly and I asked if he would like some cough medicine. Now naturally, SB is the kid who doesn't like the taste of cough medicine. While other 9 year olds have balanced the 30secs of unpleasantness associated with the bad taste against the calming of the cough and the soothing of the throat, SB has not. He informed me he didn't need any cough medicine.
I foolishly decided to try and reason with him. I asked him why he didn't need any medicine as he was obviously coughing a lot.
"I just don't need any"
"Well, you are coughing a lot, is it the taste?"
" Shutup, I don't want to listen to you!!!"
"So it IS the taste!?"
I tried to point out that the benefits outweighed the minor unpleasantness but by this stage he had lost it and ran out of the room screaming that I "couldn't force him to do anything he didn't want to do" and to "be quiet because he DIDN'T CARE".
At which point I completely lost all adult perspective and shrieked after him that we were EVEN because I DIDN'T CARE EITHER!!!!!!
(seethe seethe seethe)
Now at this point in my reflection I have to ask myself why I lost it and why I am seething.
Is it the frustration of knowing that you're trying to help and resentment at being treated like Public Enemy No 1? Is it the powerlessness of knowing he's not my kid and therefore I have no control over things like this, even if they ARE good for him? Is it the knowledge that his parents will say "Oh, don't force him....."
Is it just dislike of a spoiled, obnoxious child?
Anyway, shortly he stomped back in and flung himself on the sofa and I was petty enough to let fly with
"Don't think you're going to spend your life not doing things you don't want to do. Even as an adult I am constantly being forced to do things I don't want to do! So put that in your pipe and smoke it mate."
Then I stormed out.
Later he came and asked his father if he could have some cough medicine. Himself innocently asked me if we had any. My icy reply that 'we had several varieties' was the most I was going to get involved in that conversation. I still don't know whether he had any.
I went to church to do some major praying for patience, forgiveness and maturity!!!!
Back at the ranch everything is calm. Mainly because I let him have popcorn for lunch. For lunch >:-( ,with nothing else. Father thought it best he eat something rather than nothing. My daughter asked me what had happened to my Flaming Sword!
He did put his toys away when I asked him though.
mutter mutter mutter
5 comments:
Ouch. I can't imagine how on earth you deal so well! And being sick yourself, to boot!
My son would rather suffer than take a bad tasting medicine. And he gets all choked up swallowing a pill. Big Sigh. I have to promise that he can swallow bad medicine with a sweet drink when I think he just has to take the medicine. My nurse Mom has informed me that it is just fine to swallow a drink after the cough medicine---it really doesn't have to coat your throat or anything. :-)
Lots of us have been in this position you have been about medicine! And lots of us out here have lost our cool about stuff and said the wrong thing. And let them eat the wrong stuff. Just get him balanced meals again when he feels better, I think.
Clean slate every morning----try to hold it together better each day! ;-) (Me too!)
Thanks guys. I feel so bad when I read through all this again. Like 'how petty am I being?'. Even my mum gave me a talking to over this one. I was happy to do the sweet drink thing too. I think what irritated me was being yelled at when I was just trying to help. On reflection I wonder how much of it has to do with what he's been living with these past 3 weeks. His older siblings give him a hard time and adults at that end are apt to over compensate thus teaching the 'if I whinge people respond' lesson. I just have to pull myself together and be a bit more adult.
As you say Jenny. Clean slate :-)
Ahh...the joy of blended parenting. I'm a second wife, but not a stepmother, thankfully. I've seen blended families work beautifully and I've seen them with shrieking mothers, absent fathers. One incident is NOT the end of the world. Praying for patience and perspective is an excellent thing and I'll be praying for that for you as well. Try some of the DOR on him. It might work!
I'm sure it's not easy to deal with SB when you're feeling fine, so I can't imagine what it must be like when you're sick. Shoulda just stayed in bed!
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