The answer should be yes. Not "how can I get my loved one help?"

Author Archives: David's Father

Coming milestones

Doubting Dad

Doubting Dad

Sometime in the month of September I will write post 1000 for my little site.  In the blogger community numbers are huge.

Sometime this fall I will hit 100,000 page views.

Normally when a blog hits either of these two milestones the blog author celebrates.  They celebrate their good fortune at being able to continue the writing process and at the same time, increasing readership of their blog.

I won’t be celebrating.  My celebration will occur when I no longer feel compelled to use this as the therapy for the things that we deal with every day in our house.

I wonder how many milestones I will hit with this little blog of mine.

I am still working on a book about our adventures with David, so that others may learn and benefit from the things we deal with every day.

Anyway, as I close post 978, I thank you for reading.  When the time comes, I will let you know when we can celebrate my writing about issues related to fathering children like David, rather than writing about David.  Until then cheers.

verbal abuse from the son

Today, we had a pretty good day.  A few lies, nothing major.  Right up until we got home.

Then holy hell broke out.

I have been verbally abused when I was a kid, but never like what I get almost nightly from David.

Tonight I started recording the tirades.  This one lasted an hour.

To hear him talk, one would think that we beat him to within an inch of his life every day.

I love him, I really do, but where last night I was able to give him a hug and get him to stop, tonight he was having none of that.

He begged me to call the Sheriff so that he could get taken away from us and be placed with people who would treat him better.

So many other things, I just can’t comprehend why he would say them except to get a reaction out of us.  I calmly laid back on the couch and ignored him, which just made him get louder.

Today we logged over 200 miles because he had therapy.   Not a huge deal, but I knew that the closer we got to home, the more imminent the opportunity for him to explode.  So to say I am aching from the tension would be like saying the polar ice cap is just a little freeze.

Tonight, he claimed that the reason he is like this is because he has court on Thursday.

Last week when I explained to him about court, I also told him that now is the chance for him to show the judge that he could behave.  Not David, he claims that there is no hope but for him to spend the rest of his life in prison.   When you have a defeatist attitude, no amount of propping by your parents can help you.

What do I do?  Do I lie to the juvenile court person and tell them that everything is good at home?  or do I tell them the truth?

I was a bad kid.  I made a change in my life.  David seems to think that I didn’t have to work at making that change.  That it was easy for me to give up the things I was doing and travel down the side of good.  Oh how I wish it were so.  I explained to him that we could show him all of the tools he needs to make the change in his life, but that the only one who could actually affect the change is him.

I wish that he could see how much we love him.  Is it too much to hope that one day he will?

how I got him to stop mouthing off and gave him all of the attention that he wanted

Tonight, David’s mouth was flying.  Some of the vilest things I have ever heard him say.  they don’t need to be repeated here.  except to say that he is planning to accuse us of child abuse.  He has made that claim before.  I have zero interest in beating him.  I don’t think it would do any good.  I use pressure points when I need to.  They stop him cold.

Tonight was something else.  He wanted attention.  So I gave it to him.

i didn’t restrain him.  I didn’t use pressure points.  I just gave him a big hug that lasted for 20 minutes.  No force.  I told him that I loved him.  Eventually he stopped.

By the way, he hates hugs.  Or so he says.  In the end, I gave him all of the attention that he wanted.  And I didn’t strain my voice yelling.  Because as any parent of a kid with reactive attachment disorder will tell you, you will strain your voice, and not accomplish much.

Do I think that this will be repeatable?  Sadly, no.  I don’t.  Maybe a month from now, but not tomorrow.

The evening started with him being told to take a shower.  A simple rule is that we don’t start the water running until we are ready to get in the shower.  He will gladly run the water all day long if we let him.  Then he forgot a shirt.  Underwear.  So was traipsing around with his pants around his ankles looking for clean clothes.  He is 14.  Things went down hill from there, until I gave him a hug.  (yes, he was fully dressed by this point.)

What I don’t get is, until bath time, we had an awesome day.