Just had enough

I work in a company that is very small (less than 20 employees) and is very understanding when it comes to situations with kids and family issues.  The Monday after Thanksgiving Nathan had an appointment with the doctor who issued the prescription for his Allderol just after lunch.  I spoke with my boss/owner of the company (who is only 4-5 years older than I am) and explained that I could get Nathan from daycare, to the doctor and be back at work in about two hours.  Since he had vision therapy that night, would it be okay if I just brought him back to the shop with me for a few hours...and was it okay if I took an extra hour for my lunch.  My boss Kurt pointed out that I am salary and taking an extra hour here and there was a perk of being salary.  Plus, he said, I know that you put in more than your forty hours a week.  Kurt had no problem with Nathan being at work for the almost three hours once I explained that he could sit on the computer and play games or play on his DSi.

That being said, Nathan was great all day.  We had nice discussions on the way to and from the doctors office.  He was very well behaved at his office and while we waited.  Once we got back to the office he sat quietly in a chair near my desk and played on his DSi.  When my co-workers would talk to him, he would have a conversation with them.  When my co-workers high school son came in to do the office cleaning, Nathan followed him around and helped him with some of the grunt jobs.

We left and went to vision therapy.  He did really well there.  We had to run to Walgreens and pick up some pictures that were being printed for a school project.  It all went downhill when he saw some speakers that he wanted and I would not buy.  He threw a small fit in the store and threw a big one once he got in the van.  He was kicking the seat, calling me names and just behaved terrible.  (It was a repeat of how he acted before he got on his meds)  I gave him a few minutes to calm himself down, but as we were driving home, something would set him off once in a while.  I explained that you do not call me 'stupid, brat face' as I do not call him those type of names.  If he wants to be treated with respect, he needs to treat me with respect.

Finally, after we turned off State Route 47 and onto Dawson I chose my moment.  (At this point, we were about 5 minutes from home) It was a dark, cloudy night with not a lot of light from the moon.  I waited until we were in front of the abandoned, haunted looking house and slammed on my brakes.  In my calmest voice I told Nathan to get out and start walking home since he hated me so much.  He took one look outside and said no.  He was quiet for the remainder of the trip, but he did sulk.

I am not proud of the fact I exploited Nathan's fear of the dark, and threatened to leave him on the side of the road (I never would have left him there).  I just had enough of the Mom bashing and figured I had to do something drastic as my telling him to knock it off wasn't working.  Every time I begin to have doubts about putting him on medicine for his ADHD, an incident like this happens and sends me the signal that he needs to be on it.

Justin - Part II

We have a basement with our house.  It is not fixed up, but it is not a cellar like my parents have.  We have three open rooms - one room is the laundry room, another room has a pool table left by previous residents and the furnance is also in that same room.  The third room is a big open room that happens to have clothes lines and the boys outdoor summer toys.  It is not unusual for them to come down with me when I am doing the laundry and stay down there and ride their bikes.

Yesterday, Darren comes running upstairs and said 'the soap you wash clothes with is leaking.  Justin did it.'  I went downstairs and there is laundry detergent everywhere.  We buy the gallon size that lays down and has a push spout.  However, the push spout was unscrewed and there is detergent just dripping from the bottle as all of it had already spilled.  I made myself count to five before I exploded, but that did not help.  I marched back up the stairs and made all three boys sit on the couch (Nathan was upstairs when all this happened, but one angry look from me had him changing his mind about arguing against sitting on the couch).  Bruce and I then put our heads together on the best way to clean this up.  We decided to cut a gallon ice cream bucket lid in half so we could kind of scoop up the detergent and pour into a funnel.  I made Bruce go back upstairs and keep an eye on the boys while I cleaned everything up.  Luckily(?) the dirty bath towels sat next to the pile of spilled detergent, so I mopped up the residue with the towels.  Then I threw them into the wash with no detergent....even then there were a lot of suds!