alongfortheride
Member
Yesterday, difficult child lost his cell phone privileges because he did not answer the phone when we called the evening before. House rule is that we pay for the phone and expect our calls to be answered. He perseverated on the phone for 7 hours. "Can I have my phone?", "Why?" repeat ad nauseum. He refused to accept my answers and after an hour I stopped responding. Unfortunately, this ramped him up.
Although he never became destructive or violent towards me or the house, it was quite obvious that he wanted to. He threatened to. He was about to attempt to open the lock box with an ax when I decided to leave for my own safety. He then put his foot under the tire of my car and said I would have to run over his foot in order to leave. I sat it out and he eventually removed his foot. He told me he was going to kill me, cut off my head and *&%^ on it.
My husband came home and all was quiet and well except that he had lightly cut at his wrist, definitely not with intent. I returned home and we all sat and calmly discussed the phone again except we were right back to where I started 3 hours earlier. During the "discussion", he put a cigarette out on his the back of his hand and pulled chunks of hair from his head. "Can I have my phone?", "Why?". Sometimes he changed the intonation depending on his level of anger but not often. He said nothing else.
My sense was that he was trying to manipulate and bully his way to the phone. Another wave of calm and we were back at it again. Husband threatened to call ambulance/police and difficult child told him he needed the police to come so that he could press charges against husband for the cigarette burn which he had self inflicted. difficult child went to play video game and a half hour later came back to say he had finally processed the consequense and the evening proceeded as usual.
The whole day was spent with me second guessing myself and feeling that I did not know what to do with him. So... what would you have done?
Although he never became destructive or violent towards me or the house, it was quite obvious that he wanted to. He threatened to. He was about to attempt to open the lock box with an ax when I decided to leave for my own safety. He then put his foot under the tire of my car and said I would have to run over his foot in order to leave. I sat it out and he eventually removed his foot. He told me he was going to kill me, cut off my head and *&%^ on it.
My husband came home and all was quiet and well except that he had lightly cut at his wrist, definitely not with intent. I returned home and we all sat and calmly discussed the phone again except we were right back to where I started 3 hours earlier. During the "discussion", he put a cigarette out on his the back of his hand and pulled chunks of hair from his head. "Can I have my phone?", "Why?". Sometimes he changed the intonation depending on his level of anger but not often. He said nothing else.
My sense was that he was trying to manipulate and bully his way to the phone. Another wave of calm and we were back at it again. Husband threatened to call ambulance/police and difficult child told him he needed the police to come so that he could press charges against husband for the cigarette burn which he had self inflicted. difficult child went to play video game and a half hour later came back to say he had finally processed the consequense and the evening proceeded as usual.
The whole day was spent with me second guessing myself and feeling that I did not know what to do with him. So... what would you have done?
