Waiting for That Holiday Shoe to Drop...

DaisyFace

Love me...Love me not
It's that time of year for generalized anxiety for all of us parents of difficult children...school will be out soon...sugar and expectations are up...structured quiet time is down...


In my own home, my difficult child has been ramping up the anger. She's been increasingly nasty with each passing day.

She's flunking a math class she needs to graduate - but instead of studying or doing homework, her strategy is to pester the office to give her a new math teacher. Changing classes in an effort to get a more lenient teacher is strictly against school policy - but knowing my difficult child, she will come up with some story that allows her to get that class switched. So (interestingly enough), I have every confidence that she will get into a different math class and graduate by the skin of her teeth.

She's managed to keep her part time job - but has been feuding with the managers...and now she's talking about "soon it will be time to find a new job..." so I guess she is hinting to me that she is not keeping this one for too much longer.

And she's making plans to move out. This might be more exciting except that her plan always involves potential room-mates who are unemployed drop-outs with drug and alcohol problems. (Oh joy!)

So we are hanging in there day-by-day....just hoping that giant shoe that always seems to be hanging over our heads doesn't "drop" for the holidays.


How are things at your house?
 

InsaneCdn

Well-Known Member
No details ... but "in the house" is better than elsewhere... there's a dozen shoes hanging over my head, but right now (cross fingers) none of them has to do with my immediate (in THIS house) family.
 

AnnieO

Shooting from the Hip
I started breathing again. I don't know when I will quit looking over my shoulder, but at least I'm not holding my breath...
 

buddy

New Member
This is Christmas and Birthday time for us and is always stressful. I.thought things were so much better and now add the anxiety he is dealing with from the school in CT and he has had two not great days in a row at school. Plus his Integrated Listening Systems (ILS) worker got sick yesterday and his biofeedback therapist today. Schedule changes are not cool on top of everything else. Just have to hang on for the ride again! I hope your difficult child will do better this year. Not much longer........
 

greenrene

Member
It's a crazy busy week, the boys' last day of school is tomorrow, and difficult child's last day is Friday... We're flying out for Christmas with the inlaws on Friday. There are going to be 13 of us in one house. It's a really big house (thank GOD), but still. Should be interesting.
 

busywend

Well-Known Member
Wine helps me forget about the shoes in the air. For real. No, I do not have a problem with alcohol. But, I do find it very relaxing.
 

StressedM0mma

Active Member
I am hoping we all have a better year this year. (myself and difficult child included) We were in th edepths of it last year with difficult child. I am on edge though, and sitting here waiting to see what will happen. Today is the last day of school. I told her we need to be on time because I have other appts. So, we will see if she can comply. I am honestly not holding my breath. I have to take easy child's car, since she is parked behind me, and easy child needs to leave for work not long after I drop difficult child off so I hope that will encourage difficult child to be on time.
Busy, wine is a wonderful thing. It helps me relax too.
 
B

Bunny

Guest
We're starting to feel it here, too. difficult child has already started with "Can't I have just one of my presents early?? PLEASE???!!! I'll leave you alone if you just give me a present early." When I told him no (again!) last night it turned into, "You don't love me! IF easy child asked for a present early you would give it to HIM and bu won't do it for ME! Why don't you just admit that you HATE me??!!" It does not help that my brother in law/sister in law who live in a different part of the state asked me last week if they could come here for Christmas dinner. easy child is thrilled about getting to spend the day with his cousins, but difficult child is alredy ramping up about it. They are alot younger than him and their oldest son, who is a few months older than easy child, wants to hang all over difficult child ALL. THE. TIME! I told difficult child that he was free to go to his room and play his video games or play in the computer in the basement if he wanted to get away from the little ones, but he's still really annoyed that I said they could come. Once again, I did not take his feeling into account when I made the choice to say yes and what if he doesn't want to spend the whole day with them? As much as I am looking forward to seeing them, I just don't need the difficult child aggravation about it.
 
H

HaoZi

Guest
I'm likely working a split shift on Christmas day and Kiddo will spend most of the day with my boyfriend (at least she won't spend it alone this year). We celebrate Yule so she gets her presents early to begin with, and big ticket items don't come around until tax return time, so there tends to be minimal excitement for the holidays, just a messed up sleep schedule to realign before school starts again and she gets lonely with me at work all the time.
 

SuZir

Well-Known Member
I have my hands on my ears, eyes firmly closed and I'm singing laa-laa-laa on the top of my lungs and trying to pretend I don't notice any warning signs that things could get avry during the Christmas. No use to worry beforehand, I can feel bad afterwards if needed and you know, you never know if it goes just fine ;)

Okay, I can rationalise that while difficult child is having hard time, he has also matured and seems to deal with things and be behaviourally better than could be expected, so it may continue and that is there I put my hope. But for several reasons (many related to his sport and his big disappointments on that lately) this will be very, very difficult Christmas for him. And it doesn't help that easy child is over the moon from joy because of the sport in the same time either. That could cause some friction between the two. And difficult child and husband being in odds for half a year now isn't helping. And to be honest I'm not even totally confident that husband will not be rubbing easy child's success to difficult child's face and admonishing difficult child of his failures again. And then there is of course mother in law. Oh, and also difficult child's girlfriend will be with us couple of days and she seems to have a problem with our ethnic background and us speaking our first language. All this could be recipe to total catastrophe.

But nothing I can really do, hand on the ears, eyes shut and laa-laa-laa. That way I can at least enjoy the days before the Christmas.
 

StressedM0mma

Active Member
Well, if this morning is any indication of the week to come, I am so not looking forward to it. I drove difficult child to school, and as soon as we pull into the lot, "I am getting a migraine" -of course you are. Because you couldn't possible get it before we left the house. And it just ha[[ened to pop up when we pulled in to school. One very angry momma right now. And I of course got the "but it isn't my fault" of course it isn't. Why would we take some responsiblilty. Ok, rant and whine is over for now, but I reserve the right to come back and add to this at a later date.
 

Tiapet

Old Hand
It's ramping up here as well. Mr Busy is getting anxiety ridden as usual- not wanting to go to school and feeling like the 2 weeks he will be out just won't be enough as it is for him to be out of school. I on the other hand, think it's going to be far too much because he always is harder to transition back into school after long breaks. He's also threatening that IF he doesn't get what he wants he's going to go OFF at Christmas, which he tends to do whether he gets what he wants or not. I believe it's because he just can't handle the overall being of the anxiety of it all anyway. Everything seems to give him anxiety! I expect the anxiety but I know he IS getting what he wants for Christmas so at least he will be a little bit of happy after but he will still go off, it's inevitable! :rolleyes:

The girls on the other hand will be over joyed no doubt with their Christmas. Ms Queen is stressing about the time off from school because for her that means no social life with friends as that is the only place she can socialize with them. HOWEVER, after Christmas she will be able to do it a little differently. She will have a cell phone. Something she has wanted for a very very long time! I have put it off due to trust issues and the lack of it with her and responsibility. She has grown some but I have found a program that is a parental control that will make it so I can be sure I can do this. I will be posting more information to share with you all in another thread to give it all.

Ms. Emo continues to make progress so I think things will be ok. The only concern I'll have is that now that she is 21 she is able to drink freely and she does when she wants, which means as per her agreement with her psychiatrist, she doesn't take her depakote that day. :( Can't be too effective if you aren't taking it sporatically so you can drink now is it? You shouldn't be mixing the two even IF you don't take it the day you are drinking in my humble opinion! I don't know if she will or won't but .....

I guess like the rest of you...one day at a time and 1 minute at a time is how it will be when necessary. Hugs to all of you to get through the next week or so.
 
C

Castle Queen

Guest
Well, the other shoe has already dropped for us. Knight had detention this morning for not one infraction yesterday but 3, all of which he denies ever happened: swearing in class, flipping off another student, and rude comments to a girl in the lunchroom. He has 6 points left out of 20 he began the year with, and seven weeks until a class ski trip that he needs to hold onto at least one point to go on. Can you say ski trip= not an incentive for him? therapist is talking neuropsychologist again (some of you might remember a few years back when we finally got to see a neuropsychologist and she would not evaluate Knight due to tension between ex and myself) and I am in total agreement! I will not tell ex, this time.
 

Californiablonde

Well-Known Member
I am actually looking forward to the break this year as I am still having battles with difficult child 1 to go to school. It will be two weeks of no morning time battles. easy child is not looking forward to the break. He absolutely loves school and hates to miss for any reason. Too much time on his hands is easy child's own worst enemy. I am going to hope that his ADHD won't be too bad if I keep him medicated. He and difficult child can fight terribly. Going to try my best to keep them both occupied but it's gonna be kinda hard with no money. And I can't count on free school lunches and breakfasts for the next two weeks so I will be spending a lot more money on groceries. Other than that, I'm looking forward to sleeping in and not having to worry about getting difficult child to school.
 

InsaneCdn

Well-Known Member
What a great opportunity to learn to cook from scratch.
easy child is a strong young man... teach him how to make home-made bread.
From-scratch cookies. Home-made soups and stews and all sorts of good stuff.
Fill the time with stuff you normally don't have TIME to do...

(at least, that's what we do...)
 
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