He showed up at court today

[hearthope]

The judge gave him 30 days to be current with his payments or he would be put in jail.

With the amount he is behind + 75 a week for the 30 days, he has to come up with almost 700

PO and I agreed that may give him the idea to steal something else to keep out of jail, but that was what the judge ruled and she said she couldn't speak against her.

I also found out he borrowed my sweet older neighbor's weedeater several weeks ago and hasn't returned it. (yes, I stopped at walmart today and purchased another one for them :mad:)

A police officer from our town also let po know that a woman had filed a complaint against my son for making doughnuts in her yard and tearing up her lawn with his car :mad:


Something I am learning

Detatchment is ssooo much easier when you are :grrr:


instead of :crying:

 

[Suz]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Detachment is ssooo much easier when you are :grrr:


instead of :crying:</div></div>

So true, HH.

Be sure to keep the sales slips for any expenses you're incurring now. There's no reason why your difficult child shouldn't pay YOU back, too. If not with money, at least with chores.

Hugs,
Suz

 

[hearthope]

Suz, He didn't care enough about taking the weedeater to go return it to them.

This woman calls constantly to remind me she is praying for my son. She made him a pie each and every time he was sent off and came home. When he was 14 and 15 she paid him way too much for cleaning her barn when she didn't have the extra money to pay.

She is almost like his grandmother and he knows she lives on ss and disability and she can't afford to replace the weedeater.

When he called me today to ask what time court was I started asking about the weedeater, he told me he called about court he didn't care about that weedeater.

My eyes have been opened to just how far gone he is

He would never pay me a penny back, he feels like I owe him for giving birth to him

To show you have sweet this couple is, I took the weedeater over when I got home. They both told me they wouldn't accept it. He said it wasn't my place to replace it, it was his and I said he was not living right and would not do the right thing. All the wife did was cry and hug me and tell me how sorry she was for me.
She even tried to take the blame for allowing him to get it in the first place

 

[Hound dog]

HH

Your right. Your elderly neighbors are good people. And they're right when they told you it isn't your place to replace the weedeater. (although I understand why you did)

Detachment is alot easier when your mad.

hugs

 

[everywoman]

The trick is to find that in between place where you are neither mad nor sad, just accepting that it's their garden and they have to pull the weeds. Keep repeating the serenity prayer---it really does help.

 

[PonyGirl]

HH, if only we all had neighbors like yours! So sorry for your hurting (and angry!) heart right now. Glad you're here.

yes, it is easier to detach when you're mad. And I found, the more times I went thru the anger-detachment-mode, the easier it was to carry it thru when the sad-mode came around again.

(((Hugs)))

Peace

 

[judi]

I echo the other folks - detachment is easier when you are angry -lol.

 

[Sunlight]

I too have been snowed by ant os much that it manipulated my true sight of him. you get that you do not know the other stuff, so you are seeing this young boy of yours that you love. inside their alter ego is doing all kinds of tricks.

keep your eyes open. return the weedeater. pray for him and love him but do not do one thing to fix the troubles he causes himself. otherwise he will not learn that if you touch the stove, you will be burned.

hang in there hon. I know how troubling this is. I hate when ant uses good people.

 

[KFld]

I would have replaced it too. It wasn't like you were buying it for your son, you bought it for those nice people who didn't deserve to have to go out and buy themselves one.

I guarantee he pawned the weedeater. When my difficult child was in the height of his using, one day I discovered my digital camera gone. He was already out of our house, but apparentley had found his way in. My girlfriend and I had decided to go down to the local pawn shop one morning and see if I recognized my camera on the shelves. Right before we left I get a phone call from a detective asking me if I was aware that my son was pawning things left and right at this specific pawn shop and he gave me his name to use and told me to go tell the pawn shop owner that he had called me and that he should let me buy the stuff back for what he had paid difficult child. We go down there and not only did I have to buy back my digital camera, but my husband's weedeater, backpack blower, and a few other items he had helped himself to from husband's garage. My husband has a landscaping business, so this was his business equipment he took and pawned.

My girlfriend and I are like Lucy and Ethel, so we always find humor in things. My husband happened to be away and I had his pickup truck, thank god! So, here my girlfriend and I go into a pawn shop and come out with a weedeater and backpack blower and a everything else he pawned and load it into the pickup and drive home laughing so hard we almost wet out pants. I know it wasn't funny that he stole and pawned our stuff, but just the site of us coming out the door with all this equipment and loading it into our pickup truck got us going :smile:

Your difficult child is at the point of being desperate right now and will not think twice about what he steals. Make sure everything of value is locked up and don't ever even leave a window unlocked when you aren't home. Have you changed your locks????

God this brings me back to a place I was at not to long ago, and I feel so bad that you are there now.

 

[ScentofCedar]

This is part of the suffering those with children doing what ours are doing go through that other parents will never know.

I think it is the most painful thing to realize, right up there with what we might have done differently and the way we obsessively track every smallest step of how it got to be what it is. (Well, I did that, anyway.) :cry: :blush: :smile:

When we realized difficult child was stealing, it affected our marriage. I refused to believe it, and condemned husband for believing it so readily.

It was true, though.

I admire your courage in requiring that honesty of yourself, hearthope.

I found strength in the Serenity Prayer, too.

Karen, I wonder if part of the reason you have been able to be so strong as you have gone through this is because you have a friend, an ally from whom you hide nothing?

There may be a good lesson for all of us in your story of Lucy and Ethel. I can just see the two of you, horrified together and laughing together and making it better together. I kept everything that was happening to us undercover. I was mortified that it happened to me ~ and that was because I believed I had failed.

So, maybe the most helpful thing any of us could do for ourselves and our families as we go through this is to stop being ashamed and to start making friends of those who can help us learn to laugh through the pain until it doesn't hurt as much, anymore.

We have all posted about the feeliing of isolation and shame at what the kids do. We have all posted about family gatherings where there is nothing good to say, so we say nothing.

I am going to try to view all this from that other perspective, as though I had a good Ethel or Lucy on my side in all this, too.

Barbara

 

[KFld]

This board, alanon and my bff Jill :smile: a.k.a. Lucy!

Those are the 3 things that got me through life with my difficult child.

I always say I feel bad for mothers of difficult child's who don't have a easy child to remind them that it isn't their fault, but I feel more sorry for those on this board who don't have a Lucy. She is the one I could go to and tell ANYTHING too, especially things I could not tell my husband. She has 3 children, 2 the same age as mine, and though none are true difficult child's, but have some tendancies, she never questioned and was and still is there to support me 100% with anything my difficult child has brought my way. We have shared just as many tears as laughter over these 2 years and I truley don't know what I would have done without her. She can help me find the humor in even the darkest situations.

One of my favorite stories was after my difficult child graduated and I mentioned something to her about it being such a relief not to be waiting to see the City of Milford on my caller i.d. anymore (the number that would show up when the school called so frequently), but now when I see the number, it's just the police. :smile:

Those are things I never could have said to husband as he really found no humor in much of the last two years.

 

[jbrain]

Karen,

you are so right about having a good friend to laugh with. I have a co-worker with a difficult child so we share many stories--we can sympathize with each other, laugh, all of it. My best friend lives far from me now but she also is another source of support. We lived near each other when our kids were little and we knew pretty early on that we each had a difficult child (they were even the same age). We joked about how those 2 were going to be trouble when they were teens and we were right.

I remember one time when my husband and I were on our way to report difficult child 1 missing to the police (just an ordinary thing we had to do often). We love to dance and there happened to be a good band playing on the Commons (our downtown) while we were walking over to the police station. We stopped to dance before reporting her missing and it was fun. Then we went on about our business.

I think if we didn't have a sense of humor and weren't adaptable we'd go nuts!

Jane

 

[everywoman]

"This board, alanon and my bff Jill \:\) a.k.a. Lucy!"

Substitute the name Donna and this is also how I have survived. If not for her friendship, I would not be able to make it some days. I make her laugh, she makes me laugh, and we laugh at the nonsense in our lives together. Her sons are the same age as mine---I pick on her because she has always wanted a daughter and when pcdaughter was a typical teen 13-15 year old PIA I offered her to Donna daily. We often share pcdaughter---if there is something "girly" she wants to do, she will call to borrow Jana--LOL.

Our friendship has survived a lot.
When our older boys were in middle school, they were best freinds. That is how we met. They had a falling out the first year of high school and didn't speak for two years---were sworn mortal enemies---it never bothered us. They now live several blocks from each other and their children have playdates. difficult child and her son are also friends. Before difficult child went to rehab, he was staying with her son in Charleston. He stole money from Jared, she called me, I repaid it, it was never mentioned again.

When her father died, her mother went a little wild. She started dating only 3 weeks after her father's death, wearing skimpy clothing, and even donned a bikini at the beach (she was 65). Donna was devasted and became obsessed. After a few weeks of hearing her complain every day about her mother's actions, I told her that she really needed to find a counselor to talk to. Only a true friend will tell you that you need counseling, and only a true friend will accept hearing it.

 

[KFld]

Sorry hearthope, I think we got a little off the subject here, but hopefully we put a smile on your face :smile:

 

[DDD]

I have one friend who is my age. She and I have a running joke
to help me cope with all this horror.

When I told her 16 years ago that GFGmom was pregnant again and
that when I had confronted her by saying "GFGmom I am afraid to
even ask you...but I just threw up after I just realized that
you might be pregnant" GFGmom nonchalantly replied "Oh..that??"

For all these years that is my friends reply (before gales of
laughter) when I have told her "the school called and difficult child is
suspended" "GFGmom didn't show up to pick up difficult child at school". No
matter how awful (with the exception of easy child/difficult children brain injury), I
end up laughing because my life is just full of "Oh..that??s".DDD

 

[everywoman]

Sorry hh, I seemed to have hi-jacked your thread. But detachment is also easy if you can learn to laugh!

 

[witzend]

HH~

I tried to write earlier today but the computer froze up on me. I'm so sorry that this is where things are at right now. I hope that difficult child will stay away from your neighbor. I wonder if it's possible that she is a little frightened of what would happen if she refused him?

My heart goes out to you.

 

[hearthope]

It was great to read all of your funny stories. I needed to laugh much more than sift through my difficult child's actions.

I handled my situation much like Barbara handled hers. I was so shocked and embarassed when my son first acted out I couldn't tell a soul.

If I wasn't trying to fix him I was trying to figure out what horrible things I must have done wrong as a mom for him to be this way

I am better now. I can push those thoughts away 90% of the time.

I have shared only the smallest things with other people.
When time passes I always seem to wish I had never shared what I shared with others because to them my difficult child will always be tainted.

I don't want to just be a dark cloud but, My girlfriend that I could share with has relasped and it is impossible to bring up my concerns about my son's drug use when she herself is in such bad shape.

Ironic how I am so strongly against drug use, yet I seem to be surrounded by people that use.

God has a humor too, huh?

 

[KFld]

That is so sad that your friend who you should be able to confide in has relapsed :smile: That is what is so great about my girlfriend because no matter what I tell her, she never sees my difficult child as tainted.

I'm glad you can push the bad toughts away 90% of the time. That is a huge accomplishment. I don't think there are many of us here who could ever push them away 100%.

 

[ScentofCedar]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: hearthope</div><div class="ubbcode-body">

When time passes I always seem to wish I had never shared what I shared with others because to them my difficult child will always be tainted.

</div></div>

That's exactly right, hearthope.

And then? I get all bent out of shape at that person when they try to be angry at difficult child for me.

Maybe we should both try al-anon or narc-anon, huh?

And look for a Lucy of our own....

:rofl:

Barbara