Sue, I understand exactly.
For the past month, we haven't had the distraction of planning and making reservations for our every-other-week visits, preparing and packing for the two nights we would usually spend, and then actually making the drive there and back. That, combined with the decrease in phone calls, which I think is by my son's choice combined with his easy child's desire to "immerse" our son in the program, along with no shopping for him, no trips to the packing/shipping store to ship items to him has basically left me with no role in my son's life.
And that has left me with a lot of thinking time on my hands which has helped me to get a clearer picture of my son and our relationship. I'm not letting myself call his easy child to see whether his "tough love" approach has improved my son's behavior. I'm not certain whether or not he is really missing us all that much, but my guess would be that he probably isn't since he hasn't called in a week. This, of course, doesn't bode well for the tough-love approach, i.e., making him earn visits, having been sucessful at motivating my son as you said it wasn't for yours.
I guess all we can hope for is that, now that the "distraction" his easy child seems to think we are, has been removed from the equation, our son will also do some soul searching...
