Emotional Turmoil

Golly I have knots in my belly and butterflies in my chest thinking about writing this next post. I guess it's because things have been so up and down this past couple of weeks. Especially the weekend before last, well the Saturday before Father's Day to be more specific. I was going to write all about this earlier but it was still feeling a little raw I guess you could say. I don't want to sound as though I am complaining but to be honest I am at my wits end with all of this.

I guess I should start at the beginning or as close to the beginning as I can recall at least. You see we're having heaps of problems with Brodie, our Aspie boy. He's larger than life now - he's 170 cm tall (5 foot 7 inches in the old scale) and weighs in at 100 kilos (around 15 and a half stones or 220 pounds) so he really isn't a small boy. Well a young man really as he is 15 already.
As I was saying we are having problems with him. They're ongoing ones and it seems that no matter what we do nothing seems to improve. Or if it does its such a small improvement that it may even go unnoticed.

We have the usual problems of back answering (what kid doesn't do that?), name calling and stand over tactics. He is taller than I am and much stronger too. He stands over me or Angus and dictates to us what we can and cannot do. He barks orders, thinking he is the head of the house and all, telling Angus what he can watch on tv as far as shows & movies go. He was dictating last Saturday when the shit hit the fan basically and got out of hand!

Mark has been sleeping in the lounge room for the last few months. He is unable to sleep in our bed as when I roll over it hurts his back and wakes him up. He has enough trouble when he rolls over himself as that too wakes him up with the pain.

Anyway Mark was jack of it all too. Sick of the constant bickering that goes on between the two boys. Mark got out of bed & got some cutters and cut the electrical cord on the tv. He had been meaning to replace it with an 'ordinary plug' because the one we had on it was from Germany or something like that as the tv is a blaupunkt (I think, European made at any rate) and it had an adaptor we needed to use in order to watch it.

Well the shit hit the fan didn't it. I fly out of bed to see what was going on. Trying to get Brodie to leave the house and go for a walk. He's standing there puffing his chest out say 'What are you going to do about it?" in reference to me telling him to go for a walk to cool off. He's constantly saying NO. He at least made it out the back door and I am still trying to get him to go for a walk and cool off. He wouldn't. He's mouthing off at me and daring me to make him go. I know I should've walked away but I didn't. I reached out to him and my hand caught the strap on his memory stick. He pulled away at the same time. The strap broke. Next thing I know is his arm is around my chest. I'm not too sure what happened after that as I don't remember; all I do remember is picking myself up off the floor. I have no recollection of being turned around as I was facing a different direction to the one I found myself facing when I finally stood up.

I worked out by this stage that Brodie wasn't home any more. He had taken off. Of course with his behaviour like this he could be a danger to himself and to others. We had no other choice but to phone the police. Something we hesitated to do every other time Brodie had become violent or aggressive. In fact two weeks before this happened he had punched Mark in the face. So as I said with regret the police were called. We were just following recommendations of friends and (former) case workers. The police ended up finding him but get this he was at the local police station waiting for them so that he could tell them what he had done. They sent him home after they had spoken with him. Not that this made a huge difference to his behaviour but he was a little quieter than usual after all of this happened.

There is much more that I could put here about the aftermath of this event but I feel that I have waffled on enough at this stage. I'm sure that there will be a chance in the future to revisit this again and reflect some more. Hindsight is a good thing I guess to help us learn from these types of events.