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.

A Cluttered Brain

I've got too many things going on in my head at the moment that I don't know where to start my post. I wont be able to write down all the things I want to blog about and I know that I will probably forget half of them after I typed up the ones I want to share right now. But that's just the way it is.

Twice today I was told by the big fella that he was running away! It was because he didn't like being 'told off' or couldn't do exactly what he wanted when he wanted to. The second time he mentioned this was around lunch time when he wanted to go into the pool (which if you read yesterday's post he was banned from) because there were some friends there he wanted to spend time with. I thought I did pretty well not losing my cool with him and told him to just go. It's not like he can go anywhere especially since we live in the middle of nowhere and the nearest town is at least 8-10 km away (5 miles or so) it's a fair hike if you were walking. He ended up going over to the pool and spoke with his friend rather than getting into the pool to play. I thought that was okay I could handle that but then Mark & I spotted him picking stuff up (I thought they were pine cones) and he proceeded to throw them into the pool because his friend wanted something to 'dive' for! Mark went over to check it out. They turned out to be rather large stones!! Big MISTAKE!! He ended up having to come home rather than staying and chatting. He really blew that.

Mark & I had a good talk with the big fella this morning right after his first 'I want to run away!' statement. We spoke about a lot of different things but the main one was about being a responsible person and owning up to mistakes and taking responsibility for your actions. We spoke of how people respect you more if you tell the truth & admit you are wrong. After all we ALL make mistakes and we need to learn from them so that we can grow as an individual. I don't know how much of it sank in but at least he was willing to listen and not interrupt as much as he normally would.
All I want is for my kids to grow up and be responsible adults. I just hope I don't mess this up with them!

Thankfully for the last few hours the boys have managed to get along with each other quite nicely. Which makes for a pleasant change. I just hope that it lasts for the rest of the day!!
Even though the boys drive me absolutely crazy with their behaviour at times I still love them to pieces.

Over the last few days we've had some awfully hot weather with the temperature climbing up to 37C (100F) but luckily today it's been so much more pleasant. It reached 30 but I can cope better with that rather than the 35 or higher it seems to be of late. Sometimes when the weather is hot like this I can't wait for winter .. but then again I hate winter too rofl so I can't win! I wish that we always had Spring weather. Cool in the morning but it turns out to be a beautiful day. For me at least, Spring is my favourite season! I love it when the birds are out singing, the blossoms are on the trees, everything looks fresh, green and alive! Why can't we have spring ALL year round??

I suppose I had better go and work out what's for dinner. I am sure that they boys will start complaining that they are "starving" and they want food NOW!! You'd think with the way that they react to hunger pains that they only get one meal a day!!