Well, here I am, blogging from the company’s new headquarters, just one mile north of the old one. My entire life (well, at least my professional life) is contained in a stack of cardboard boxes in front of my desk. The computer is unpacked, assembled and working, but we have no phone system to speak of, no internet connection other than a dial-up which is currently being shared by a dozen or so users, and therefore we’re all sitting around staring at each other, wishing we could get some work done.
Last week was spent doing nothing but packing, arranging the move, moving, and stacking things in the various offices. I was well and truly exhausted by the time Friday rolled around, and the family and I decided to take a road trip to help us all decompress. Remind me, the next time I have that thought, that I am an idiot.
I should fill in some of the blanks here by mentioning recent events in Alexis’ life. Alexis has reached puberty, an age during which most parents expect some problems. We, on the other hand, have experienced a startling metamorphosis through which she has acquired The Bad Attitude From Hell. She defies authority, she rejects any form of guidance. She talks to her mother and I in appallingly disrespectful tones and with astonishingly vulgar language. She disappears the moment her mother’s back is turned, and sometimes does not return for hours. (I took this as a sign that she might be developing an unhealthy interest in the opposite sex, a theory her mother [at the time] found ridiculous.) In any case, she’s fallen in with the wrong crowd. She has even become violent, throwing things and striking people.
We tried individual counseling for a while. It didn’t work, and the behavior problems escalated. She got angry at a school teacher one day and locked her out of her classroom, initiating a classroom mutiny. Eventually, both we and the school had swallowed quite enough of this, and she was delivered into the hands of the juvenile justice system. She got herself placed on probation and immediately set about breaking the terms of that probation with glee. The juvenile courts, loving any opportunity to create complications, have gone over our lives with a fine-toothed comb and decided that what we all really need is family counseling, so now we’re doing that two nights a week. The court-ordered psychiatrist has put Alexis on court-ordered medication, which she must be given twice each day.
The restrictions on her lifestyle have not made Alexis too happy. This she takes out on her mother on a daily basis. One day last week she was so relentless in her pestering, cajoling and taunting that my wife lost a $1500 sale because she couldn’t get the necessary work done. When she was restricted to her room as a result, she decided she’d up the ante. She told her mother that she’d been having sex. Then she told her mother she hadn’t, after all, but had just said this because she and her friends had thought it would be fun to tweak us. Then she said no, that she actually HAD been having sex, but only twice, and refused to name the partner. At this point we’d had enough, so an appointment was made with a gynecologist to clear up the matter once and for all, as well as to assess the possible outcomes (STD, pregnancy, etc.) I remind the reader at this point that Alexis is fifteen years of age. Yes, I know many young women are quite mature and in command of themselves by the age of fifteen … this child is emphatically not one of them.
This brings us to our weekend. The problem, of course, was Alexis. Things didn’t go exactly her way, which is to say that we didn’t allow her to bring one of her friends along. She decided, therefore, that if she wasn’t getting her way, no one would be permitted to have any fun at all. This was accomplished through an elaborate plan involving whining, muttering under her breath, tantrums, uncooperative behavior, outright disruptive behavior … and — to top it all off — an actual physical assault on her mother. She hit, scratched, and even bit her mother and could not be dissuaded until I physically pulled her off her shocked mom’s body and deposited her a safe distance away. She then called her mother something that rhymes with “glitch” and locked herself in the hotel bathroom.
All of the above was reported to her probation office this morning, and she is now spending the day doing “community service” … cleaning the probation office. This is considerably more than she can be persuaded to do at home, so it’s progress. Meanwhile, her mother took the opportunity this morning to have a look around the pile of debris she calls her room. She called me a few minutes ago to report her findings, which included:
* Numerous used condoms
* About a dozen pills (prescribed) which had been ‘cheeked’ rather than swallowed
* Numerous items of jewelry my wife hadn’t yet missed
* Written material which I asked not be shared with me, but which described disturbing activities.
* Materials that might be used for “sniffing” or “huffing”
I am not nearly as shocked as my wife is, but we’re both pretty shocked that the behavior we’ve been seeing was just the tip of the iceberg. We have obviously got a serious problem, one far beyond even what I expected. After a decade of relatively uneventful and (we thought) effective parenting, we are presented with the fact that we’ve failed miserably. It’s a bitter pill to swallow.
Wish us luck. If nothing else, maybe the challenge of dealing with this together will bring my wife and I closer again.
Oh, and before I go, let me apologize again for my emotional outbursts last week. I reacted badly to some comments on one of my blogs. I was a twit, please forgive me. Henry, I understand your feelings and I know they’re not directed at me personally, but at my country’s admittedly ill-considered foreign policy. Merman, you’re all right too. The only way you’ll really offend me is if you DON’T turn up to have that pint with me!
My best to all, from your most intermittent and undependable of blogringers…