Honesty
Note: I wrote this about two weeks ago, but I’m just getting around to posting it.
Before S, my house (and my phone line) were safe spaces for people to come and talk about nearly anything. Although my life has changed significantly, I still have phone and in person conversations when S is in the vicinity that she probably shouldn’t hear. She understands this, but doesn’t always remember not to repeat what she knows. Finally, after some talk about this in our family counseling, we have managed to figure out how much she should know about other people’s lives and how to set up boundaries.
There is also the question about my own past and our family’s history. What should and shouldn’t she be told, for instance, about what kind of father my father was? About my dating history? These issues are a little less sticky, as I have decided honesty is, in general, the best policy here. I don’t have to tell every detail, but it’s important for S to have some sense of the history that she would have either lived through with me or learned piecemeal over several years if she’ d been my birth child. The basic facts are necessary, and some details come in handy when she is assuming I can’t possibly understand something she is dealing with.
What I didn’t realize until last week that I was holding back from S was how hard it is sometimes to be her mother. In the past month, she has gotten lazy about getting up on time. When we started homeschooling for the first two periods of every day, we agreed (and I told my supervisors) that I would go over what she would be doing the night before, and she would work quietly in my office from 8-10 each morning. I would be available to help her, and on some days she would definitely need more hands-on help than others, but most of the review of her work and the instruction would happen in the evening. Lately, getting her out of bed has been a struggle, and nothing has worked. Even when she is up on time, she’s rarely fully ready to go by 8. I have as a result fallen further and further behind on my work, which has led to late nights, less sleep, and a decreased ability to stay calm.
She’s also begun to get more verbally and physically abusive—so much so that it is not realistic for her to get consequences each time she cusses at me, for instance, or even each time she lashes out physically. The consequences I’d used in the past aren’t working. In short, I realized recently that things were really falling apart, but I think I was so tired I couldn’t see just how much.
A couple days ago, things came to a head. I screamed at her in the morning, something I work hard not to do, telling her I couldn’t take it any more, I needed to get to work at 8, I needed more sleep but couldn’t get it if she didn’t fulfill her part of the deal and allow me to get to work on time, etc., etc. She said she was sorry and promised to get up on time for the rest of the week. We set up a reward she would receive at the end of the week if she did so. The next morning, when I asked her for about the seventh time to get up, she called me a bitch.
I decided to just leave at 8. It was the best possible thing I could have done. I was angry, and I didn’t want to yell at her. I’d tried waiting in the car for her; I’d tried going into her room and doing silly things like jumping on her bed. I decided the best plan was just to go to work, do my work, and let her deal with her own morning routine. I returned to take her to school. She was quiet, and had managed to get through her routine, but she was also reading a horse book instead of studying for her test or doing her English. I calmly told her that I was glad that she was up and ready but that, again, she hadn’t completed her English or her study hall work. I was going to have to give her an incomplete for English, and she would have to make up the time she had missed because of sleeping in. She apologized, and seemed sorry on the drive the school (i.e., uncharacteristically thoughtful and quiet).
That night, on the two hour drive to see her counselor, I said I thought she should talk to her about her behavior and how she could be more respectful of me. She mostly ignored my comment. When she came out of her session, she said she had some things to tell me. First on the list was how bad it had felt for her to be yelled at a couple days earlier. Second, she told me she needed to also explain that this time of year was hard for her because of some abuse memories. We talked briefly about both of these things, and then I heard myself saying, “I’m sorry this is a hard time of year for you, but now I have to tell you something.”
I went on to explain how hurtful it was to be physically and verbally abused. I got tears in my eyes. I explained that I really felt we couldn’t go on like this. It was too painful for me to get so little respect from her. I said that I needed to be able to get more work done in the mornings and that I couldn’t do so because of her refusal to take seriously my need to be at work at 8. I pointed out that this also was selfish and disrespectful. “I never envisioned being the kind of parent who yells at her kid, but I seriously can’t cope,” I said.
“So it’s all my fault?”
“No, I should be able to control my temper. But I will tell you it would be a lot easier if you weren’t so mean to me and if you were more respectful. Also, if I had more sleep, I would be more in control of my temper.”
“I still feel like you’re saying it’s all my fault,” she said.
“No,” I said. “I’m saying it really, really hurts me when you call me names. You can’t just do that and think it won’t affect me. And I’m saying it really, really makes me feel disrespected when you won’t bother to get up so that I can be at work on time. If I had any other kind of job, I would have been fired by now for not showing up on time, but the consequence for the kind of job I have is that I have to be up late making up the work. You don’t seem to care how this is affecting me.”
“Why haven’t you told me this before?” she asked.
“Your social workers warned me about this. They told me you’d try to break me down as soon as I finally got you to make some progress. They said you manipulated all your foster parents into giving up on you.” At this point, my voice broke. “But I’m not going to give up on you. No matter how much it hurts and how hard you make my life, I’m not going to give up. But I wish you would stop trying to get power over me. They told me I should never let you know how hard it really is to be abused by you because as soon as I did, you’d have all the power. And now I guess I’m giving it to you. I don’t know what else to do.”
There was a long silence. “The social workers didn’t really know me,” S said finally.
“Maybe not,” I said, “but I think they might have been right about this. I think you’re terrified about the fact that I expect you to have a future and you have no idea how to treat me, so you’re pushing me away.”
“I don’t want to be the kind of person who hurts other people,” S said, starting to cry.
“Then stop doing it,” I said, firmly, gaining control of my own tears. “Just stop doing it.”
Of course, I know it’s not that simple. She can’t wake up one morning and stop resorting to “bitch,” “fuck you,” “go to hell,” “I want to kill you and myself.” She can’t just suddenly stop using violence to deal with her anger. But at least now there is an awareness and a willingness to work on changing her behavior.
Then she added, incredibly maturely, “I mean, I need to know these things, Mom. I never have any idea how you’re feeling. We have to be honest with each other if there’s going to be any trust.”
Duh.
The next day, the morning went swimmingly. She got up, did her morning chores, got ready by 8. She worked quietly in the morning. We wrote up a plan to make up the missed English classes, and she agreed to it. On our dog walk that afternoon, we processed how well the day had gone and why.
“I finally feel like all the tension’s gone between us, because now I know why you’re upset. It’s not because of what I’m doing, it’s because of how what I’m doing hurts you.”
This seemed so odd to me. How could she not realize that being called a bitch, being told to fuck off, being kicked or slapped, hurt me? And then she answered the question before I could even ask it. “Everything I do and say seems normal because I don’t know any other way. And nobody’s ever told me that what I do and say matters to them.”
“We’re a family,” I said. “You’re not just using my house as a place to sleep at night. Of course everything you do and say affects me.”
“I know you want me to have a future,” she said. “I know that’s different than the people from before.”
We got to the house of a daycare provider we know well. The children ran toward us, kneeling down to play with the dog. It’s finally really spring, I thought to myself. I’d missed the long walks, missed seeing our neighbors, missed the talks that happened naturally as we were walking. I thought briefly, as I often do, of how things could have been different for S if she hadn’t had the childhood she had, about what it would have been like to have had her since birth. I thought about how she might have been among children like these, whose parents love them, who are with a gentle, kind woman for much of the day. And then I thought of what a miracle it was that I have S now, that we’re talking again instead of bickering, that the day unfolded with sun and tulips and budding trees and after the longest winter I can remember, we were walking around in short sleeves.
Maybe this was part of the problem, too—it is harder to schedule time to talk when there aren’t natural opportunities. We were at least a little out of practice. Even our two hour drives each way to and from her counselor’s hadn’t been as fruitful as they usually were. The wind, the cold, the endless snow and sleet and bad weather, had somehow made us tired and lazy. We needed to keep working at it. I’d been so focused on fixing things at the school—after several more problems with her IEP, finally switching caseworkers for next year, and then dealing with the fallout that happened as a result—and we’d been so focused in family therapy on talking about the school issues—that we’d forgotten to talk about the big things, like what it meant to be a family, like how important trust is to building one.
Before S, my house (and my phone line) were safe spaces for people to come and talk about nearly anything. Although my life has changed significantly, I still have phone and in person conversations when S is in the vicinity that she probably shouldn’t hear. She understands this, but doesn’t always remember not to repeat what she knows. Finally, after some talk about this in our family counseling, we have managed to figure out how much she should know about other people’s lives and how to set up boundaries.
There is also the question about my own past and our family’s history. What should and shouldn’t she be told, for instance, about what kind of father my father was? About my dating history? These issues are a little less sticky, as I have decided honesty is, in general, the best policy here. I don’t have to tell every detail, but it’s important for S to have some sense of the history that she would have either lived through with me or learned piecemeal over several years if she’ d been my birth child. The basic facts are necessary, and some details come in handy when she is assuming I can’t possibly understand something she is dealing with.
What I didn’t realize until last week that I was holding back from S was how hard it is sometimes to be her mother. In the past month, she has gotten lazy about getting up on time. When we started homeschooling for the first two periods of every day, we agreed (and I told my supervisors) that I would go over what she would be doing the night before, and she would work quietly in my office from 8-10 each morning. I would be available to help her, and on some days she would definitely need more hands-on help than others, but most of the review of her work and the instruction would happen in the evening. Lately, getting her out of bed has been a struggle, and nothing has worked. Even when she is up on time, she’s rarely fully ready to go by 8. I have as a result fallen further and further behind on my work, which has led to late nights, less sleep, and a decreased ability to stay calm.
She’s also begun to get more verbally and physically abusive—so much so that it is not realistic for her to get consequences each time she cusses at me, for instance, or even each time she lashes out physically. The consequences I’d used in the past aren’t working. In short, I realized recently that things were really falling apart, but I think I was so tired I couldn’t see just how much.
A couple days ago, things came to a head. I screamed at her in the morning, something I work hard not to do, telling her I couldn’t take it any more, I needed to get to work at 8, I needed more sleep but couldn’t get it if she didn’t fulfill her part of the deal and allow me to get to work on time, etc., etc. She said she was sorry and promised to get up on time for the rest of the week. We set up a reward she would receive at the end of the week if she did so. The next morning, when I asked her for about the seventh time to get up, she called me a bitch.
I decided to just leave at 8. It was the best possible thing I could have done. I was angry, and I didn’t want to yell at her. I’d tried waiting in the car for her; I’d tried going into her room and doing silly things like jumping on her bed. I decided the best plan was just to go to work, do my work, and let her deal with her own morning routine. I returned to take her to school. She was quiet, and had managed to get through her routine, but she was also reading a horse book instead of studying for her test or doing her English. I calmly told her that I was glad that she was up and ready but that, again, she hadn’t completed her English or her study hall work. I was going to have to give her an incomplete for English, and she would have to make up the time she had missed because of sleeping in. She apologized, and seemed sorry on the drive the school (i.e., uncharacteristically thoughtful and quiet).
That night, on the two hour drive to see her counselor, I said I thought she should talk to her about her behavior and how she could be more respectful of me. She mostly ignored my comment. When she came out of her session, she said she had some things to tell me. First on the list was how bad it had felt for her to be yelled at a couple days earlier. Second, she told me she needed to also explain that this time of year was hard for her because of some abuse memories. We talked briefly about both of these things, and then I heard myself saying, “I’m sorry this is a hard time of year for you, but now I have to tell you something.”
I went on to explain how hurtful it was to be physically and verbally abused. I got tears in my eyes. I explained that I really felt we couldn’t go on like this. It was too painful for me to get so little respect from her. I said that I needed to be able to get more work done in the mornings and that I couldn’t do so because of her refusal to take seriously my need to be at work at 8. I pointed out that this also was selfish and disrespectful. “I never envisioned being the kind of parent who yells at her kid, but I seriously can’t cope,” I said.
“So it’s all my fault?”
“No, I should be able to control my temper. But I will tell you it would be a lot easier if you weren’t so mean to me and if you were more respectful. Also, if I had more sleep, I would be more in control of my temper.”
“I still feel like you’re saying it’s all my fault,” she said.
“No,” I said. “I’m saying it really, really hurts me when you call me names. You can’t just do that and think it won’t affect me. And I’m saying it really, really makes me feel disrespected when you won’t bother to get up so that I can be at work on time. If I had any other kind of job, I would have been fired by now for not showing up on time, but the consequence for the kind of job I have is that I have to be up late making up the work. You don’t seem to care how this is affecting me.”
“Why haven’t you told me this before?” she asked.
“Your social workers warned me about this. They told me you’d try to break me down as soon as I finally got you to make some progress. They said you manipulated all your foster parents into giving up on you.” At this point, my voice broke. “But I’m not going to give up on you. No matter how much it hurts and how hard you make my life, I’m not going to give up. But I wish you would stop trying to get power over me. They told me I should never let you know how hard it really is to be abused by you because as soon as I did, you’d have all the power. And now I guess I’m giving it to you. I don’t know what else to do.”
There was a long silence. “The social workers didn’t really know me,” S said finally.
“Maybe not,” I said, “but I think they might have been right about this. I think you’re terrified about the fact that I expect you to have a future and you have no idea how to treat me, so you’re pushing me away.”
“I don’t want to be the kind of person who hurts other people,” S said, starting to cry.
“Then stop doing it,” I said, firmly, gaining control of my own tears. “Just stop doing it.”
Of course, I know it’s not that simple. She can’t wake up one morning and stop resorting to “bitch,” “fuck you,” “go to hell,” “I want to kill you and myself.” She can’t just suddenly stop using violence to deal with her anger. But at least now there is an awareness and a willingness to work on changing her behavior.
Then she added, incredibly maturely, “I mean, I need to know these things, Mom. I never have any idea how you’re feeling. We have to be honest with each other if there’s going to be any trust.”
Duh.
The next day, the morning went swimmingly. She got up, did her morning chores, got ready by 8. She worked quietly in the morning. We wrote up a plan to make up the missed English classes, and she agreed to it. On our dog walk that afternoon, we processed how well the day had gone and why.
“I finally feel like all the tension’s gone between us, because now I know why you’re upset. It’s not because of what I’m doing, it’s because of how what I’m doing hurts you.”
This seemed so odd to me. How could she not realize that being called a bitch, being told to fuck off, being kicked or slapped, hurt me? And then she answered the question before I could even ask it. “Everything I do and say seems normal because I don’t know any other way. And nobody’s ever told me that what I do and say matters to them.”
“We’re a family,” I said. “You’re not just using my house as a place to sleep at night. Of course everything you do and say affects me.”
“I know you want me to have a future,” she said. “I know that’s different than the people from before.”
We got to the house of a daycare provider we know well. The children ran toward us, kneeling down to play with the dog. It’s finally really spring, I thought to myself. I’d missed the long walks, missed seeing our neighbors, missed the talks that happened naturally as we were walking. I thought briefly, as I often do, of how things could have been different for S if she hadn’t had the childhood she had, about what it would have been like to have had her since birth. I thought about how she might have been among children like these, whose parents love them, who are with a gentle, kind woman for much of the day. And then I thought of what a miracle it was that I have S now, that we’re talking again instead of bickering, that the day unfolded with sun and tulips and budding trees and after the longest winter I can remember, we were walking around in short sleeves.
Maybe this was part of the problem, too—it is harder to schedule time to talk when there aren’t natural opportunities. We were at least a little out of practice. Even our two hour drives each way to and from her counselor’s hadn’t been as fruitful as they usually were. The wind, the cold, the endless snow and sleet and bad weather, had somehow made us tired and lazy. We needed to keep working at it. I’d been so focused on fixing things at the school—after several more problems with her IEP, finally switching caseworkers for next year, and then dealing with the fallout that happened as a result—and we’d been so focused in family therapy on talking about the school issues—that we’d forgotten to talk about the big things, like what it meant to be a family, like how important trust is to building one.
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