It was an uneventful week, until Saturday. Saturday turned into grumpiness. Saturday, M broke a couple rules at the same time. T lost his cool, again, after I thought I had already dealt with it, and had it under control.
M went past his boundaries. Was I really upset? No, not really, but he did it so nonchalantly that I had to say something. He tried to make excuses, they didn’t work, and rather than be grounded from his skateboard (for ONE DAY) he chose to have his allowance taken away for an entire week (which gets pushed forward every week he doesn’t do his chores.) I can’t wait to hear how that goes next weekend.
The second rule, I didn’t even realize he had broken. A friend (not even a friend, but a Facebook friend of a friend, someone he’d never met before) was waiting for him in front of our house while he was supposed to be eating dinner. This is a HUGE no-no. You do not bring friends home at dinner time, (or period) unless we know them. He knew the rule, and he broke it.
T went off. Almost as bad as ever. I tried to de-escalate, and it didn’t work. I went inside. M went to tell his friend what was up.
T came inside. We talked about the same stuff we talked about last week. I won’t go into details.
I had to leave. I went upstairs and closed the door. M came up about 10 minutes later, having finished dinner, and asked if I was ok. I said, “not really.”
M left after a brief bit of trying to cheer me up, and T and I got to talk again. T apologized to M for getting so riled up, but explained that he was upset about M disrespecting me every time he gets called out on something wrong.
M and I chatted Sunday morning about what went wrong Saturday. I set clear boundaries (again), and we talked about friends/real friends/acquaintances/folks you don’t even know.
Sunday was good – M spent the day with neighbors, skating all over. They came home for a drink and to change clothes at one point, because M was all sweaty.
Sunday night was like any other – spent relaxing, talking about the coming week. M was home on-time and did his nightly routine, minus litterboxes, without any fuss.
After we’d been in bed a while, the phone rang. It was M’s friend’s dad. His wife had seen something on the blockwatch about a kid with M’s description (and another with a neighbor kid’s description) having been in the ravine, seemingly shooting off a .22 (by the sound). The cops had been called, but the boys were gone before they got there. The cops were looking for M. This other dad was going to call the other 2 kids’ dads to see if they knew anything about it (one lives on the ravine), and then give the cops my number.
I got up, stirred M, and asked him about it. He swears it wasn’t them. I told him the cops were going to come out and talk to him. He panicked. He said something about a $50k fine, even if he’s not guilty. I told him if he’s not guilty of anything, he has nothing to worry about, but he didn’t believe me.
As T and I headed for bed, he mumbled “Happy Fathers Day.”