Thank you Truffle and Outside Perspective (sm)
Posted By: MTmom on 2009-04-13
In Reply to: I agree with truffle (sm) - Outside Perspective
I think you are both right. He does seem happy when he is getting his way. He only gets upset when he is being told no. He has actually been even more active and social since we moved, so in general I think things are better for him. He has told me that under no circumstances does he wish that his dad and I were back together. Thanks for your input and views, I appreciate it. I guess I should have not even responded to the person below.
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agree with you, truffle.... also
Sin hurts God, and as Christians, we should love God above all, even if it means that the relationship you desire with another human being cannot be.
I agree with truffle (sm)
It is very normal for children to want to figure out where the limits are in a new situation. There's all kinds of stuff that my kids pull on me that they wouldn't dream of trying at school, as well as stuff they get away with when they're with their dad that one of them has to come running back to me and tell me all about.
One of my kids is a master manipulator with tears and drama (and he's a boy!) I have fallen for his act more than once, and been told later by my husband that I was definitely being played.
If he seems depressed when he IS getting his way or doing something unrelated to not getting his way, that might be worth looking into with counseling for him.
Your parenting skills seem very solid to me. It sounds like you are setting well-defined limits and sticking to them, without the limits themselves being unreasonable.
As for the poster down below who signed himself "divorce." My bet is that that's a disgruntled man or a woman who has never had her heart broken by a lying cheat who calls himself a man. Don't pay him/her/it any heed!
Blessings and best wishes!
I have maybe a different perspective
I was once worried about seeing 51, but I kicked that number to the curb several years ago. I am not at all worried about getting older.
What I do maybe sometimes think about is perhaps not being able to make my needs known. My sweet mother was in a nursing home for a bit recovering from some particularly nasty pneumonia, and several of the ladies and gentlemen there had lost their ability to speak, or to make their wishes known.
That does cause me concern.
Slightly different perspective.
So maybe I shouldn't post about this since I have not exactly been in your shoes but I think possibly I can lend a help perspective. I lost my father to cancer when I was 19. My FIL is an alcoholic. No I didn't grow up in a divorced family or without a father through my childhood and no I haven't experienced my father being an alcoholic.
What I feel I can tell you is there is such a thing as being too late to say the things you wanted to say, good or bad. If it does come to that, you will never let it go. He is still your father regardless of the choices he has made in his life. You only have 1 father. After seeing my FIL, I believe alcoholism is an illness. Sure people can fight it and get help if they wan, but it takes a very, very strong person to overcome it and it is a constant battle.
From the sounds of your post it seems as though you have some things you need to get off of your chest. Whether that means sitting down and talking to him or putting the past in the past and moving on with any kind of relationship - I think only you can figure that out. Even a relationship that is only on holidays and important events is still a relationship.
Who knows, maybe talking to your mom would help her as much as it might help you. It certainly can't be a short conversation, it needs to be thorough to get through the surface feelings and to the nitty gritty. Maybe, just maybe, your mom could shed some light for you on why she has been able to forget the past to a certain extent and move on. If nothing else, this might make you and your mom even closer and it sounds like no one else (professional or otherwise) would understand better than her.
With my FIL, we do not stay when he is drunk or starts drinking. The entire family knows we pack up and leave, regardless of the situation. It hurts his feelings sometimes I can tell, but he knows the circumstances and we have small children that we will not subject to that. It was difficult at first but over the years it is just "the way it is" and no one says a word anymore and respects where we are coming from.
I don't have a pop-up, but maybe I can put your great deal into perspective.
Waaay back in 1968, my parents bought a used Coleman pop-up for $800. Can you imagine what $800 was worth back then? And it was a very basic trailer. You cranked it up, pulled out the bunks, and that was it. It was pretty snazzy, though, because our particular model had a hard top and solid screen door. Back in those days, pop-ups were little more than tents with wheels. Of course, the table folded down to another bunk. My dad, who was a carpenter, built three nifty cabinets that held all the cooking gear and clothes and stacked on top of each other. There was electric hookup, but no potty and no stove.
I LOVED the whole camping thing growing up. It was great. By then, I was the last of the children at home, my parents were older, had no money, but still wanted to go and see things. I went to a lot of cool places and really enjoyed the outdoors in that camper.
To this day I enjoy camping. I went more hard-core after my trailer days with my parents. Today, I enjoy backpacking, and sometimes I do that without even a tent!
Enjoy your camper. I think you got a great deal. You've bought more than a pop-up trailer. You've bought yourself a lot of cool trips.
Oh! Do you want to know what happened to our little $800 Coleman Trailer, used, bought in 1968? Well, it was still in great shape when my dad died in 1983. My mom sold it then for $1000. They seem to hold their value!
Happy camping!
I think your perspective on things is shared
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Yes, the news IS unreal. They throw us headlines night after night but never tell us later how it all turned out. So it seems less and less real, the less truth we get, and the more Britney, etc. we are forced to hear about. You're right - it's hard to just go about life as if everything were normal, when lately the world seems like it's anything but. Sometimes just watching the news every day can be too much. After 9/11 I got 'addicted' to the news, couldn't turn it off, but after a while I just couldn't stand watching those buildings fall over and over, night after night, and I was getting depressed. So I decided to temporarily quit the TV news 'cold turkey' for 2 weeks. Sometimes that can be amazingly refreshing!
perspective: 10 below in Michigan -- hate it!!
 there's no preparing for this. for us, 39 degrees is a heat wave.
just get all the supplies you could need and stay in. the dog and three cats have cabin fever. i have to go out and shovel -- just shoot me!!! kid has a temp of 103. this is so harsh. beyond words... stay warm.
Wow!! What a great attitude! I love that - great perspective!
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