My Favorite 15 Year Old

I love this girl. One minute gawky, fun loving kid, the next introspective, mature adult. This is by far the most pleasant of all my children to be around. (No offense all you other moody folk!) She has her things she needs to work on, like helping with chores and keeping any sense of organization of her own stuff, but aside from those things all is well in the 'ville. I think she has benefited from the luck of her birth order. I know if I still had a passel around the house, that the resistance to chores and the detritus of her life strewn about the house would really have worn on me. Now when she is often the only one about I have a higher tolerance for the mess. I still don't clean it up or take responsibility for knowing where anything is, but I have more time and less stress to let her cope with the consequences of being messy and disorganized.

She has been the recipient of the best of my parenting. All the skills I have learned, the books I have read, the techniques I have practiced were experiments on the other kids. By the time we got around to this darling I pretty much had a handle on how to do this parent thing in the least destructive manner to both the child and myself. It helps so much also that she has an easygoing and happy personality.

I truly miss the time we spent together homeschooling, although I love to see her flourish and grow at the Youth Performing Arts High School. I do not have the same sense of worry and impending doom that I had about a number of my other teens who when faced with the difficult choices of the high school years seemed to always choose the drama filled, negative consequence generating, sometimes life threatening path. This one has a good head on her shoulders and a sense of who she is and who she wants to be.

I don't think I am deluding myself, she will inevitably take some wrong turns. But she will take responsibility for her choices and be able to see appropriate ways out of her predicament.

It is refreshing after having been worn down by years of parenting difficult, sometimes violent, sometimes law breaking, sometimes suicidal, teens to not be under that kind of stress and still be parenting a teen. Almost, let me stress almost, makes me sorry she is the last of our long line of teens (she is 9 of 9).

College Days

James was at the 2008 UPA College Ultimate Championships with his team from UC Santa Cruz, the Banana Slugs. Unfortunately James hurt his hamstring in the first half of the first game and had to sit out the first day. So their hopes of a championship were lost but they had a great time. As you can see from the picture above, the location was just amazing. And the weather pretty much cooperated. My DH had flown out for the event and had a grand time with James and his teammates.

Frisbee has been very important for James and his older brother Bart. They have played through high school and college and in city leagues every summer. Bart is the president of the local league. It seems to be a wonderful community of people, one that polices itself both on and off the field.

Now James has to buckle down for the next eight days and get through the end of the semester. He will be starting his Senior year in the Fall and I am hoping this year has been a good one for him. He really worked hard to get to UC Santa Cruz, it was his dream from his Jr. year in high school. But there was no way we could afford out of state tuition. Instead of shattering his dreams this news motivated him to take responsibility for making it happen himself. He moved out to Cali at the end of his high school time and lived on his own for 3 years establishing residency. He took courses at the Junior College and worked at restaurants and retail establishments. Then he got himself accepted at Santa Cruz as a transfer student for his Jr year. We re so proud of him for following through on his dreams. I think they will be that much more important to him since he has accomplished them on his own.

Go James, I hope your leg feels better.

Everybody is in flux

Every last one of the kiddos is in the throes of change, angst, emotional upheaval of some kind, and desperately needing their parents at least to hate on them. DH and I are reeling from the demands.

Some of the change is good, and developmentally appropriate. Bart is moving into a house with a friend and he has needed advice, cleaning supplies and general moral support.

James is flying high as his Ultimate Frisbee team from UC Santa Cruz is going to the nationals this weekend in boulder Colorado. He is happy, excited and really wants some of his family to be there, so even though DH has just flown in this AM from Shreveport, LA and has to drive up to Lansing and Kalamazoo on Sunday evening, he is nonetheless flying out to Boulder tomorrow AM to see the Frisbee tournament. He flies back on Sun noon and leaves for Michigan Sunday at 5 or so. DH is physically exhausted, but James needs one of us there.

Brooke is not dealing well with the transition from school to summer break. She is having some issues in her Supported Community Living placement and as is her way as she becomes upset she is holding her bowels and they are talking about a hospitalization again. I hope it doesn't come to that, but it almost always goes all that way. At least she is kind of used to all the procedures now and she is less frightened of the whole experience. Nonetheless she is calling in tears or angry, demanding that we fix things, or change things or somehow make her life less hard than it is. It is very sad to deal with Brooke as she is just a 4 or 5 year old in a 21 year old body and there are so many things she doesn't understand or deal well with.

Annie has been calling and texting me until I want to scream as she is trying to convince me that she is somehow miraculously cured of all her issues, Traumatic Brain Injury and Borderline Personality Disorder, Oppositional Defiance Disorder, and Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. See if she has turned her life around and now understands everything she has done wrong and has broken up with her old boyfriend we should know that she is ready to live out on her own and she is going to go live with this new man she met on MySpace because he understands her in every way, unlike us or her therapeutic team. My head just spins when I deal with her and most conversations end with her screaming curses, threats and everything else at me. Thank God she hasn't been able to pull the wool over her new therapist eyes and no one is ready to let her out of the lock down facility just yet. Too often I let her circular thinking get me all wound up and spend way to much of MY time thinking about how to reach her.

Douglass was home this weekend and it was great to see him but he only went back reluctantly to his military school despite the fact that he only has 5 more weeks left. I was feeling very guilty that I had encouraged him to go to this program as he lost the chance to do the one thing that truly makes him happy, be a camp counselor this summer. His military school doesn't end until 2-3 weeks after camp starts and the camp was not willing to keep a counselor slot open for him. He is feeling really bad and rejected. And I am feeling really bad too. He deserves a better deal after working so hard to overcome his issues and get his life in a forward moving direction. I just hope he wont let his anger explode and undo all he has worked so hard to accomplish. It is hard to see your baby hurting and disappointed even when he is a hulking young man who is half a foot taller than you.

Kendra is finishing her freshman year at the magnet school and is feeling all sorts of pressure to get ready for exams, etc. She has been pretty demanding of our time to help her, using homework as an excuse to not help around the house and snappy and emotional. I feel all I do is walk on eggshells around her right now and that all I do is drive her to dance stuff. Typical teenage stuff, nothing bad or unusual, I am just not at the top of my game and it is telling in my dealing with her.

Finally, Dancing Baby Girl is involved in a situation in which I have to sit back and let the professionals do their thing and I have no trust for these particular professionals and I am scared for her, her family and for my continued relationship with her and her family. There are so many ways this could not end well and so few ways to see it go right that I lie awake at night and just shake.

Sometimes I really feel like there is just not enough of me (or DH) to go around at all. I surely don't see how families that are bigger than ours get through the inevitable tough times when everyone is crashing down or just needing parents.