Changing the Wording...

Thanks to all who sent encouragement and promises. I have some all alone time this morning where I am going over those promises and presenting them to God. I ask Him to honor them.

After Dad's comment about not talking of failure, I am changing all the wording of this post.

I did blow it this morning.

It's been rough.

Kiddo has tried me to the core. All that stubbornness he had towards school last week he poured into balking at one single, solitary chore I asked him to do in place of feeding the dog yesterday. He literally laid on the cold ground outside and refused to move ALL day.

He would not budge in his refusal.

Nothing. No entreaty, no patience, no kindness, no firmness, no pleading, no ultimatums would move him.

ALL day.

Steve came home at 6 and took him up the mountain for a father-son- hike -your-nasty-attitude-out exercise.

The kid ran away,

In the pitch dark on the mountain despite his fear of cougar and coyote.

He lost his way down the ridge and ended up in the orchards in the valley. He was never truly lost as far as that goes. He knows the area well and even in the dark, there are definite markers to turn you around if you miss the first few  - but as far as we were concerned we lost him. What if he went the wrong way and over the steep part and hit his head or something? And, the animals are no joke, either. Flashlights are puny in the dark on this mountain.

Vanessa found him.

Steve took him up again, because since running away was wrong and scary he needed to walk with dad and come home with a new attitude.

Eventually he did.

BUT he then refused to sleep. He was practically propping his eye lids open but he would not give in.
I got on my knees beside him and tried to connect in some way. Trying to talk to him is difficult. His words have no meaning. They are a set of words that he uses in a ceaseless round of confusion. It's very difficult to get to the heart of the matter. Impossible, actually.

He uses no feeling words. It takes him a full minute to say the word "because" and then you wait a full minute for him to say "I don't want to".... "Because".... "I not obey".  "Yes", "No" is used interchangeably depending how you state the question.  Very frustrating when you just want to know what is going on in his head and to find out if there is anything you can do about it.

This morning he was a bear, of course.

And I had had it.

And that's when I began to steam.  I probably would make a pretty mean sergeant in the army.

And suddenly, he had enough of my ordering and commanding him through his routine and he decided to sweeten up.

Just like that.

Both kids were late to school.