Caught In Between

I was noticing recently, in the ‘Labels’ column in my sidebar, that I’ve got posts labeled for each of my kids. . . except one. I’ve briefly mentioned, from time to time, my second daughter, 2F; but I’ve never devoted a post to her and her life. Which is a shame, because, at least so far, her life has been the most substantial of any of our ‘older’ kids (if perhaps not quite so ‘interesting’ as the others. . .)

From the very beginning, 2F seemed to have come into the world with the mission of teaching Molly and me that:

(a) each of our kids was an individual in her own right,
(b) not all of our kids would be compliant ‘pleasers’ like 1F, and
(c) there were limits to how, uh, ‘forcefully’ we could coerce our kids into obedience.

For that, we have come to be grateful, but gratitude was not always our first instinct.

I suppose that it is inevitable that second children will be parented at least partly in comparison to their first-born siblings. And that tendency is perhaps intensified when the two children are of the same sex. As I’ve said, 1F was a very compliant child, the type who, when we said “Jump” would ask, “How high?” 2F was much more inclined to say, “Why should I?” And “Because I said so” was not always as convincing an answer as Molly and I might have thought it should be.

2F’s stubbornness, combined with Molly’s and mine, and our immaturity as young parents, made for some fairly monumental contests of will. With 1F, whenever she opposed her will to ours, we could fairly easily ‘turn up the heat’ to get her to comply. With 2F, it didn’t work that way, ever. I vividly recall one such contest, when 2F was two or three, that we ‘turned up the heat’ to a level I was already uncomfortable with, and the realization came to me that this toddler girl had us stymied – the next level of ‘heat’ would cross a line into the realms of ‘abuse’ that I was unwilling to cross, and might put us into a danger zone with the law, as well. It was a very disorienting experience, for sure.

And so it went for virtually all of 2F’s young childhood, until roughly 7th grade. Molly and I took to telling her that, if she continued on the path she was going, sooner or later, she wouldn’t be dealing with her parents, she’d be dealing with the police; and the police didn’t love her like we did. And the day came (inevitably?) that she found herself dealing with the police. It was a small enough matter, but it did confirm for her that, indeed, the police simply didn’t care what became of her. So I suppose Molly and I got some credibility out of that.

I don’t know if that experience had a major impact on her life or not, but it roughly coincided with a turning point in her life. Somewhere around 7th/8th grade, it was like she rolled over in bed, and said to herself, “the approach I’ve been taking isn’t working so well; maybe I’ll try it their way, and see if that goes any better.” And really, from that time on, she’s been our most solid, responsible kid.

2F was 16 when 3M started running away from home (and generally demonstrating to us that such willfulness as 2F had shown us in her childhood years had been, well, child’s play). And she was 17 when 1F took up with F-bomb. And for a few years after that, our family was just traumatized. And 2F, being between the two ‘troubled kids’, kinda got lost in the trauma.

She finished high school and went to college, and got a degree in Child Development (following in Molly’s footsteps). She has made us proud in so many ways – she recently returned from a year-and-a-half of mission work in Detroit, during which she lived in the middle of one of the poorest, nastiest ‘inner cities’ in America, and brought God’s love to the people there in a multitude of ways.

2F is an incredibly kind, sensitive young woman, and admirable in a multitude of ways. Just as people used to congratulate us for having raised 1F, nowadays they say similar things to us about 2F. And she finds that ‘role reversal’ the least bit ironic.

The thing is, her childhood has left its scars on her psyche. She was deeply wounded by the severity of our learning-on-the-job young parenting, and by the way she was constantly overshadowed by her ‘perfect’ older sister (and she knew all along, when Molly and I couldn’t bring ourselves to see, what a façade the ‘perfection’ was). Even as she has made us busting-our-buttons proud, she has struggled with her relationship with us. In the last few months, we’ve been able to start bringing some healing to our relationship. By God’s mercy.

I’ve said, from time to time, that life turns out to be more heart-breaking than we planned on. And there is something heart-breaking about our inability to appreciate 2F for who she was all along, to give her the love she needed on her own behalf, and where that’s brought us in the meantime, in terms of psychic wounds and painful relationships.

But God is merciful. He “restores to us the years the locust has eaten,” (ref. Joel 2:25) and “gives us a hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11). So, we can look forward to that. . .

I Must Be Clueless

Yesterday was Father's Day, and I am a father. So do me a favor, and don't throw any more days for me, OK?

The day got off to a roaring start, when one of the older girls (I'll decline to say which one) decided that she was receiving insufficient attention for her recent birthday, and threw a major snit that Father's Day would take precedence over presents and birthday cake for her. Nice. Actually, it was embarrassing; I mean, we're talking about someone in her 20s, know what I mean?

Then one of the teenagers decided that the little kids were getting too much attention at his expense, so he spent most of the afternoon picking fights with them and engaging in attention-getting behavior, which included setting off firecrackers in the living room.

On top of it all, Molly was short on sleep from the night before, so she wasn't dealing with the chaos as, uh, constructively as she might have.

Plus, it rained all day, so the nice family walk in the arboretum that we had planned, never happened. That might have actually been merciful, considering how the day went.

And it all came to a fitting conclusion, with one of the younger ones screaming from his bed, "I HATE this family!"

So I went to bed last night kind of shell-shocked, wondering how the day might have gone if they weren't trying to honor me in a special way.

At least the Tigers won.

I must just be the world's most clueless father, because I really try to do right by my kids - to "train them up in the way they should go", to love them, to prepare them for their own adult lives, and, as best I can, point them in the direction of heaven - and what I have to show for it are a distressing number of incidences of my kids acting like self-absorbed jerks. Of course, they are only too happy to point that out to me. (That has always seemed to me an odd insult - "You're such a bad father; just look what jerks we are!")

I love my kids, I really do. I love being a father, and I take it as seriously as I know how to. But I mean, obviously, I must be doing something wrong here. . .

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Et Tu. . . ?

A week ago Sunday, Molly got up early, as she always does on Sundays, to help 5M do the paper route, and the message light on the answering machine was flashing. Strange. She checked the messages, and they were all from the police, letting us know that they had 4M in the overnight lockup. What? Were they talking about the right kid?. Anyway, I got up and went downtown to spring yet another of my kids from jail. . .

It seems that 4M was out with his buddies for a little after-hours frivolity, and got caught waiting for a ride, so he 'borrowed' his sister's (2F's) car. Which would have been damned inconsiderate, taken by itself. But he's only 15 and DOESN'T HAVE A DRIVER'S LICENSE! Or even a learner's permit! Even that wouldn't have amounted to much until the police caught him going 52 in a 35mph zone. So all of a sudden - cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching - speeding, driving without a license, and breaking curfew (in OurTown, kids under 16 are supposed to be off the streets after midnight). So the officer took 4M downtown (and very helpfully left the the car in a nearby parking lot for us to retrieve at our convenience).

This is our 'GOOD' kid - The All-American Boy.

Well, now he's got a $115 speeding ticket to pay, and he gets to appear before a magistrate to find out when he'll even be eligible to get a driver's license, and to what extent his freedom will be curtailed. Oh, boy.

I was very good; I didn't lose my temper, didn't even raise my voice (much). I just told him, as calmly and clearly as I could, how disappointed I was, how this had damaged my trust for him, that it would take a while for him to rebuild my trust, and that he wouldn't be getting the freedom and priviliges that he would have if I still trusted him.

AND HE GETS MAD AT ME! Starts telling me that now I'm four-for-four with my oldest kids getting picked up by the police, and that can't be a coincidence - obviously we're failing miserably at our parental duties. I just sat there with my mouth open.

So Sunday afternoon, he headed up to his room, saying he was tired and wanted to take a nap. A while later, I was upstairs in one of the other kids' rooms; I stuck my head in to check on 4M, and he was gone! He'd called one of his buddies, then snuck out the back door to go to another buddy's graduation party. We finally tracked him down, and went to get him. When I asked him what he was thinking, he said, "Well, you're just gonna take everything away from me, so I might as well just be rebellious and do whatever I want."

What I really want to know is, what alien keeps sneaking into my kids' rooms at night and sucking out all their brains?

Thing is, 4M is really a pretty good kid; I think he'll actually learn the lesson he's being given, without the Universe giving him too much of a beating first. But he's been running way too wild lately (much wilder than we thought he was, you can be sure), and needs to be reined in. I was talking with his football coach a couple days ago, and the coach said that he's been "pretty full of himself, pretty cocky lately". Sounds like the coach and I are seeing the same stuff.

So, it's a shock to us, for sure, but it's not the end of the world. You know, experience in dealing with the police is one of those things you never really hope to gain in the course of your life, but. . . you do what you've got to do. 2F actually got 'scared straight' by her brush (years ago) with the law, and I'm hopeful that 4M will do likewise. Really, he's got too much going for him to flush it over some late-night rowdiness, and I think he understands that.

Well, I've certainly been on kind of a downer around here lately. Truthfully, things aren't as awful as all that, but it has been an intense couple weeks. So I need to post something lighter soon, or you all will start to wonder about me, too. . .

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My Son, My Son

Our oldest son, 3M, was a very cute little kid. He was precociously bright, cheerful, friendly, and funny. When he was in 2nd grade, he memorized most of a book of Shel Silverstein poems, several of which he recited for a school talent show. One of the school moms played in a band that had regular night-club gigs, and she got him hired for a 20-minute bit between sets of the band, for which he made $20, plus all the fries he could eat.

In school, 3M always craved the elusive elixir of 'coolness' - more than anything else, he wanted to be 'popular'. It never happened for him, at least not to anything like the degree that he wanted, so he started acting more and more outrageously, in a vain attempt to win social status. When the other kids still wouldn't give him what he wanted, he just raised the level of outrageousness, until finally, in 7th grade, the Catholic school we sent him to told him to find another school for 8th grade.

That summer, between 7th and 8th grades (2001), he met a girl, and went completely ape-shit nuts over her. I won't rehash all the gory details, except to say that, all through that summer, he would regularly run away from home, for days at a time, to go see the girl.

He told the girl's parents how abusive and violent we were, and that I would "probably shoot" him if he showed up at home. Thus, a police officer appeared at our door asking me if I owned a gun (I didn't, and never have). A few days after that, a State of Michigan social worker came to our house and spent several hours trying to catch us acting abusive and violent (she didn't; in fact, we have documentation on file with the State of Michigan that we are a stable, loving family - how many of you can say that?). For a few days we didn't know for sure whether our other kids would be taken from us or not.

That fall, the situation came to enough of a head that he was admitted to a 'halfway house' program for troubled teens; he physically lived in the 'halfway house' for two weeks, and we had counseling sessions every other evening. At the end of the time, we gave him a choice - either come home and live under our authority, of find another place to live. He chose to come home (I actually have no idea what would have happened if he had chosen otherwise; he was only 13, and the State of Michigan doesn't allow teens to be 'liberated' until they're 16)

From then until he graduated from high school (by the very thinnest possible skin of his teeth), things were never as bad as they were that summer, but they were never good, either. Somewhere along the line, he developed a real problem with authority. He was oppositional, defiant, and disrespectful. He lied and stole seemingly without conscience, always managing to stay one step shy of getting his ass thrown to the curb. Sort of an ongoing, slow-motion train wreck.

Now, you can imagine that all that was plenty to deal with, if he were our only child, but we had seven others besides him. We were constantly forced to spend a disproportionate amount of time and energy dealing with the 3M-fires, while the other kids (who might actually pay attention to what we said) got less than their share of our scarce resources.

The saddest part of the whole thing was the 'ripple effect' that spread out from 3M's misbehavior. In some ways, we really 'found out who our friends were'. Several folks sort of withdrew from us - either they didn't want our wicked kid to 'contaminate' their kid (which, honestly, I understand), or they started to have doubts about us, for not being able to do better at raising our son. I can't bring myself to be angry about it - I understand their misgivings - but it was very hurtful, and disillusioning.

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The Apple of My Eye

Our oldest daughter, 1F, was very much the 'perfect kid' growing up - trustworthy, helpful, loyal, thrifty, brave, clean, reverent, and all the rest. She was a sweet kid, and as the kids kept coming along, she became sort of Molly's 'junior mom'.

We didn't allow our kids to date in high school. 1F mainly didn't fight us over that, but she wasn't terribly appreciative of it, either. During her junior year of high school, she had a 'boyfriend' more-or-less clandestinely, and when Molly found out about it, 1F continued with the relationship until the boy got tired of the drama and moved on.

1F graduated from high school in 2001, and took a year off before starting college. She got a job bussing tables at the local convention center, and moved out of our house, into a household of single women all belonging to our Christian community.

Late in the summer of 2002, about a month before she left for college, she started telling us about this guy she'd met at work, who was so charming, and paid such flattering attention to her. Molly and I were very uneasy about it, but we didn't have any real basis for saying anything much more definite than "be careful". Then she told us how she went out with him for a drink after work, after which he took her to a motel, "and stuck his tongue in my ear." OK, that set the alarm bells ringing!

She was completely out of her league with this guy, and I told her that she had no idea what she was dealing with, and she should run, not walk, to the nearest exit. But she couldn't bring herself to believe what we were telling her. Yeah, he might have 'issues', but they were because of his rotten parents or his rough upbringing. He was just basically a nice guy, who most people misunderstood (she really said that!), and she just soaked up the snake-oil he was pushing.

We consoled ourselves with the knowledge that she'd be going away to college that fall, and that would be that. But, it turned out that her two roommates were both borderline head cases, so she spent most of the fall immersed in roommate-drama, in addition to the pressure of college-level studies for the first time. And how did she deal with the stress? By calling her 'friend' (I'll call him 'F-bomb'), pouring out her anxieties to him over the phone.

One day in October, she just left - walked away from school without a trace. For two days, no-one had any idea where she was. We finally found her back in town, working at her old job at the convention center. Where F-bomb was. We convinced her to move back home, helped her finalize the administrative details of quitting school, and tried to help her come down from the stress she'd been under.

And she started seeing F-bomb again. We'd never met the guy, so we asked a few questions. How old was he? About 32, she said. A big red flag, since she was only 20. Her behavior became more and more outrageous - she'd go out on dates with him, and not come home until 5AM. When we confronted her on that, and the bad effect it had on the life of the rest of the family, the bad example to her siblings, etc, she just said, "Fine - I'll move out." So she did - and moved in with F-bomb, two weeks before Christmas.

After that, we barely heard from her over the next few months. She wouldn't tell us her address or phone number, so the only way we could contact her was for Molly to go to her place of work, and in due course, she quit that job, so we couldn't contact her at all; we could only wait for her to contact us.

It became pretty clear that F-bomb was playing her like a puppet. She systematically cut off all of her closest friends, including her best friend since they were both in diapers. One woman, a family friend who had been something of a mentor to 1F, tried to talk to her, and 1F threatened her with a restraining order.

1F had a credit card, and he rang her up for $10,000 and a used SUV, ruining her credit in the process.

Also, it turned out F-bomb wasn't 32 - he was two years younger than I was. He had an ex-wife and two kids, who were in high school with our other kids. One day, his son grabbed 3M in the hall and said, "My dad is dating your sister; how weird is that?"

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Over the course of the next three years, she left him and went back to him more times than we could keep track of. One time after they'd fought, she was wandering alone in his neighborhood at 3AM (probably the worst neighborhood to be found in our town), and was attacked and raped. To this day, nobody has any idea who did it to her, but she was left lying unconscious on the sidewalk across the street from F-bomb's house. F-bomb and his brother threw her in the back seat of his car, drove her to the hospital, dumped her by the ER door, and left.

About two years ago, she moved out from his place for the last time, and back in with us. She had a good job, and was getting her feet back underneath herself. But she couldn't stay away from F-bomb. She hated herself for it, but once or twice a week, she'd miss dinner without calling us, which we knew meant she was seeing F-bomb.

All this time, we consoled ourselves with the fact that she hadn't gotten pregnant. Maybe he was 'shooting blanks'. But alas, she finally did get pregnant, and that was the last she saw of F-bomb.

Our grand-daughter, who I'll call AG (Adopted Girl, get it?) for blogging purposes, was born this past winter.

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For the last several months, 1F has been seeing a counselor who is helping her deal with some of the issues that made her particularly vulnerable to someone like F-bomb. Molly and I have sat in on some of her sessions; as you might imagine, several of her 'issues' radiate out from her upbringing. We are still very much 'in process' with the whole thing, but we have learned a couple things.

The 'junior mom' role that we reserved for her was not a healthy thing; it effectively robbed her of a lot of her 'childhood'. As a kid, 1F was almost freakishly responsible - the 'first-born pleaser', in spades, doubled and redoubled. Which was nice for us, but she'd have been better off with a bit more freedom to just 'be a kid'. And, she felt like she always had to 'fix' everything, so when I lost it, or Molly did, or chaos reigned, as it often does in large families, 1F felt like it all fell on her to 'make it better'.

And the thing is, I could often see that going on with her. I could see her trying like mad to just 'make it better', to restore control. And it bothered me - I knew what she was trying to do, and I knew that she shouldn't be taking that burden on herself, but I didn't know how to get her to relax and let it go.

And somehow, a guy like F-bomb, who needs 'fixing', especially a streetwise guy who knows how to look like he 'needs help', is exactly the kind of guy who would hit her at her vulnerable point. Add to that her own insecurity at being out on her own in the big, wide world, and his 'father-figure-ness', his ability to 'show her how it's done', and she was easy pickings.

Today, I think, she's a stronger, wiser young woman, albeit with scars on her psyche. She has restored most of her lost friendships, but the years of traveling in 'different circles' sometimes make for awkwardness. And, her story has gotten around - not everyone knows quite how to approach her.

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