One Good Turn Deserves Another
I know I haven't written in this journal for some time, but I'm irritated enough about something to need to write it down somewhere. We've been under a lot of stress lately, mostly from our previous living situation and the homebuying process to get out of said situation, plus the subsequent move. The last of our new (to us) furniture was delivered yesterday, so we finally got the opportunity to move things around in the living room and see how everything fit. It's not set (yet), but we now know what we're going to do.
I sat down afterwards to relax and so my darling fiance can dye my hair for me, and I got a message from someone that there's a blog post I needed to look at from someone else I thought I knew rather well. So I hunt down said post and read through it. It's about her cat. No surprise there, she has no kids. She's upset because she's been told the cat might need prozac for its behavioral disorders. This is upsetting because she doesn't like the idea of medicating, then decides to use the example of kids with ADHD as proof that medication isn't a good idea. Her claim is that they just aren't allowed to be kids and express themselves. Whatever, when kids are rightfully diagnosed with ADHD their brains have physiological differences. Otherwise they wouldn't react to caffeine and other "uppers" by calming down. But I figure she's entitled to her opinion...after all, she has no kids of her own and thus no experience to pull from to be able to see otherwise. But then she starts launching into a specific example. My kids. She states that she offers to watch them because they get ignored and yelled at when they're at home, that they're not allowed to be kids and be themselves, which is obviously why Talyn is medicated.
...wait, what?
I read it again. I turned and looked behind me at Talyn, who was busily working on learning games and chatting in our chat room on the kids' laptop. I looked over at Devin, happily trundling along on all fours after Matisse, who despite Devin's obvious wish to give him affection was not interested in being hugged by a nine-year-old just then. Shaking my head, I shared the link with Gabriel. He read it, and his reaction was the same.
"What?!"
He proceeded to try to wrap his mind around this new information.
I turned to look behind me. "Hey Talyn, now that school's over, what are you doing with yourself all day?"
Talyn eyed us in confusion, realizing we already knew the answer to this question. "Go outside...play...ride my bike...play games...read...go to the pool...watch TV...why?"
"Because **** thinks you don't get to do anything you like unless you go to her house."
"What?!" (Is there an echo in here?) "Why would she think that?"
"I have no idea. She thinks we ignore you guys and yell at you all the time."
At this point, Devin chimed in with, "Well, I don't know how she'd know about anything we do, since we don't get to go over there anymore," obviously annoyed.
I explained for the hundredth time about how it was rude to invite yourself over to someone's house and how I wouldn't send them over there unless it was offered. I won't just ask people to watch my kids for me. They cut me off mid-explanation. "Yeah, we know. But they don't ask you to bring us over a lot."
Even the kids seem to think this is madness. She doesn't ask us anything about them, not what they do on a daily basis, not how they're doing in school or their activities, nothing. I doubt she could tell anyone much about them beyond how old they are and what they do at her house. Furthermore, with no kids of her own she would have no idea what it's like to have another entire person depending on her 24/7/365. No clue about the sacrifices made to give them better lives, to help them learn who they are. My above-stated policy of not pursuing people to watch them for me means I pretty much have no life beyond them. Every hour I've worked since Talyn was born was to help pay for something having to do with them. Food, clothes, diapers and daycare early on, toys, electronics later on, rent for a nicer place to live, and now we've gone through the sanity-challenging process of searching for, purchasing, and setting up a house, completely with the idea that it's bad for them to have to move around so much. We picked the neighborhood and house largely with them in mind. Big backyard for them to play in, sidewalks, playgrounds, a community pool, and closer to their schools so they can sleep later in the morning. Every Tuesday we drop everything to get Devin to gymnastics so that he can climb and tumble to his heart's content for two hours. Every Wednesday we hurry off to violin lessons so that Talyn can indulge and explore his talent and love for music. I put in the extra effort to get them into an arts-infused magnet school, and every school day we have to drive them to and from school because these schools do not have bus systems. Also, we have been working on reducing Talyn's dose of Concerta for the last several years, first getting rid of the extra "boosts" of ritalin he was being given to get him through school, and more recently taking him down from the highest dose of Concerta. So far our efforts have been successful.
I could have stayed in the crummiest, slummiest house I could find that would fit everyone and save money to send on babysitters so that I could go out and pretend I don't have kids. I could have let them get by with the bare minimum I had to provide for them: cheap food, cheap clothes, whatever schools they had to be assigned to, and after-school care so I didn't have to worry about picking them up. I could be pestering everyone I know to watch them for me. I could be living off the government instead of working at a place that would gladly replace me with someone they could pay less should my body ever break down at the volume of work they're throwing at me. I wouldn't have to go to school for years on end to get a decent degree so that I could get a better job making more money that would allow me to spend more time with them and do more things for them. Hell, I didn't have to keep them at all. I could have put them up for adoption.
What neglectful mother makes a point of meeting and keeping in constant contact with every teacher her children have to be sure that they're doing all their work and turning it in on time? Would she know that one of them has established "clubhouses" in small corners of the house made by the furniture? Would she be aware that the other carries a small stone owl statue, a stoppered jar of salt, and a shark tooth necklace to ward off the monsters that frighten him at night? Why would she ever bother to honor their request to wake them before she leaves for work to kiss them goodbye? Would she cram her home workspace into a corner so that they could use a bigger space for their own entertainment area and not have to be forced to watch what the adults wanted on TV?
There is no way that her opinion can be justified. It is the most egregious example of deliberate, willful ignorance that I have had the misfortune to personally see. People approach me on a daily basis and comment on how wonderful they think my kids are. I am told they are friendly, polite, helpful, and imaginative, if energetic. They do well in school and make good grades. Their teachers love them, and moreover they appreciate how involved we stay. Does she think they got this way for no reason? How would a child who is as ignored and stifled as she claims even function as a person? Especially when she only "saves" them from their terrible situation for a few hours once a month or so, and only after nine to twelve years of their lives have gone by? How does she think only one of them would end up on medication and the other wouldn't if they were both treated the same?
The simple answer is this: she has formed a misguided, uninformed, sanctimonious, self-righteous opinion, likely based on some other person's misguided, uninformed, sanctimonious, self-righteous opinion. The truth about my family doesn't fit into her paradigm, so she doesn't want to know the truth. She fabricates her own truth and bases her entire argument on what amounts to a lie. What's more, this person has the unmitigated gall to be nice to my face, lie about her reasons for offering me help with my children, and then turn around and say nasty things about me behind my back. On the internet. How much lower can one person's behavior get?
Better than that, this person has a spotted history with my family. There were falling outs and disputes with other members of my family while working for my parents, and she put my brother in the untenable position of defending her against them. I stayed out of this, knowing I wasn't involved enough in the situation to know enough about what was going on to form a fair judgment. I would have thought that I deserved the same consideration from her, but I suppose I was wrong.
Needless to say, I have no desire to further subject my children to this misguided individual, nor do I have any further desire to interact with her. There is quite enough uncertainty in their lives already without adding her drama to it. Somehow, I think they'll do just fine without her.