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[becomingkate]

Honestly I think I'm about at the end of my rope.  I had the parent teacher conference yesterday in which I found out that my son is a model student.  He was picked out of his class (2 from each class) to stand up at an assembly and be recognized for good choices and helping people and stuff.  It brings tears to my eyes for more than one reason.  Obviously I'm really proud of him, but I feel like I can't take credit for this.  He's always been a really helpful kid without my prompting.  The problem is, he's not this way at home.  He said himself, he saves all his good behavior for school because "school is more specialer than home".  Well I'm trying to teach him that good people are good all the time, not just for half the day.  The four hours he spends at home (and the 2 or so before school) are pure chaos.  Unless he gets really involved in something, he's constantly doing things I told him a thousand times not to do, talking back, throwing things, kicking...and he claims he has no control over this.  I'm trying to teach him he does have control over his own body.    I send him to his room, take things away, even yell and lash out in my outraged moments.

I never thought I'd be that kind of mom but I can ask him nicely until I'm blue in the face to go get dressed, or brush his teeth or basically anything I ask him to do, and he won't move until I snap at him or threaten to take something away if he doesn't get it done.  I hate that we've gotten to this.  I wanted to be the kind, doting mother with the child who respects his parents enough to do the things they ask before I have to ask him 5 times.  And then 5 times again the next day. And the next and the next, like he hasn't learned anything from previous experiences of us being frustrated with him for not listening, or talking back.

What's worse is that since he's a perfect angel around everyone else, I look like a crazy person when I can't handle his behavior.  When I don't think that it's cute that he won't stop talking over people or that he controls people to his will or that everything has to be perfect.  When I make him a sandwich and he refuses to eat it because there's an air bubble in the bread.  When he refuses to talk to me until it's past bedtime and then he screams and cries because he misses me.  These things that are cute in short doses are purely intolerable when you're around them all the time.  Cute can turn into annoying real fast.

What also kills me is that I know he's capable of good behavior.  If he had some kind of behavioral issue where he didn't know right from wrong I might be able to see it differently.  But the teacher said it herself, he knows right from wrong.  He knows what he's doing at home is wrong. He knows we don't tolerate it and he has no plans of changing.  He'd rather get yelled at and dragged to his room than just go brush his damn teeth.  That's what I can't understand.  He has no respect for me and my husband and yet he obeys a teacher he's known for 3 months.

My husband doesn't help.  He's as impatient as I am.  I don't agree with the threats and punishments he doles out and yet to convey a false solidarity I have to sit there and agree to it and then I'm mad at my husband and myself for going along with it.  I get no support from my husband, he thinks I've gone off the deep end I think.  He obviously doesn't even like me anymore and I don't like him.  He picks fights with me and makes me look like the crazy one.  He and I disagree on everything so after I'm done disciplining my son I have to turn around and discuss with my husband why I feel his approach was wrong.  This morning my son very sweetly woke me up at 5:50 a.m. to tell me that he was going to wake up daddy and let me sleep in.  Well, daddy refused to get up and my son refused to go back to his room until a decent hour so by the time I was done shoving my husband out of bed I too was wide awake and we got up grumpy and fighting first thing.  I'm going to start setting my son's alarm for 6:30, but I know my son will get up whenever he pleases and refuse to leave us alone until we get up too.  

Then he had the nerve to suggest that *I* go back to my therapist to deal with this?  Because somehow it's my problem and my fault that our son is acting out at home?  Because I took our son to a child therapist and she watched him for 10 minutes and decided he was perfectly fine? Because he wasn't tearing up her office and swearing at her and me, like other kids she sees, I'm supposed to go home and deal with it?

So now that I don't work I usually spend my days watching TV, doing random chores around the house, eating, feeling like a waste of space.  I have the things I like to do that make me feel useful but they are diminishing...I don't work anymore, I don't have friends, I don't really contribute to the church I'm a part of, for fear of social interaction.  I live through my son who I suppose is the best thing I'll ever create or otherwise be a part of.  I should really focus more on him but I still have an ego, apparently.  

I'm tired of people telling me this is common behavior.  First of all I think my son's behavior is more extreme than average.  Second, even if it is common, how is that going to make me feel better?  How is that going to help?  Because other people are going through it, that makes it okay?  I'm supposed to let him be a brat to us until he "grows out of it", which really means "grow into being a tween and then a teenager" which we all know is going to be even harder?

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