off the rails

It feels like everything with M is up in the air and going off the rails. His ODD is really rearing it’s ugly head these days.

Last Wednesday he got suspended from school for assaulting another kid (apparently it’s not the first time he’s pushed this kid). Then on Friday I got home from work, the phone rang just as I sat down and it was M asking me to pick him up because he didn’t want to be at his father’s house. I asked him what happened and before I knew it him and the ex’s wife were screaming at each other. I’m sitting there on the phone in total shock and then it gets hung up.

Suddenly, I’m inundated with a barrage of text messages from the ex’s wife asking me what type of games I’m trying to pull, that she’s called the police on M because he assaulted her (which turned out to be a lie–the police part, not the assault part) and that he’s now on his bike coming to my house. She’s telling this all to me all because I simply picked up the telephone.

Saturday, I get a phone call from the ex. M isn’t welcome in their house at the moment and he thinks it’s my turn to take care of him. I did that for the first 9 years of his life and I told ex that he was out of control at that time. Ex’s solution was to take him because it was my fault that M was acting the way he was. Well it’s been 5 years and nothing has changed and M is still the same way he was before. Now ex is admitting he didn’t do anything to make things better and apparently now he wants us to work together. After all these years, now that M is totally out of control, bigger, and stronger, he wants to work together? And the whole time his wife is barking in the background with all of her demands ‘you tell him he better stay out of our room’, ‘you tell him he better not touch the cameras I set up in the house’, blah, blah, blah. I’m sorry but it’s not my responsibility to control what happens in their household.

I’ve talked to M about therapy. I told him that he needs to see someone. M says it’s all ex’s wife’s fault–the blame game. Ex agrees with me but says M doesn’t want to go and that he can’t force him. Well if he thinks he’s just going to move back with me and that’s it, he’s got another thing coming. It’s going to be mandatory because otherwise M is seriously heading down the wrong path. I also told ex that if he so much as lays a finger on me I will be calling the police because there is no way I am going to be assaulted again by my own child. Ex thinks I’ll just ruin his life by doing so, but what are the alternatives? To stick our heads in the sand and pretend everything is fine while he goes around hitting and shoving whoever he likes? One of these days someone is going to be seriously injured by his uncontrollable rage issues.

The last few days have been a total nightmare. I don’t sleep well. I barely eat anything. And all of this is leaving me mentally exhausted. I have to drive him to school because he’s out of his school district, leave work to pick him up and then come home and go back to work before C gets home from school. C is a total disaster having M back in the house. His anxiety is through the roof and all he does is cry because M torments him constantly.

M is supposed to go back to ex’s on Sunday but I have a feeling it won’t last long. The week of the 23rd I have to go out of town for work and I already told them that M has to stay with them because there is no way my mother can handle M by herself. And I don’t think she should have to. They want to work together? Well keeping him with them that week is working together.

Yesterday I had to send a message to my boss because I miss work having to go and pick M up from school. He was really good about it all but it’s not something I wanted to share with people I work with. I basically told him M is having some mental health issues…because that’s exactly what I think is happening with him. One minute he’s totally fine and the next he’s flying off the handle in an uncontrollable rage. And he’s mean. And scary. And bigger than me now which just makes everything worse.

I called our local family services and right away I got an appointment for M on the 31st to speak to someone. I also know a social worker who works with youth and she’s willing to talk to him as well. I will give him the options and he’ll need to choose one because somehow we need to get to the bottom of what is causing so much rage.

I honestly don’t know how much more of this I can take. It’s not good for me. It’s not good for C. It’s not good for anyone, really. I have an appointment with T today and it can’t come soon enough. I wanted to text him so badly over the weekend but I refrained because it was a holiday weekend. I just don’t know what else I should be doing. All I know is that what’s happening now is not sustainable.