Continuing.
On Friday, our son left home and came back Sunday morning at 10 am, ready to leave to play hockey for a 10:30 am departure. In this time away, he refused to tell us where he was, who he was with, a contact number or anything. I was very concerned, my wife was shuttling between the feeling of deep concern and rejection and indifferent hatred for the child. We were chatting about what was going on, she was wondering the "ifs". If I had done this?, maybe he would not have done that, "if I had treated him this way" that would have happened. I tried to re-assure her we have done everything we can do over many years. There is no specific event or thing we did or did not do that has lead to this.
What did occur to me, is another way for us to look at what was going on.
To him, it had become a competition he was going to win. It had become a game of brinkmanship.
He was polite and reasonable with others. He simply changed the minute he walking in to our house.
So I concluded he was making very specific choices. He had not had a complete attitude and behaviour change that he was applying to every person and situation. The question to answer "is there any thing I could do to get through to him".
At this stage, it is worth saying my wife and I have agreed from the outset we were not going to hide what was going on in our lives. It was having too much of an impact to hide it. So it was simply better to be open and honest with work, colleagues, friends, family and ourselves. I can see some people feeling the need for privacy, however for us that would make a toxic situation even harder to cope with.
I woke up Sunday morning with a few clear options and a clear determination.
I would do everything to get through to him in the next few weeks.
Fair, firm and friendly.
Then if that failed, when he was off on one of his two days away, "I won't tell you where I am or what I am doing" I would kick him out. Empty his room, dispose of all the unnecessary items, get rid of the luxuries of his life and leave a couple of boxes with only the essentials of living in the car port.
That was how I felt.
So the one strategy I had was to take him after hockey to a friends farm about 1 hour 15 min out of the city. He would be in the car with me, the trick was to see if I could keep him on the car with me for the trip.
Once he figured out what was going on, he started with low level things to annoy, distract and disrupt my driving. Eg, adjusting the mirrors, taking his seat belt off. It then escalated: spraying sunscreen in my face, taking my glasses off and throwing them out the window, to throwing other things out the window the car. He emptied almost all the contents of my business brief case. In the last 20 minutes at 110 km/h, he resorted multiple times to try and wrench the steering wheel to drive us off the road. I remained calm and unflappable the whole drive. It was a white knuckle trip though. I thanked that original driving instructor when I was 17 showing us the correct seating and steering wheel position would allow you to effectively lock the steering wheel preventing a deranged passenger from pulling the steering wheel away from you. Never thought that 36 years later and 52 years old, my 14 year old would be the deranged passenger!!
Off to work now. To continue.
