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helpless. And even scared.
    ‘Can we just get some boots? Please?’
    I don’t want her to be like that. She’s no good to me like this. She can be angry, but if she’s going to fight me, she’s got to be sure in her own self what she’s mad about. You know Lois, from Malcolm in the Middle ? She hollers at her kids all day long, but I would have Lois for a mum any day. She’s yelling at those kids because she’s a hundred per cent sure they’re doing the wrong thing. When my mum yells it could be about anything. Half the time I’m pretty sure it’s not even about me.

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I thought about what Vic said, and I rang Alex’s school to ask about whether he was bullied. The lady at reception said that she would get his year advisor to call me back. Then she asked if this is why Alex wasn’t at school this week.
He came downstairs this morning in a girl’s school uniform. He looked straight at me so defiant, like a challenge. Another mother told me once, ‘only engage in the battles you think you can win,’ and that was the best advice I ever got when he was small. A lot of problems resolved themselves when he stopped trying to pick fights with me. Well, he still used to challenge me all the time, but I stopped taking the bait.
It also meant that he won a lot of the time, so I suppose it was less about winning battles and came down to the things I could put up with and the things I couldn’t.He went through a phase when he was about three where he would push his highchair around the house, and then climb up, and he could reach just about anything. I had some stamps, because I was into scrapbooking for a little while, but he pulled them down and stamped all over the furniture with ink. He did that twice. I was angry and so I threw away all my stamps and ink. Then I cried, because I had really enjoyed scrapbooking. I didn’t get to do it very often—only when Alex was asleep and the house was clean, and all the bills were paid, and the washing finished, which was almost never. I cried because Alex has been so totally demanding, I’m not even allowed to have a hobby that I don’t do. I’m not allowed to own something that’s just for me.
It’s not about the stupid stamps, it’s the fact that I am not allowed to define myself as separate from ‘cares for Alex’, even with something so innocuous as scrapbooking. Does that make sense?
He got a bottle of cough syrup open once, and I was so scared! Nothing was safe from him. So I said ‘right, mister! This is how it’s going to be,’ and I got really tough about the whole scooting the highchair around, and it worked. It also helped that I locked the highchair in the broom cupboard when he wasn’t in it. He was safer and we didn’t fight about that anymore.
Today I tried that again. He told me he didn’t want to go to that school, he wants to go to a different school. Idecided that I would be tough. Tough but fair, and just say, ‘this is what the rules are’.
But I called him ‘mister’. Twice. I didn’t mean to, it just slipped out. It hurt him, and on some level I was glad that he was hurt, because I’m hurting. I’m hurting every day, and he doesn’t care now any more than he cared that I wasn’t allowed to have a hobby. I wanted him to know what that feels like, so maybe he can appreciate what his behaviour is doing to me and stop it.
I don’t want to hurt him, but I also don’t know how to make him understand. I want him to be a person who cares for other people. I am overwhelmed by the gender thing, but much more than that I want him to grow up as a person who thinks about his actions and doesn’t do things that hurt other people. I want him to be happy, but not at the expense of hurting others. I don’t know how you make someone care about other people. How do you do that?
Heather
COMMENTS:
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Dee Dee wrote:
Everything you did today was right, except the name that you used. Don’t beat yourself up. The approach