Like Mother, Like…

(sigh) R has­n’t been home 12 hours, and he’s already telling bald-faced, stu­pid, yes-he’ll-def­i­nite­ly-get-caught lies. Why does he do that? It was­n’t even about a big thing, but it was­n’t any­thing he could in any way be “mis­tak­en” about. He just chose to lie. I hate that.

I should­n’t be sur­prised or dis­ap­point­ed. They are always much more poor­ly behaved after a vis­it with their mother—and the longer the vis­it was, the longer the adjust­ment peri­od will be. But I’d real­ly hoped to get through at least 24 hours with­out any prob­lems wor­thy of mention.

R & G are dis­ap­point­ing­ly dis­hon­est far too often. They lie casu­al­ly, fre­quent­ly, and with­out remorse. I’ve yet to fig­ure out why—because they did­n’t get enough imme­di­ate neg­a­tive con­se­quences for lying ear­li­er in their lives? Because they’re mod­el­ing their behav­ior after their bio­moth­er? Their father thinks it’s pro­tec­tive behav­ior devel­oped in an attempt to pro­tect them­selves from their moth­er’s rages, but I can’t see that in cir­cum­stances where it would be far eas­i­er to sim­ply tell the truth.

Dis­hon­esty is a big deal to me. I don’t trust any­one who is habit­u­al­ly dis­hon­est (or is even dis­hon­est ONCE about any­thing impor­tant). So there are two peo­ple in this house in whom I hon­est­ly have no trust at all. It isn’t a com­fort­able way to live. Yeah, they are just kids—but I can’t ful­ly relax when there are untrust­wor­thy peo­ple around. Maybe it’s the PTSD, and maybe it’s just hav­ing good sense.

I think sam­bear lived for so long with a habit­u­al liar that it just does­n’t affect him as much. I don’t think he expects or demands hon­est­ly near­ly as much as he should.

So here we go again. Back to the con­tin­u­al strug­gle¹Yes, I know many par­ents see the con­tin­u­al strug­gle as nor­mal. But when you have 13- and 10-year-old kids who still can­not be trust­ed to do these things con­sis­tent­ly with­out con­stant nag­ging, it isn’t nor­mal. A 5–6‑year-old is old enough to be dress­ing and tak­ing care of per­son­al hygiene with­out prompt­ing, and R & G can­not or will not do that con­sis­tent­ly yet. just to get R & G to do basic things like bathe, brush their teeth, and take care of their pets and their own per­son­al spaces. Much less help around here. And as school starts, we’ll be back to the con­stant strug­gle with G and the school work that she lies about, won’t do, etc. R cares about his grades — I don’t think G does. But R gets in trou­ble with aca­d­e­mics at times due to pro­cras­ti­na­tion and lack of self-dis­ci­pline. Dammit.