We are now a four PDA family, as real_pochacco‘s mother gave him an old Palm III she wasn’t using. One more to go and we’ll be an even geekier household. I’m not really counting on R not losing his, though, which is why we weren’t going to buy one for him or G anytime soon.
I’ve been going through our address book in Time & Chaos to clean it up so that it’s more usable when synchronized with our PDAs, and found a name neither of us recognizes. Lucy Smith. She lives in Snellville and I have her email address, but that address doesn’t appear in either of our email archives, we don’t recognize the name or address, and there are no notes in the record to clue us in. Who is this person? I have her home number, but I don’t quite have the cojones to email or call her and say “Hi, why are you in my address book?” because she might not know either. Or she might be terribly offended. Who can tell?
goddessinga and greyknight departed for home, sambear got shadowkatt to rehearsal, real_pochacco stayed heads-down over his neglected homework, and I supervised G this afternoon. She continues to get into SOME kind of trouble every time she isn’t being directly supervised.
Last week the therapist said that she and R are engaging in power struggles, trying to manipulate us so that they have more control in the household despite the negative consequences they experience. It sucks to have to be the hardass all the time, but apparently, that’s the only thing that will get through at all. And we’re not supposed to show any kind of emotional reaction to their misbehavior, either—everything has to be matter-of-fact and immediate with absolute solidarity among all adults in their lives.
I can’t help feeling resentful, because it feels like we are being punished because R and G are being so difficult. I know it’s just part of being a good parent, but my inner child is pitching one hell of a temper tantrum.
