Stormy With a Chance of Sunshine

Nothing like starting off the weekend with joy and cheerfulness, right? (Please insert extremely sarcastic tone, here... I wish there was a font option for sarcasm) The post title is a reflection of the weather prediction here as well as the mood of the day.

Got up this morning ready to face the day. DS was up and at 'em and ready for cartoons, with DD taking a little longer to finish dressing (big surprise). Gave out meds, headed to our room to get myself ready. Not 2 seconds after DD descended the stairs, heard screaming. Great. DS hadn't even had a chance to do anything to bug her, so I poked my head out. "He threw my sweatshirt on the floor.. blah, blah, blah!"

At which point I told her that the night before I had taken her sweatshirt off the couch (where it didn't belong), and put it on the newel post at the end of the stair rail, and apparently it had fallen during the night. So if she needed to yell at anyone for the crime, it would have to be Gravity (or maybe Newton, since he discovered it and all). Please sit at the top of the stairs for 5 minutes to calm down and apologize.

But noooooo..... she can't leave it at that. She has to go through a half hour of smart mouthing and raging. I could almost ignore the raging, but the smart mouthing drives me nuts. Finally got her calmed, and reminded her that I needed to see an improved attitude before gymnastics, as I have no plans to inflict her "nasties" on the unsuspecting teacher.

Whew... that's done!

Only during the preceding process, I discovered that someone had dumped out the recently filled soap container in the kids' bathroom. Sigh. Pull the two kids aside and say that I know it's one or the other, and I would like to know who did it. Not like it's the end of the world, but it's wasteful, and I'm an odd duck who prefers honesty. I was hoping for a quick confession, a short discussion on not wasting stuff (and on pretending to wash with soap when the container is actually empty). Silly me.

I could tell right away from DS's response that he was the guilty party. He has a certain shifty-eyed, won't-meet-my-gaze look when he's lying. And he gets extremely defensive. But apparently "Not Me" is active in our house, so both kids got a seat on the stairs, because I don't appreciate being lied to. DS became more and more defensive (can you say, "guilty conscience?" I knew you could), so we moved on to breakfast and a trip to gymnastics, and I left it at telling them I would like honesty sometime in the near future.

Fortunately, DS's conscience eats at him when he lies, in a way that DD's does not. But he's learned that DD is so often guilty that he plays a game of waiting for her to take the rap rather than admit his own culpability. So as we arrived at gymnastics, DS admitted, that, well, he thought that maybe he had done something by accident, when he tried adding water to the container, but he didn't remember dumping it (hmm.. it happened last night, dude... you have a better memory than that!) I told him calmly that I appreciated him fessing up, and that I think we're getting closer to the truth, but that we weren't quite there yet, and I hoped to have it soon. Left it at that, and calmly offered that he could either come in with my to gym. or could sit in the car for a while if he preferred, and come in when he liked. I could tell from my seat inside that he was raging like mad, pounding on windows and the seats. I left him be, and about 15 minutes later he came in, and admitted that he had looked away while holding the container to talk to his sister and it "might" have happened then. After that he was pretty clingy and snuggly, which he often is after a rage.

I asked him why he did it, and he said he was scared of the consequence, though he admitted it probably wouldn't have been as big as the consequence for lying and raging. I told him that the biggest consequence was the loss of my trust, and the guilt that I know is eating at him. As for the soap, all I needed to tell him was that it was wasteful to dump it, and that I needed to know that they were out again so I could refill the container, but if it made him feel better, he could deduct 50 cents from his funds to pay for the soap. And that it was not OK for him to try to wait it out so his sister was blamed, so he needed to apologize to his sister for trying to let her take the rap.

Sigh... it's amazing how little things (sit on the stairs for 5 minutes, admit you dumped the soap) turn so quickly into hour long raging issues. It's like something inside them just fights the truth! I mean, I really couldn't believe the raging DS was doing on his own inside the car. He hadn't been yelled at, he hadn't been punished, he hadn't been told he had to stay there, and he hadn't been unjustly accused. But his conscience was warring within him, and it was driving him nuts! He decided to take the difficult path (lying, denial, raging) rather than just admit his guilt and accept the consequence (a short talking-to). I don't get that! Maybe I never will.

I sometimes think of the phrase, "Is this the hill you want to die on," when confronting certain issues, and I certainly wouldn't chose to die on the hill of "snapping at your brother" or "dumping out the soap." It doesn't start that way, but somehow I keep getting dragged to the hill whether I want to go there or not. At the end, I stand there in wonderment at how I got there in the first place.

DD went on to be more focused and appropriate at her gymnastics class than usual, spending more time doing tricks and less time arguing/talking/playing with her hair. DS went on to smile, snuggle, and joke with me for the rest of class time. We get sunshine after the rain. Sometimes I swear we need the rain to get the sunshine, because I doubt DD would have been as focused if she hadn't gotten the rage out of her system. It's like the rage has to happen either way, it's just a matter of what the trigger will be. Sometimes I'd rather it be triggered at home than in other situations anyway.

Of course, I may have spoken too soon. As I was reading back and editing this post, I heard screams from the living room. DS had grabbed DD's hair. He said, "I didn't touch her, I just grabbed her hair!" Hm... cause that's not a part of her??? After much whining from both parties, it came out that he had thought she said, "This isn't your home," but actually he had deduced that from hearing only the word "home," when in actuality she had said, "This isn't just your home, it's all of ours." Sigh.. Even he ended up laughing at himself.

Sigh... I guess the forecast is for scattered showers after all.