Time for some Counselling

see that boy up there. ^ that is my baby. hes not the oldest or the youngest. he is my middle child and he is the one who is unlike the others.
dan has been giving us a lot of trouble lately but before i tell you what he's done wrong i want to tell you about the child.
born 9/11/95 ... 9lbs7oz... he came into the world in a hurry. the doctor was inducing labour monday morning at 9am and dan was born monday morning at 7:47am after only 3hrs of labour. right from day one things were going to be on his terms not anyone elses.
he was a good baby. never wanted for anything and was happy to be in the wind-up swing or infant car seat where he could watch the world. he crawled and walked early and since then we have been trying to keep up to him.
dan's personality is not only different from his brothers is its different period. he is a very tender child who is easily hurt. his self-esteem is lower than i would like it to be and he internalizes more than he externalizes. dan is a goofy kid and loves to make others laugh even if how he does it isn't always appropriate. if even one person laughs he has an audience and the acting continues. hes the kid who comes home from school and tells us the jokes he's heard even though they usually result in a don't ever say that again reply from us. dan is as feminine as he is masculine and there if he decides that he will follow a homosexual lifestyle i wouldn't be the least surprised or dissapointed. i will support him no matter what.
dan doesn't make friends easily in fact he doesn't have friends outside of school at all. a teacher once told me he is a wise old soul in a young mans body and other children can't relate to him or his humour. i believe that is the best explanation anyone could give of my middle child.
as dan's mother i want what all mother's want for thier children. i want him to grow up happy and healthy. i want to protect him from the evils of the world and even at times from himself. i want everyone to like him and show him respect and courtesy. i want him to be popular and the top of his class. i want only the best for him.
dan has been having some issues. issues a lot of kids have. issues that are classic for a middle child. issues all parents hope they never see in thier own kids but when they do they usually find out all parents have been through degrees of the same issues.
the lying and stealing started not long after his dad and i split up dan was 9. the first time i realized the stealing was after a shopping trip when he stole a cadbury easter cream egg. we had a long chat about stealing and how and why it was wrong. i said all the things i was supposed to say he said all the things he was supposed to say and we moved on. the lying was not as easily dealt with. he would like about having taken a cookie or a chocolate when he wasn't supposed to. he promised not to do it again but the next time a cookie was missing i would ask who had eaten it and the answer was always "not me". i kept working with him and things did get better he saw that honesty was better and that taking a cookie and owning up to it didn't get him in nearly as much trouble.
dan also has a long slow burning temper. rarely do we see him angry but when we start to see signs of anger we know that the only thing that will bring him back to calm is a temper tantrum. i have tried to extinguish his temper a few times but experience has taught me that it doesn't help that he just closes up until he can't keep it contained anymore. in the past when this has happened he has lashed out at adults who are close to him and who have some experience in handling these types of outbursts.
last week dan found a watch in the ice at school and rather than turning it into the office he brought it home. when i noticed on saturday that he was wearing a watch that wasn't his i asked where it came from and he said his friend had given it to him. i hate to admit it but i couldn't believe him. after a long weekend advising him that he had til tuesday when school went back to provide the truth before we confronted the boy at school about it, dan finally came clean tuesday morning in the school hallway. he figured we wouldn't believe him if he told the truth... guess what... we didn't believe the lie even more. we returned the watch to the school lost and found. tuesday night we had a long talk about what had happened and i could tell its wasn't settled but it was a beginning.
the anger was coming i could see it but i couldn't do anything about it yet it cause i couldn't get him to pinpoint the emotion.
it blew up yesterday!
he got in a fight at school with a boy two years younger than him. the boy started something then walked away and dan escalated it by following after the boy and when the boy threatened to hit dan, dan hit the boy. it got worse when the teacher was trying to talk to dan, dan turned and tried to walk away and the teacher grabbed his jacket from the back dan turned and tried to get away and in doing so hit the teacher in the face with his crazy carpet. the principal stepping in asked what had happened and dan proceeded to lie about the whole thing. just not good at all.
dean got the call and was very angry as expected. i talked to dean only a few minutes after he had picked dan up who has been suspended for 2 days. i had to finish my day at work and come home to try and figure out what was next.
when i got home i was far to upset to deal with dan so i decided to leave it for today. we talked this morning and dan seems much calmer and more composed and to be honest so is his mother. i have a great benefits program at work so counselling is paid for if we need it and i think dan needs it. to show dan that counselling isn't a bad thing i will be getting my own counsellor since having some place to vent will benefit me too.
ok thats it for now. i will try and catch ya all up soon just been in a whole other mental place and haven't felt much like bloggin.
hugs ya all.

Hockey

this should be an interesting blog... i asked dean to pick a topic and this is what he picked. it is 10pm on saturday night and he is watching ufc wrestling knockouts. its really not my thing but i have the laptop so it's keeping him entertained.
so hockey it is... i can't remember watching hockey as a kid in fact i don't think i ever saw a game til the year curt and i got together. thats a huge statement considering im a canadian and grew up in the same city that the vancouver canucks still play in. my parents weren't into watching team sports. my weekends were filled with racing, both live on the tracks ,and on the television. dad raced on the same track as guys like bobby rahal, danny sullivan and the great gilles villeneuve. in fact the day i was born my dad was heading to california for a race and almost missed my entrance into the world. i knew the names of all the formula 1 racers better than i knew our provinces. andretti, fitipaldi, mansell, rosberg, shumacher were like heroes to me growing up they were household names. we watched nascar too but not with the same veracity.
these days i can name a few hockey players. curt and his family are all avid watchers of the sport so over the years i came to understand the game but never learned to like it much. curt and i attended a couple games when we were first married and they were lots fo fun to go to but watching it on tv just never had the same appeal. i finially got into the game during the 2002 winter olympics when both the men and women of canada kicked the hides of our american counterparts to come home with both gold medals. olympic hockey is fast paced and is not filled with the politics of the nhl unless of course you include the gambling habits of gretsky's wife.
having boys i knew that one or all of them might get involved in hockey but i was adamant i wasn't going to be the one taking them to the rink at 4am. turns out i was right, robert, our oldest decided that hockey was to be his sport of choice. i managed to maintain my status on early morning ice times and let his father play the part of hockey dad. even the afternoon games i could find good reason not to attend. i love my son dearly and i went to every game he asked me to go to but he didn't ask me to attend many cause he knew how i felt about the game. i think he also know how i felt about the bigger, faster boys nailing my baby into the boards. the few games i went to it was really all i could to to watch my boy get tossed like a rag doll on skates by the opposing team. i really didn't like going and would cringe everytime he got hit. he loved it though and hockey was all he talked about the 2 years he played. dean's youngest wants to play and again i will take a stand on not doing morning ice times.
dean and his family are hockey nuts. they love the game and watch every double header on hockey night in canada like it was sunday's wonderful world of disney when i was a kid. i watch with them and have learned to tolerate the game. what i like most about these nights is listening to them talk about the history of hockey and the players that dean grew up watching. it is obvious that hockey was a family event in thier house and it always seems to bring the family together when hockey is on. they are baseball fans too and do the same thing during the ball season. as the two seasons almost overlap each other it means that there is always family time to be had in our house and thiers.
what brings your family together?

Sleepless nights

when i lived close to the ocean i used to sit at my front window on sleepless nights and watch the tug boats move the gravel barges into position so the converyers could spill the earth onto them. the lights from the island across the straight would twinkle on the clear nights. the ocean breeze moving the windchimes hanging from the neighbours eaves. the sound from them was always calming no matter how violent the winds. waves would crash against the breakwater that sheltered the beach below the houses across the street. if the wind was blowing just right the smell of salt air would drift through our drafty house reminding me of the time i spent on the beach as a child.
last night was a sleepless one. i longed to be on the beach watching the waves roll onto the shore washing away the stress of the sand. i wanted to watch the work of a child's mind slip away one grain at a time as the water lapped over it. i wanted to watch a strand of seaweed roll with the white foam as it struggled to find a place to rest. i wanted to feel the sea breeze moisten my exposed skin as i smell salt air.
tonight i hope to dream of the ocean.
sweet dreams

The Hill

the other night we went for a drive to look at christmas lights. going for a drive is something we like to do as a family. we load into the van and off we go. this night was much like the others as we drove along icy side streets looking at the beauty of lights in many colours bliking and twinkling in the snow. we passed a large hill where some teens were sliding. this hill wasn't a really safe place for the kids to play because the bottom of the hill was the main roadway but the kids were having fun just the same.
as we continued to drive i got to thinking about the hill that we used to play on when i was a kid. when i was 10 we moved to a townhouse complex in coquitlam bc. the town house units were made up of row houses four to a row. we lived in one of the middle houses in the first row at the top of the hill. the hill was actually an access road to the complex below ours. everyone knew that there were kids that played on the big hill so they were always careful to drive safe speeds up and down the hill.
i remember sliding down that hill in the winter times when we got a rare snowfall. in fact the hill would get so icy in the winter that people didn't use it because there were other safer routes to take. we didn't have gt's or sleds and usually our toboggans were made of whatever we could find that we could slide on. it might be a black garbage bag or an old scrap of linoleum or even old pieces of carpet (they slide great on ice) we would bundle up in snow suits, mitts, scarves and touques and we would spend hours outside in the chilly weather.
if i walked down the hill about 2 city blocks i would arrive at the street where all my friends lived. we seldom played inside each others houses because the streets of this subdivision were so full of kids that we couldn't all go in one persons house at any one time.
my gf lisa lived in the duplex on the corner. she was from malaysia and her parents spoiled ehr and her two sisters rotten. lisa was fashion crazy and was the girl who had all the teen romance novels in sequntial order from 1-100 and they were on her book shelf in order.
gulia was from a big italian family and she lived in the biggest house on the block. her's was the house with every new fangled gadget in it that the rest of us wished we could afford. she had the atari as soon as it came out and was the only house on the block with an automatic garage door. (how times have changed) she had a dishwasher and microwave when our mothers only dreamed of having them. she even had a tv in her own bedroom!
benita was born in canada. the rest of her family including her sisters were from india. i loved going to her house for dinner for traditional dinners made by her mom. her dad was a short little guy with a great sense of humour. benita's sisters were gehita and anita and they were the most beautiful girls i had ever seen. both were in university and were always studying. i remember benita's mom always shooing us girls outside so the sisters could study.
debbie was a year older than the rest of us and became a trouble maker in high school from what i heard but when we were pre-teens she and i used to go to the mall on saturdays to watch movies and spend our allowance on candy and clothes.
boys were just beginning to be a big part of our lives back then and there were more than a few that lived in the subdivision that caught our eyes. joe was the boy i wanted for my first boyfriend. he didn't know i exsisted because shilo was all he thought of. she was his girlfriend for about 3 years before he finally noticed me when i was 13. too late for him since i had moved to a new city by then and had found other boys who caught my fancy.
when i was 11 all us girls got roller skates right around the time when school let out. that hill was great for skating down to see my friends. the skate home was much more difficult since the grade on the hill had to be about 6%. we didn't care though we were kids and no hill was too steep. in fact we didn't even have to use the hill to get to each others houses. there was a path we could take through an empty lot. the lot was left empty on purpose when the builders planned the complex i lived in. there was two of these lots that they left full of trees and natural brush. we spent hours hiding and playing in these lots. the one lot even had an old deadwood trunk that we used as a bench seat, we used to cut through that lot on our way home from school everyday. i remember the boys sneaking smokes, beer and kisses in that empty lot.
we only lived in that house for 3 years but i love the childhood memories i have of that time. when i moved back to vancouver the apartment i rented was only about 10 min from this area. the house we lived in was still there and hadn't changed much. the area however has totally grown up. the forest across the street is now full of houses and a church that they were building when we moved away. dean and i spent some time driving through the area when he was there and i couldn't believe how little forest was left.
the hill is still there , but i bet the kids can't play on it like i did when i was a kid.