reasonable requests.

i pled with his therapist, "what can i do when he gets beyond reason and starts breaking things and hurting people?"

on paper she's his therapist. not really, though. i was hoping for someone to do play therapy with him. i was hoping for someone to help teach him the skills that i apparently cannot. i was hoping for someone to sit with him and get to know him and to ask him about his struggle. that's not really how it's going.

when i asked that question she told me i should create a safe room to stick him in. clear everything out. install a camera. let him do his worst. i guess my son is a werewolf.

i am not going to do what she suggested.

just prior to then we'd been talking about the day before when, after i'd spent an hour playing chess with him, the full moon came out. especially after we have a good one-on-one he pulls phrases like, "you never spend time with me!"

his therapist told me that he is probably trying to say that he wants me all of the time, or that it never feels like enough. i really don't like thinking that his needs aren't being met. I told her so and she replied...

"children can have unreasonable wants that they can't differentiate from needs." that was useful to me. i started thinking about what reasonable wants/needs a child has. what is my obligation to my children?

but then, ossi's needs are special. so what is unreasonable? a padded room with no windows seems like an unreasonable request.

so, she is not his therapist. she is training me to be his therapist. or trying to.

i tearfully told my dad {who was watching the other kids while i took ossi to see her} "this is asking more from me than anything ever has." i didn't imagine my life as a mother going this way.

so, i thought back to my first question and found an answer that will work for now. i'll draw with him. i'm going to have paper and pencils on my person at all times. his safe room is going to have to be inside his own body,  just like the rest of us, and he's going to have to learn how to make his mind calm enough. he's not a werewolf, he is a four-year-old boy with infinite potential.

then on to my second question. what is reasonable for him to expect from me?

here's what our scripture says about that...

"Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, and to teach them to love and serve one another, observe the commandments of God, and be law-abiding citizens wherever they live." {the family; a proclamation to the world}

if i need to become a therapist in order to keep this charge, i guess that's what i'll do.