3.24

So much to update...not sure even where to begin!  I really need to do a better job of updating daily, or even weekly.

Things with Eriq are a mess.  Possibly worse than usual.  The first area of concern is school work.  Eriq is enrolled in home school with VLA, but attends a behavior-counseling school in the area.  Basically, he gets counseling and does his school work during the day, because Dad and I are at work.  However, he isn't really doing the school work.  He has to complete 9 lessons in a nine-weeks per subject (Math, Language Arts, Science and Social Studies), and yet he has barely completed 4 or 5 in each lesson with the 9 weeks ending in five days.  He goes to school for hours a day, and barely gets 5 questions answered.  He has been doing nothing but school assignments in the evenings, but can't seem to get then finished.  On the adding and subtracting fractions lesson it took him seven days to complete 7 worksheets and 50 online questions.  Most nights it was from 4pm til 9pm or 10pm and he barely got anything done.  I try to see the ADHD that the psychiatrist has diagnosed him with, but I just don't see it.  It's more like he doesn't want to do the work...and just doesn't.

Last Saturday, I told him he had one worksheet of math to do before he could leave for his mom's for the weekend.  That was 9am on Saturday morning.  When she got there at 1:30pm, he had half of the worksheet done.  I looked at the problems remaining and they were problems he had been working on all week and just couldn't seem to understand them.  During that week he had videos, explanations from me, Jim, and my son Nicholas on how to solve.  Yet, he still couldn't, or wouldn't do the work.  I am left again to think, does he really not know how to solve the problem?  Or does he just not want to?

It was decided about 2:30pm on that Saturday he would take the worksheet home to his mom's and finish it over the weekend.  When he returned on Sunday, Eriq's mom sat down to show me the worksheet, and the answers in the notebook.  The problem was that all of the problems were in her handwriting!  She did all of the work for him.  This turned into an argument between me and her because I said I don't know how you doing the work for him helps.  She said he did it, but she wrote it down.  She wasn't happy with what I said and just left without saying a word.  After she left, Eriq got mad at me because of the way that I talked to his mom and said that she is his mom and that she didn't do the math and a crapload of junk about how it's none of my business and I'm not his mother.  It got very heated and I smacked him in his mouth.  Twice.  It got physical and Eriq lunged forward to strike me, but Jim stopped him.  They ended up in a physical altercation as well.  Jim pinned Eriq and told him to knock if off.  Later when Jim and I looked at the problems he did with her, we noticed they were all wrong.  So much for that help!

I left the house for a while to take Bella somewhere and to try to think.  Eriq has never gotten physical with me, so that was a first.  I am honestly concerned about what would have happened if Jim wasn't there to step in.  Eriq is very strong, and easily could have harmed me.

Of course, all of this was defending his low-life mother.  This woman is a piece of work, and in my opinion, the real root of Eriq's problems.  For the first year of my relationship with Jim, I asked him not to say anything negative about her so I could form my own opinion of her.  It didn't take long before I realized that she is a problem.  First, she pays VERY little or NO child support for Eriq.  Her current order is $135 a month (because she doesn't work, and won't) and yet she only seems to pay that about every 4 months.  She went to court in January because she is so far behind and told the judge she would make weekly payments to the court to get it caught up.  That was January 23rd...the same date as her last payment. Second, this woman sets NO rules or guidelines for Eriq.  She literally lets him do whatever he wants, and then complains about his behavior.  I can recall over the last four years, since Jim and I have been together, her giving him energy drinks, letting his girlfriend spend the night, run around the property unsupervised with an ax, him left to care for his brother and sister, never being forced to take a shower, and so much more.  If I know anything about Eriq is that he is not a normal child and needs to be closely supervised.  At our house, it was less than a year ago, when Eriq was playing with fire in our bathroom, that we decided he shouldn't be left alone, or unsupervised.  My other issue with Denise is that we suspect she constantly works against the parenting that Jim and I are doing with Eriq.  He always comes home from her house in such a negative mood towards us, I suspect she bad mouths us to Eriq, creative more negative energy in our home.

Eriq went to his mom's again this weekend and we took this opportunity to look through his room for stolen items.  While we didn't find things in the usual, obvious places, we did find a huge jackpot hidden behind the dresser where the old window is sealed into the wall.  We knew of this hiding place a couple of weeks previously and found again a ton of stolen items including root beer, snack cakes, Girl Scout cookies, tubes of icing from the kitchen, clothes he don't want to wear and such.  The search of his room also showed mechanical pencils, sharpies, books, pens and such that we didn't purchase for Eriq.  When he got home from his moms, we asked where this stuff came from and got the standard idk answer.  I asked about the stolen items, and he said he took them from our room when we weren't looking or from the kitchen when we were in the other room.  We have literally locked up and hidden so many things in our house, yet he is still able to sneak around to find them, steal them, eat them, etc without us knowing.  Yet he can't learn how to add or subtract fractions after 7 days. I also suspect I had money missing out of my purse also, but I have no proof that Eriq stole it.  I assumed I misplaced it, or spent it, because it was in my room and the door was closed so Eriq couldn't get to it....and then we found papers from snack items that are in my closet and now know he was in there after all.

Jim and I had a long talk last night about the status of things with Eriq and I think he might be really considering filing unruly charges or taking the next step in the the process, whatever that may be.  I have several friends who has suggested unruly charges, which is basically a complaint against Eriq in the juvenile court system....friends have said that it opens up doors to programs that we might not have available to us otherwise.  Is this the best path?  Should we create a juvenile file for him?  Are his violations that bad to warrant that level of punishment?  Sometimes I feel like we are overreacting and it's just a few things of stolen candy from my room, or a little bit of cash.  Or pencils.  It's not a big deal.  And then I remember the anger in his face when he lunged toward me, for what I assumed was to hit me, or him pulling a knife on my daughter three years ago, or the fact that my overly affectionate cats won't go near him, or that he was playing with fire, or cutting himself, or pouring bleach on my clothes, or that he can't, or won't, so his school work, or that he has been skipping class, and then I remember it's more serious than the pieces of candy.

I honestly don't tell Jim how I really feel about the situation because I sometimes don't know how I feel about things myself.  The truth I will admit though is that this situation with Eriq has taken a toll on our relationship.  We fight alot about Eriq, usually because I don't think he supervises him enough, and lets too many of the small things go.  I am fearful that Eriq will harm someone I love or that the day to day dealings with Eriq will have a negative impact on the lives of my own children.  My daughter has said before that he hates when we fight with Eriq.  I feel like I divorced her dad because we were fighting too much and now I put her back in the same situation I was trying to avoid in the first place.  I think sometimes of just leaving the house with Nick and Bella and getting our own place.  Then I think of moving them from a house they love, or maybe even from the school they love, and uprooting them again, and I stay with optimism that things will get better.  But will they?  Am I risking my kids sanity and stability for Eriq?  Would Eriq be better off if it was just him and his dad?  Is that what he wants anyway?  I told Jim in the beginning that I would never leave him because of Eriq, but the truth is every day that it gets a little closer and closer as the situation with Eriq continues to worsen.