Thursday, March 15, 2012

Where'd my boy go? Oh, there he is!

Sometimes, my son (who’s 13) drives me absolutely bonkers. He wants to negotiate every.single.thing I tell him or ask him to do. He feels like he is entitled to everything, even though we didn’t raise him that way. Is it something in the water filtration system at the middle school? I don’t know, but it’s there! It’s like once he turned 13, he turned into a different child. He and his brothers are at each others’ throats all the time. I’m sure it’s normal brother stuff, but good grief, I get tired of being a referee!! The other night they were throwing BOOKS at each other. Books? Honestly? And let’s not even talk about the whole “No, I don’t have any homework!” line, with the corresponding blowup three weeks later, when nothing’s been done. Y’all with teenage boys, you know what I’m talking about.

The only person he doesn’t treat differently? His little sister. She is three years old, and she thinks that the sun rose and set in her biggest brother. He helps her get dressed, plays with her, takes care of her; he soothes her hurts, distracts her when she’s mad, and reads books to her at night. I have to MAKE them stop playing sometimes, because they just enjoy each other so much!

So even though he has apparently turned into an alien toward the rest of us, I can still see my true son when I see him with her. I see his sweet spirit, his playful nature, and the way he genuinely cares about people and wants to help take care of them. Now if I could just see it when he’s trying to angle for more time on his iPod…