The 4 Year Ordeal

My stepson was attending parochial school and he was every young girls dream. Handsome, quiet and just a boy with a kind heart. But, getting him up for school was an ordeal that at first I tried to stay out of, then got involved in and eventually threw up my hands over. It was a lot of lost sleep, anguish and no matter how much cajoling we engaged in getting my stepson up for school was four years of hell. He was sick more mornings than I could count and overslept at least twice a week. He refused to ride the bus and we had to go and get him in the nurse’s office at least 3 times a month. One year they wanted to leave him back because he had missed so much school.

Get the picture? I had such resentment I would usually be up late most nights on appointments with clients and the alarm would go off in the morning 40 minutes before he was to get up for school. My wife needed that time to start waking up the prince, which involved several visits down the stairs where she was greeted in a variety of ways.

I think that all through the “4 year ordeal” I learned a few things. The first was that my reaction to my stepson’s unwillingness to get up for school was not something that I could have controlled or had any affect on. It was going to happen regardless of what I did or didn’t do. A 12-step group has a great saying, we can’t control people places or things and had I remembered that I could have saved myself a lot of aggravation and resentment. The second thing I learned, stay out of it! Reducing my ego to just bystander would have taken one volatile element out of the whole affair. Had I refrained from my two cents the situation at worst would have been no different but most likely it would have run itself out of energy much sooner. It’s just like any argument when one person doesn’t respond in kind the argument dies a much quicker death. In this case the third by product would have allowed me my own piece of mind. There was no imminent danger to either my wife or stepson’s health, so why not excuse myself from the equation. I could have focused on consoling my wife and patting my son on the shoulder to

tell him I loved him. I can’t tell you how many times I allowed myself to get caught up in every vignette that was performed in front of me. This obviously was from something in my past that evoked silent memories of some torture I had long since buried. Perhaps with my stepson I was merely reenacting what I thought I was trying to control.

I saw in my stepson a very well liked young man. The girls used to fawn over him, but he was oblivious to most of them. Because of his maturity his friends in high school were 2 years older and although they appreciated his company, convention ruled out romance with a younger boy older girl. There were a few exceptions and some of his female liaisons were short lived. My only guess was they did not live up to his maturity, which was beyond his years. His cousins both older were helpful entrees to high schoolers that were older. That proved to be a negative as when they graduated his pool of friends was diluted. This made going to school even more difficult and my wife and I lamented he hadn’t gone to public school.

But getting to some of the reasons as to why getting up for school was such a challenge for him. It wasn’t necessary that I tried to correct his behavior. His choices to go or not to go were not compelling enough for him like in my time at school, which left no choice. My wife pointed out that since we weren’t the cause of my son’s absence and tardiness. She didn’t make him dress funny. There was nothing we could do in our behavior to change his. We had no control over the reasons for his not wanting to attend school so in the end there wasn’t anything we could have done to change the outcome to the out come we wished for.

I look back on those years and the distance I felt towards him was very apparent even though most of our interaction was pleasant and courteous. He was too old for me to become his dad because his biological father and he were going through a very acrimonious time so it was impossible for me to fit into a “father slot”. I had to be satisfied that he was in a more stable environment that was not filled with his parents arguing. He was in essence safe at home free from, arguments and two people that didn’t want to be together.