Cell Phone Abuse

Due to general over tiredness and moodiness, DH and I sent everyone to bed early last night. G has been complaining of feeling off but we had chaulked that up to her medications side effects (which were changed yesterday), and J was just being his usual "I don't want to eat my vegetables or do the dishes" self. By 8:00 the house was quiet and peaceful so hubby and I settled in to watch a movie or 2.

At 11:30, I heard G get up and start moving around but didn't think anything of it until I heard her talking. I turned down the volume on the TV and realized that she isn't doing her usual early morning talking to herself, she is actually having a conversation! Something told me that she was talking to her guy friend from school although when I've busted her previously for late night phone calls she claims it was with her SD. So I got up and knocked on her door to which her only response was "oh shit". Yep chicka, you are SOO busted.

I asked who she was on the phone with and she replied that it was her friend from school but that she had woken up because her room had gotten too hot (space heater) and she had seen that he had called and had called him back. I told her to shut it down do what she needed to to cool down her room then go back to bed.

This morning I decided to take a look at her phone records. While she doesn't normally use the phone much, her text messaging sent me over the deep end. After I told her to go to bed she sent a text at 4:30 AM and this is not an irregular occurance. 2:30, 3:30, 5:30 am conversations; all on school nights! No wonder she has been overly tired.

Then I found the best part. She has been sending text messages during school hours! I really think not!

I talked to DH about everything this morning. J is an easy fix. He once again loses all of his electronics (made sure DH agreed to ALL of them this time rather then just the Wii). G on the other hand is more complex. First just to get it through her head just how much she has screwed up, she is ground and cannot have friends over or go to visit them after school. Second, she has lost her cell phone for the next week and when she gets it back she will not be allowed to have it during school hours or during sleeping hours.

Homework Hotline

I came home tonight to a homework emergency. G and DH had been working on G's English homework for quite some time and they were both stumped. The assignment was a list of sentences and the students were asked to mark the prepositional phrases in each. As with most grade school assignments most of the sentences followed the basic rules that were covered in the classroom but final 4 were more difficult.

I was able to help G with this and started helping her break down the first sentence she had a trouble with, asking her to single out the subject and the verb of the sentence because neither could be apart of a prepositional phrase. The only answer I was able to pull out of her was "I don't know". I even prompted her for what a verb and subject were and got no answer. I spoon fed her the first sentence stopping just short of giving her the answers outright. On the next sentence, I tried having her brake down the sentence again. Find the subject and the verb. "I don't know." This time she follow it up with complaining about how her teacher didn't explain any of this and that she just spent most of the class time yelling. While there may be some truth to this I can't believe that it is not exaggerated since G was able to do the first part of the assignment without any assistance from me or DH.

At this point DH and I were at our wits end, I pulled DH aside and explained that I would NOT give her anymore answers. That as much as I wanted to care and help her figure it out, I can't teach someone who doesn't care herself. I do regret one low blow that I took. DH often comments that BM is actually very smart but uses all of that brain power to figure out how to get out of doing any work rather then applying herself and excelling at anything. I pointed out that I felt G was behaving the same way, but I do have to wonder if that is BM influence or just normal 13 year old behavior.

DH pulled my assistance from G's assignment (I also had my own homework to get to), and apparently G was picking up some of what I said because she was able to finish the assignment. For better or for worse it is done, and at very least I can feel confident that I have shown G that I will never do her homework for her. I just home that she understands that I am still willing to help.

Contest of Wills

The kids have been doing a great job recently of sorting through all of their things to get rid of everything that they no longer use in order to make room for them to actually live in their rooms rather then just having space for their stuff. However this morning J decided that he did not want to sort through all of the cloths that his mother brought over, saying it would be easier for him to just keep everything in the bags. Translation: I don't want to do this because you are interrupting my Wii time. DH put his foot down and set J to his room to complete the task but J still refused to sort his cloths. Instead he sat on the corner of his bed sulking.

When DH gave me an update of his day on my break at work, I told him I refuse to allow any more contests of wills between him and a 10 year old (this has been a reoccuring theme for quite a while). I advised DH to start threatening to take things away from J, starting with the keyboard and mouse to his computer. Apparently this worked because J started sorting his cloths.

And then fell asleep in them. I swear the boy can fall asleep at will and does anytime he is being forced to do something that he doesn't want to. Unfortunately, this is a disagreement between me and DH. He says that if J falls asleep like that he apparently needs his sleep and lets him do it, resulting in J getting out of many chores.

I think when I go to bed tonight I'm going to take all the wii remotes into the bedroom with me. J tends to get up (who knows how early) and starts playing his games before anyone else gets up. If a 10 year old can not make it through the day without passing out I say there is something wrong and he apparently needs encouragement to sleep more. Fine. I'll provide the encouragement.

UPDATE:

Apparently after only being asleep for about an hour, J woke up and informed DH that "I think I'm sick". Lightbulb goes off and DH realizes he is being played. DH and I now are agreed that all electronics will be shut down and made unavailable each night before I go to bed. J is not to be allowed down time from his assigned tasks until they are done (except eating and sleeping).

Vindication is sweet.

Changes

I never wanted to be "mom", but when I fell in love with my husband 6+ years ago I knew I would have to accept his children if I wanted to be a part of his life. At first, we believed that I would be able to pass off most of the parenting to him. However, as time passed we found that it was not possible to keep me out of the "parenting" mix, even though the kids were only with us on the weekends.

As of Christmas day(G,13, and J,10) are with us full time. My husband(H), while a stay-at-home-dad, is dealing with new mental issues resulting from an accident at work, so I am finding that I have to step in to the "mom" role more and more often.

At this point, I think it may be best to wait for the dust to settle from the holidays and see where we are left standing then. There are going to be some major differences between how their mother's house was run vs how we keep ours, as well as just dealing with the stress from the sudden change.

Wish us luck.