The Players:

The Big Guy (my 18 year old son who suffers from numerous disabilities, learning, mental, physical, emotional, you name it, he’s got something in every category)

The Middle Child (my 13 year old daughter going on 60 (read: a seriously cranky know–it-all) who has a few diagnoses of her own which we won’t get into because she thinks someone might actually read this --

someone she might actually know and I don’t want to disabuse her of said notion--

(the one that people actually read my blog)

because I might slip even further in her esteem)

The Little Guy (nearly 7, so far diagnosis free and if I do say so myself, cute as a button)

The Spouse (my darling husband of 22 years who does fairly well when he has meds in him—yay meds!—and is doing even better now that he has some new meds---yay meds!)

Me (40-something worn out old bag)

The scene: A peaceful living room. Messy, yes, cluttered, yes, but peaceful. Until the Little Guy comes running into the room wailing “I hate him. IhatehimIhatehimIhatehimIhatehim! He ruins everything!”

Since this is technically true, it leaves me with very little to say.

I feel your pain? Join the club? Buck up?

Since it’s also true that being around the Big Guy can be somewhat akin to driving a screwdriver into your brain--painful, agonizing and torturous—I could really offer little hope or even half-baked lies.

Since it’s also also true that the Big Guy is someone we all truly, madly, deeply love, (in spite of him) I went for the reverse psychology ploy. It was a big risk. There were so many ways it could all go wrong. So, taking a deep breath and mentally crossing my fingers I said, “So, should we just get rid of him? I mean, I love him but I love you too and I don’t want you to be unhappy. Maybe we should just give him away.” (This concept of giving kids away is one that was introduced to the LG when he wanted to run away and I suggested there might be a mom out there who we could give him to—hoping it would make him think about how sad he would be to have a different mom. That one back-fired on me BUT he did consider the fact that his new family might not believe in the same religion and THAT’S what held him back. THAT. Not me. THAT.)

The Little Guy just stared at me for a second, prolonging my agony, after all, it wasn’t as if the ol’ reliable reverse psychology ploy hadn’t backfired on me before. Then his bottom lip started to tremble, then tremble a little more. His cheeks kind of wiggle-waggled and then he said, “No, because that would make him really sad”. (I guess that kind of empathy evolved when he contemplated running away from me—perhaps he was just using the ol’ religion thing as an excuse to prevent me—heaven forbid—from getting too sure of myself.)

Mentally wiping the mental sweat off my mental brow (and I am mental, that part is clear) I went for the whole garbanzo bean and asked the do-all be-all solves-all question: What do you think we should do about it?

Get a kid to try and solve his own dilemma and suddenly you have a kid trying really hard to find a solution, then one who wearies of trying to solve the problem who then becomes the kid who slinks from your presence and who is, as far as I know, still thinking . . .

Mission accomplished!