Blogging about life in Minnesota, raising our six kids with Down syndrome while battling Breast Cancer.

Be the kind of woman that when your feet hit the floor in the morning the devil says, "Oh shit! She's up!"

Monday, December 08, 2008

It's going to be a long day

How do I know it's going to be a long day? Because Angela's bus left 10 minutes ago, only Angela wasn't on it. No, instead she's standing in the bathroom, screaming swear words at me because I told her she can't go to school until she's taken a bath.

She came home from her dad's last night, and although I know she had a bath while she was there, she REEKS of cigarette smoke and urine. It's awful, and it's disgusting. Never mind the fact that she has asthma and nobody is supposed to be smoking around her. She hates baths and showers, only we don't know why. She used to love them, then one day someone flipped a switch and we couldn't get her in there any more. I'm thinking she fell in the shower at her dad's or something. Who knows. It's been like this for well over a year and I'm just plain tired of the battle. I don't understand why it has to be so difficult. Why is this her biggest problem area? And so, this morning, we're in a battle of the wills, because if I cave and let her go to school without the bath, I'll never get her in the bath before school again.

As she always does, she came home from her dad's exhausted. Her hearing aids were in her backpack because he said, "I don't know how to put them on." You gotta be kidding me? She's been wearing hearing aids since she was 11 months old. It takes about a fraction of one second to pop each aid in her ear. Seriously, there is nothing to it.

She always comes home from her dad's swearing constantly. Clearly he shows no restraint in his language when she's there, and this drives me crazy. What drives me even MORE crazy is that I can't do ANYTHING about it. Not one, tiny thing. I've tried going through court, saying this is abuse of a child who is not cognitively able to sort out the "bad words" from the appropriate words at school, which ends up getting her into trouble because HE is an idiot and can't control his mouth around her. He doesn't care about her. He only cares about weather or not his family thinks he's being a good dad or not. It's all in the appearance, ya know? Dean is her "dad". Dean would do anything for her. Her father would do anything for her, as long as it didn't interfere with his plans.

And so, this morning is just one of many when she comes home from a weekend visit with her father, where I know I'm going to have to deal with the fall-out for several days. Thankfully the behavior specialist comes today. I sure hope they do more than just PLAY today! I need to know what to do with the behavioral problems!

Angela is now naked in the bathroom, so at least that's progress. Still not in the water though. School started one minute ago.

3 comments:

JennyH said...

I hope your day gets much better! Some mornings it is so hard! This morning Max WANTED to take a shower but he did not have time. I got to hear all about that with his yells of dislike.

Stubbornness can be hard to deal with!!

Bethany said...

OMG that is so funny, but SO NOT funny ... all at the same time. I hope she stops cussing soon and that by now she is clean.

Oh, and a smack upside the head for your ex who didn't put the hearing aides on!

Syncopa said...

Honey, I'm right there with you; the cigarette smoke, the bad language and the father who'll be a dad if it doesn't interefere with his own plans - which is just about.....never. Sucks.
Sucks even more when there's nothing you can do, I'm there, too.
Hang in there, it can't get worse, now can it? ;-)