The Boys & Me

When Dylan arrived home from school like this...



here is a closer look



...maybe a new approach is necessary.

This was Dylan's best pair of jeans. He now has one pair of pants without holes. Each day I wonder, will he arrive home with his clothes intact today? He has poked holes in shirts with pencils, he has marked on his clothes with markers, he has cut his shirts with scissors, he has taken a minor split in the knee to a massive opening by stretching it with his fingers, and that is just what I know about. When he arrived home the first thing I noticed was his "good" pants were torn, not in the knee but in the thigh. "What happened to your pants" I say urgently. With his arms out as if he has the best use of logic in his explanation he explains, "Well, all the other kids had holes in their pants so I wanted a hole in mine." I am speechless for a few seconds before I go into my lecture. Hours later I decide since his pants cost the same as a six pack of Bakugan so he is to hand over six Bakugan to me. As he whimpers, "I got to know what you're gonna do with them, I got to know." I explain that when he leaves the house I don't know what will happen to the expensive jeans and shirts he wears so he can just wonder what will happen to his Bakugan.

Hours later I have made a beautiful salad for dinner in preparation for my weigh in the next morning. Randy and I spent 10 minutes discussing what could we eat for dinner without messing up my pre-weigh in meal. I turn to sit down at the table to watch Dylan pour 20 fat grams worth of salad dressing on my entire salad. I try my deep breaths. I count to 10. I count to 10 again. I breathe some more. I can't lie, there was a little yelling at the table that night.

Tonight I walk in Dylan's bedroom to find this...



First I hear "I couldn't get the tack back in the wall". So he uses scissors to chisel a hole in the wall. After some calm discussion he confesses that he really just wanted to see what inside the wall was like.

Somewhere between the salad and the wall I had decided to take a new approach. No more overreacting and getting upset at "the little things". It is just a pair of pants that he can still wear. I was able to salvage most of the salad. There will still be consequences but I can do this without getting worked up. So I choose to document each incident so that in 20 years I have the evidence of the crazy he put us through.