Nice people thread part 4 - sugar and spice and all things

vivatifosi

LydiaJ wrote: »

I'm more and more convinced that kids are just kids, really. The ones with more money may have different expectations and aspirations in life, different hobbies, and sometimes better manners, but underneath they're just adolescents with much the same feelings as other adolescents. Of course, at fee-paying schools you pretty much only get kids whose parents value education, but they don't seem to me to be any different from the kids at the comprehensive my kids will be going to - in a "nice" area where parents mostly value education too.

I meet a lot of kids through the library Lydia and I'm convinced that kids are kids too. I've met immaculately behaved rich kids, poor kids, British-born kids, immigrant kids.... The well behaved ones, save perhaps a little something about how they are dressed or drop the occasional consonant, you can't really tell apart. Ironically I think the badly behaved ones you can tell their background as they resonate it more loudly if that makes sense. The working class badly behaved ones act like slobs, whereas the wealthier badly behaved odiously, like something out of a Harry Enfield video. A bit like a class pastiche. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad. Thankfully they are very much in the minority.

Incidentally, among the best behaved ones I've met are the three youngsters of a certain Hertfordshire NP. They were lovely.

SingleSue

Thanks guys....I've calmed down a little overnight (although there wasn't much sleeping going on!)

Middle son I think is struggling a little with the stress of GCSE years, hormones and the stress of keeping it together at school, which is making him retreat into his rituals and 'safe' zones. This is making life a little eek because if we don't adhere to those rituals and safe zones, then he becomes very aggressive and trying to adhere to them is not conducive to normal life for the rest of us...so he is getting aggressive a lot just lately.

Last nights little episode was about shampoo, I had forgotten to buy his tea tree shampoo (he won't use anything else), there was still some left of his old bottle and of course, plenty of other shampoos but he wouldn't use the old shampoo because it had been opened too long (a couple of weeks) and of course, the other shampoos were not 'safe'. Sounds simple eh? Well the outburst over it lasted well over an hour, an hour in which he smashed up a drawer, destroyed all the other shampoos and body washes in the bathroom and was generally very loud and aggressive. Unlike youngest, when middle son gets out of sorts, you cannot calm him down in the usual manner or use distraction (which works very well with youngest), he calms down when he is spent and not before..any attempt to use the same measures as with youngest, leads to more aggression so you just have to leave it until such time his main red mist is over.

Now youngest is already out of sorts because of the strike last week (he is very routine bound and doesn't like deviation from the norm) and because of all the hype over Christmas....he doesn't cope well with christmas at all, at primary school, they used to give him the last week of term off because the normal school routine stopped. So you can imagine how last night went down with him....I finally got him off to sleep near 2 in the morning but he didn't have a good night (hence very little sleep going on for me).

It's all getting a little too much for me at the moment, especially since eldest and the stress over his health just recently...it just seems like it is one thing after another to be honest and it is exhausting me.

Last night was the first time in ages when I felt like I was going over the cliff edge, the same feeling I had when I had my breakdown in 2005, thankfully this morning, I am not feeling the same despite having barely any sleep.

LydiaJ

Oh Sue.

I am so sorry it is being so hard for you. I don't know what to say. Mainly, I feel it is so horribly unfair that you have to cope with all of this on your own, when those boys have another parent who does nothing. :mad: But I expect you have got beyond that ages ago, and accepted that ex is useless, so maybe that's not very helpful.

Are you the sort of person who can catch up on sleep during the day? If so, then please do, and don't worry about whatever else you ought to be doing today.

We are all here for you as much as we can be. Sorry we can't do anything very much to make a difference.

(((hugs)))

michaels

Sue. Have you asked your GP to get your Middle Son some CBT or similar for his OCD?

lostinrates

glad you feel less strained this morning Sue.

GDB2222

Generali wrote: »

I once went an entire week, every day taking the wrapper off a Mars Bar and throwing away the chocolate bar and standing with the wrapper in my hand feeling very stupid.

Your dentist would be proud of you.

chewmylegoff

i went to the same secondary school from 11-18. i was a day pupil for the first two years.

when i was 13 my mum went back to university 100 odd miles away, and my dad worked abroad for six months of the year for several years in a row in japan, india and then turkey. i therefore ended up having to board from 13-16.

it was a bit weird, because my house was only 1/4 of a mile from the school, but that's just how it worked out.

when i got to the sixth form i could have reverted to day, but decided to stay as a boarder. i could see the roof of my parents' house from the window of my sixth form room!

chewmylegoff

purch wrote: »

On the other Q, I have pretty soft water where I live, but when I lived in the London area I always used Brita filtered water in a machine and had no scale problems.

i had a gaggia when i was living in SE london, which is hard water. i never filtered the water and it was pretty much destroyed after 6-9 months.

LydiaJ

vivatifosi wrote: »

I meet a lot of kids through the library Lydia and I'm convinced that kids are kids too. I've met immaculately behaved rich kids, poor kids, British-born kids, immigrant kids.... The well behaved ones, save perhaps a little something about how they are dressed or drop the occasional consonant, you can't really tell apart. Ironically I think the badly behaved ones you can tell their background as they resonate it more loudly if that makes sense. The working class badly behaved ones act like slobs, whereas the wealthier badly behaved odiously, like something out of a Harry Enfield video. A bit like a class pastiche. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad. Thankfully they are very much in the minority.

Incidentally, among the best behaved ones I've met are the three youngsters of a certain Hertfordshire NP. They were lovely.

I agree with all of that. (Loving that word "odiously" too. )

lostinrates

Builders.

I know the place will look a lot worse before any better and I am fine with that, but still.....nd this is just enabling works. One of the workers here is the son of the boss, just starting out. I pointed out to dh that by the time we are finishing the wreck he'll probably be the boss himself. I'm hoping cake, biscuits and a good supply of hot drinks now will make us favoured customers deserving of competitive terms in the future.

Mean while, one of my cockerals (Lydia...the little tiny chick your DD named Chickadee;) who is now awaitig his fate, he'sa hybrid and though I'm sorely tempted to keep him I don't think we can) and the peacock ar going at each oher hammer and tongs in a machismo battle. The peacock is juvenile and doesn't have a full tail, so he can only lift his bum a little and display stumpy fronds of tail feathers with arrow ends, not eyes, so in comparision, Chickadee's raised neck feathers and goose stepping are actually rather impressive.