Let me start off by saying I love my son dearly. He’s one of the best things that ever happened to me. True, he definitely wasn’t on the agenda and I had entertained thoughts of terminating the pregnancy, but due to a variety of circumstances, that didn’t happen, thank God.
He was born to a single parent without a decent job or even a place to live. We had no family helping us, my mother had died from cancer five years earlier. All I had was welfare. I was sick with the flu and just had Medicaid, but ready or not, here he came. After at least 12 hours of hellish labor without any anesthetic, my son decided to be born. He was a beautiful baby with dark blue eyes and dark hair. He was a bit on the large side weighing at over 8 pounds.
From the beginning, he slept right through the night. Yes, don’t hate me. He never woke up once for a feeding or anything. He seemed even-tempered and calm. He didn’t fuss at mealtime or anytime. He was a great kid although extremely hyperactive; he would never sit still. He was lagging a bit in the speech department. We just kept an eye on him and gave him a chance to catch up.
Now it’s time to brag: by three years old and onward my son made up for lost time in leaps and bounds. I took him to the preschool and they were amazed by how bright he was and they didn’t keep it a secret from him either. He was an Honor student throughout kindergarten and first grades, receiving almost straight A’s on his report card. He was an avid reader and writer and excelled at math. Everyone would constantly congratulate him and exclaim how bright he was, including me. I’m sure his sister was jealous of all the attention. One thing he was also good at was throwing fits and I mean bad ones where he would break things, kick the walls, beat up on his sister. Of course I did everything I could to get him to stop: I spanked him, sent him to his room, charged him for the things he broke which sometimes would cost hundreds and thousands of dollars. He vandalized a woman’s leather couch with a red marker. He would just spit out an apology until the next round. If I ever disagreed with something he said, he would be utterly offended and shout me down. He would walk right up to me get in my face and yell until I told him loudly to “Stop”. He would get just as upset while playing video games. I was certain one of these days he would strike me, but it never went that far. He would yell when I walked out of the room during these tantrums. During this time in his life, he lost interest in school and stopped doing the homework. I believe it was in retaliation for what was expected of him. He was picked up for shoplifting twice, thank goodness the cops just brought him home. He threw rocks in the pool of the complex where we lived, they told me if it happened again we would be kicked out. The fact he never met his alcoholic father could have been a source of that anger, but he claimed he didn’t care.
I put him in counseling starting at five years old and the doctor placed him on everything from Ritalin to Risperidol up to 1000 mg a day, but this did absolutely nothing to help the problem. Finally when he reached eighteen and refused to either get a job or go to college I called the sheriff to kick him out. I just couldn’t deal with him and his destructive, violent behavior anymore. Fortunately, instead of having to evict him I found out about the Job Corps organization and after registering him as disabled they moved him up on the waiting list. He was in, Hallelujah! What a difference this place made. I don’t care what some people have said, this place was a Godsend. He shaped up, got both his GED and High School diploma, learned a couple new trades and graduated with a new outlook on life and responsibility. I believe it was their male role models which was something he never had that made all the difference in showing him how to behave as a man.
