Disappointment

You know there's nothing like raising kids to give you those moments that feel like a complete kick in the balls.

Roughly a month ago, I was informed that my daughter has been permanently kicked out off of the ski team for attempting to shove another little girl off the chairlift. And let me just say that there are few things that make you truly question your parenting skills and maybe even your worth as a human being then the realization that you may be raising a sociopath. Cause you know I'm a pretty off the wall person, and I'm not the best at being Mr. Upright and Proper, but still... a 9 year old sociopath... really?

So my wife and I had a long and productive talk with the daughter, and I can see that she didn't mean for it to come out as bad as it sounds, cause basically she was thinking they were playing dare, and my daughter is really not a person that knows appropriate boundaries, and she tends to be a giant douche to kids that don't set boundaries for her, so I can see how she was thinking it was this and the other little girl was thinking it was that, and you know, once you've done something douchy enough, you're basically fucked. Not that I would know anything about that.

Anyway my daughter got kicked out for being a giant douche. So I'm sad for my daughter, who won't be able to make friends with a whole bunch of kids. And we talked about that, and how it was really a bad idea to play around like that, cause someone could get really hurt or even killed that way. And we talked about how disappointed we were that she would make choices like that. And as we were talking she was doing a great job of holding up the bravado, saying she didn't mean it like that, saying she didn't like it anyway, but then she went and wrote us each a note (she like to write a note any time she thinks she has something important to say) stating that she was sorry for being mean and

"this in my harth (sic) it is dieing.(sic)"

And she brought over the notes, and we read them then, oh did we ever see the waterworks. She talked about her birth mom and how birth mom never taught her to make good choices, and how birth mom never came when she was a baby, and she was crying cause she was hungry, and all this stuff that is really painful for a child to admit about their mother.

And it's not a place we go with her. We're very hands off about the whole thing of why she got taken away from her mom and her brother and sisters. We tell her the judge said it had to be this way because her mom was not making good choices.

But the daughter went ther on her own, and that was pretty much of a breakthrough moment, but she really cried some bitter, bitter tears. And you know, I've seen her cry out of fear, and I've seen her cry out of frustration and anger, but this was something different, this was her coming completely undone.

Fortunately she has the attention span of an incontinent gnat, so she's moved on to normal kid thoughts. But she's not the same. She's a kinder, more loving child now, still rambunctious as all get out, but a bit softer.

And me, I've taken a hit. And some hits make you wonder if you really wanted to get back up again. But I'm up, just a little dizzy.

Of course the reason I took the hit was having high hopes. If I'd expected a cold pail of vomit, well then I would have been right.