A Crazy Life....

Lately, Tami and I have been really stressed out here at our jobs in Portland. The boys that we look after can be rather difficult at best. They can constantly argue and fight over nothing. One boy has oppositional defiant disorder, a slight Mental Retardation and ADHD, another has anger issues and Post tramatic Stress Disorder, and the last has anger issues, oppositional defiant disorder, anger issues and post tramatic stress dissorder. So if you can put all those together we can have a rather dissordered house here. Somedays, like today for example, I got so frustrated at times dealing with these boys that I have questions that run through my brain like, "Am I doing a good enough job with these boys?", "Am I being consistant enough or am I inconsistant?" and "Am I helping or hurting these boys at all?". It just seems that everytime I turn around and one of the boys asks a question about something and I feel that they have not earned it or they are being too selfish(which is unbelievable how selfish these kids are) and I say 'No' to their questoin and the answer can cause a big behaviour because we will not let them do a particular thing or have a particular food, or go to a particular place. I question myself "Am I being too selfish?", "Am I being too mean?". For instance, we have taken the boys out all day out into the community and we have given our all to these boys to help them, give them something that they deserve and so on....and we get home and it is the evening and they have supper, do chores, have roomtime, and come out and ask if they can go outside and Tami and I are really tired and we say 'No"(because they are on eyesight supervision) because we want to have sometime for us to relax and there is a big fit because they say "This is my freetime!! I never got any freetime at all today!!" And then I exclaim "Excuse me! We did this and this and this all day! Can you please stop thinking about yourself for once and think about Tami and I?" This is all going down while I am counting all of the 4-5 things on my hands that we did with them and for them. It is hard because we are are always dealing with the MEMEMEMEMEME disorder. I think that should be a real diagnosis now with the doctors and psychologists. The MMEMEMEMEMEME disorder where kids can't think at all about another person but themselves. But then I remember too that they maybe 13, 14, and 16 but in a actuallity they are 3, 4,and 5 especially when they go into a behaviour. We have had one kid kick through his door, another punch through a window, and another scream, cuss and yell so much that he will disturb the rest of the household and cause another kid to go in to a behaviour. With two of the boys we have had to put them into safety holds because they are unsafe or destroying property of the house. This morning the 16 year old had a fit because I told him that he was not going to school without socks in his sneakers because it is hard on the shoes, hard on your feet(blisters?) and will cause his shoes to stink and make his feet stink even worse and the rest of the house does not want to smell this stinky feet after school because he did not wear socks. He had a behaviour over this. This same kid we have to remind him everynight that he needs to change his underwear when he takes a shower. He is 16 years old. Whinning is the kids all time favourite past time. I have picked up a fewer sayings to help them realize that they are whinning. They are and I am sure that you have heard them, "Do you want some cheese with that wine?", or "Do we need to call the waaaaaaaaabulance?". It makes them mad sometimes but it gets the point across! Some days we just want to quit and we also think about quiting early. Tami is worring that it might be hurting our marriage. I want to be back into the ministry. I don't know what God will be doing. That is another equation into the mix. "WHAT DOES GOD WANT US TO DO?" If I was offered a good and the right position I would think really hard about leaving this job and taking it right off. Part of me want to honour the visa that we have and another part of me wants to move on from this job. These kids are hard. When the kids are bantering to full out arguing with each other I want to tell them to "shut up" but I don't because I will make the situation worse. Part of me also thinks that sometimes these kids need to be taken over a knee and paddled a couple of times. But anyway, this is part of the Matt brain because you have all read a lot about what Tami has been thinking. See ya later!