Uneasy Caution

This has been a pivotal couple of days for us. All things considered, things have been going really, really well. Jme has been on her best behavior. She has been very conscientious about checking in on time or early every time she has been given permission to go somewhere or do something. Wifey has been doing a lot of overtime mothering of Jme. It’s been good, as we feel Jme hasn’t been really mothered – really taken care of – in a long time, if ever. And Wifey is very good at making life comfortable for everyone around her. It is her great gift. And so, Wifey and Jme have been getting along really well so far. Wifey is a fresh face for Jme, a fresh start. Wifey is easy to be around, comforting, easy to talk to, and easy to love. She’s non threatening. She’s fun. Who doesn’t like Wifey?

The relationship between Jme and me, however, is tenuous at best. For this entire past school year, I haven’t really known her story. All I have seen is her behavior in school, which has been abysmal. Her academic effort has been poor, and she completely shut down whenever I attempted to give her any individual attention. She has been completely unteachable. For some reason math in particular has been an area where she turns off the minute I come around. But I have always understood that her actions were not about anything I am or did, but were more a product of whatever was going on in her life outside of school. I could see through her behavior to this great, funny, valuable, loveable person who was really hurting through some crappy circumstances.

On Tuesday, we attempted to do math again. It was perhaps too soon. As soon as things got difficult, she shut down again. It was suddenly back to the same old Jme. And that kind of tainted things for the evening. She didn’t want to be anywhere around me. And as much as I understand it, and know better, it still hurts my feelings. I feel rejected while Wifey is adored. I’m the bad guy while Wifey is more fun than Mary Poppins.

And so it has been with a kind of uneasy caution that Jme and I have been relating to each other since she came to be with us. Or avoiding each other. Wifey goes in to Jme’s room every night and says, “Goodnight. I’m glad you are here. I love you.” And I think that’s great. Jme needs to hear that. Every night. I generally tell my students at the end of every school day, “Be good. Be safe. I love y’all” for the same reasons. I, however, have not wanted Jme to feel like I am crowding her or pressuring her. I say goodnight from across the room, and I can feel her inner eyes rolling.

On Wednesday, we drove in to the City for Jme’s counseling appointment. Jme and the boys rode with Wifey, while I drove another vehicle. On the drive, Wifey and Jme were talking about a number of things, including me. At one point in the conversation, Jme pulls out her laptop and reads aloud from a journal entry she wrote shortly after her first failed attempt at the DMV. Jme wrote about me and about her dad and the fact that I remind her of her dad – conjuring both the good and the bad associations. Wifey told me that it sounded like Jme sincerely cared about me and was glad to be living with us. It was good to hear, but I also don’t know what to do with that because it is so very far from how she acts toward me.

I love Jme because she is a good kid, and because Wifey and I have made the decision to love her. Her moods or her rejection of me or of us will not make that love go away. I tell myself that I am the adult who is in control of his emotions; she is a child who cannot control hers. I am not doing this so that she will like me; we’re doing it because we have the compassion and the ability to meet this need. If we had raised a fourteen year old “from scratch,” we’d be caring more about what is good for our child than about how much our child likes us for what we were doing. And so it must be for Jme.

She took her driver’s test again yesterday and failed. She had a really bad afternoon and got moody and sullen. Wifey and I worried about this for a while. We wondered if it was something we had done; if she was suddenly unhappy living with us. But as Wifey began to mentally recount the day, we think it was simply a series of other minor disappointments that built up. We don’t yet have a baseline to gauge what is an expression of serious problems and what is well within the normal operating range of an overly dramatic and hormonal fourteen year old girl.