Evolving situation

People think it is very straight forward when kids complain about their parents. Many people assume the worst based solely on one side of an issue. Here is an example of how my kids create echo chambers where small miscommunications become giant accusations of abuse and neglect.

My youngest has an injury. She is also 18. We have been taking her to weekly physical therapy appointments. She has been given exercises, a doctor’s note to get out of dance class and PE, and tries to tell us that she was told not to take any over the counter pain medications. She just had an appointment three days ago. Most of the time since then she is fine. Occasionally she complains about pain and claims she cannot walk, stand, or anything.

Her pain might be true. What she says about what the physical therapist says may be true. I do not know. I am not her. I do find it strange that the injury only gets brought up when she does not want to do something. This is typical behavior we have seen for years. We take her for medical treatment and let the specialists deal with managing her and her reported injuries.

Today, I fell down the stairs, even did the splits. Every part of my body hurts. Nothing helps as I do have a chronic pain disorder. I cannot drive. She messages after school and says she has to stay late for some practice or other that I had not been told about. Two hours later and she expects a pick up. I cannot drive. I tell her she will need to walk home. Then she complains about her leg pain and claims she cannot do the walk home.

If I could have, I would have driven to pick her up to get her home sooner. It is about a twenty minute walk home from the school. On the way home, she messages everyone in her phone and tells them I am a monster for making her walk home on her injured leg. She gets home and yells at me and tries to tell me I am abusive.

I remind her that I fell down the stairs this morning and I should not drive. She says that there is no way she could have known I fell down the stairs. She was home when it happened. Right after I woke her up for school. There was a loud crashing right outside her door. This is the same child that claims she can hear our whispered conversations from two floors away.

Then she cries. She has refused to talk to me since she hurled a bunch of curse words and accusations. Now she is leaving for dance class.

When you wonder how situations are presented to you about other people’s families. You need to remember you are only getting one side of a story. I am sure that if she was still seventeen, I would already have the police at my door from the responses I have gotten from my daughter’s social network.

This is why DHS investigates claims and why you should not decide blindly that someone is telling you the whole story. So many things came together today to cause a perfect storm of tears, anxiety, mistrust, and physical pain. I am part of the story and I may never know the truth of what happened today.

All I know is that we love each other and it will take a few days for us to move past this moment in time. We may talk about this later. We may not. It is just one moment. It is not indicative of abuse or neglect, both parties were hurt for valid reasons.

Now we do the work of coming back together and moving forward.