So then. The low down.

So, because this is my blog and isn't just for laughs, but started off as somewhere to come and vent the crappy stuff, here I am, about to tell the world the dark side of today.
Naturally, because this is me, I have to tell all the background and make it all long winded and try and explain ( but not excuse ) the whys and wherefores.
I don't think I started my blog until the very worst of Sophie was done. I'm sure we have had some bad times but not any of the worst. Maybe we have, but without reading through my whole blog, I can't remember. I do recall one episode that made me mad with H, but not sure if I have ever blogged in full detail any of the episodes that are Sophie.
So, here I go.
She is a teenager, normal in many ways and in many ways she is unlike any person I have ever known, teenager or otherwise.
She seems to take the greatest delight in teasing and arguing with the boys, there is something disquieting about a 17 year old fighting, really fighting, with a 3, 5 or 6 year old. She does, most days.
She does what a lot of teenagers with younger siblings do, she thinks she is the parent, when we are right there, she will discipline our children, she smacks them ( which drives me insane!) she teases them, she orders them about. I cannot stand it, H cannot stand it, nothing we say works, she is deaf to it all. She does as she pleases.
Eli has been so sick, you know little people when they are sick, look at them sideways, they cry, give them the wrong plate, they cry, don't look at them they cry. ARGH!!!! So Sophie walks into the room ( several times a day) she grabs Eli, who is sitting quietly with blanket and thumb. She grabs him, well just because. He screams, she drops him onto the couch and yells that he is a brat, stupid kid screaming.
3 days we have calmly told her to leave him alone, don't touch him don't interfere with him. LEAVE HIM ALONE!!!
This morning at 7.30, she did that. Then she started on Seth, pick, pick, niggle, pick, tease, yell.
H said "Sophie, if you're looking for something to do, go and do your dishes you left last night"
Nothing.
5 minutes later, nothing, still pick pick, ignore, sit, stare.
H...." Sophie, go and do what I asked you to do, what is this? Just do the dishes "
( here's where things get iffy, to give the real picture I can't just replace the words she says, sorry about this)
"Fucking hell, a few fucking dishes, get a fucking life, OH MY GOD!" all the while stomping and swearing and head wagging.
He left the room to follow her and left a red mist behind him.
I said " Don't hit"
I said that because I hate hitting, also, when the red mist descends, he hits. When you have a person who is almost always controlled, when they snap, they really snap. Me, I can yell at the drop of a hat, cry with the greatest of ease, laugh and start all over again. H doesn't so much of that. He thinks about things and works things out and he broods. He takes it all in and rather than say what he is feeling, he just feels it and broods about it and minds, he just isn't sure what to do about minding. So
sometimes, after he has held his wrath for days, weeks, months, over things that would have had me blowing my top....he snaps.
So, I heard, before I saw, that hell had erupted.
Now, this has happened 4 times that I can really remember. One of those times, he had his heart attack. His rage was so huge that his heart quite literally shook, convulsed and spewed off some plaque that blocked it and made it not work. The other times, well I hate to talk about them, or think about them really.
I do know that I am never afraid of him. He has come towards me with the rage in his face but he hears me when I say stop, when I talk to him, he comes back from the bad place and all is well.
Sophie though, well to start with she doesn't care enough to wonder what to do, he is my husband, it matters to me that when he is angry, we work it out. Why should she care? So she doesn't. I get that, in as much as she feels what she is feeling, what I don't get and can never understand is her complete inability to shut the hell up.
Everyone else I have ever met in my life, has that something inside that tells them to stop, shut up, be quiet, give up. Not Sophie. Ever.
When I got into the kitchen, I made myself stop and take in what was happening because, I have learned that there is power in knowing what you are dealing with, respond rather than react.
So, I stopped and I looked and I saw H, behind Sophie with his arms around her, holding her arms down, trying to get her out through Jordan's door. She was kicking, slapping with the arm that got free, and she bit him, right through his finger. The whole time she was yelling
"FUCKING BASTARD! Get off me, you fucking asshole, I'm going to get you kicked out, piss of back to America and I am going to make sure you never see your kids, Fuck you asshole!"
I walked in, stood between them , put a hand on each of them and told them to stop......he walked away, hardly breathing, she never took a breath, more fucking assholes, bastards, twat, etc etc. ( with 3 little boys, huge eyes very still, that breaks my heart the most)
She was raging, she was getting the police, social services, he was dead, finished. All dotted with expletives of the vilest kind.
Then she left, H took the boys to school and while he was gone, she came back. Because he wasn't here, she started on me, bitch, cow, fucking useless always taking his side, never treat her the same as everyone else, well fuck me, she's going to show us, she isn't going to take it anymore, just wait and see. Out she went again.
Just as H came home, the phone rang.
" Hello, to whom am I speaking?"
" Who would like to know?"
"This is ******* from social services"
"Oh, then you are speaking to Sophie's mother, I assume you have her with you, would you like to keep her?"
Slight silence as I am sure they are used to people being flummoxed and afraid and defensive.
He laughed a bit and then said that as she was almost 18 and an adult, no he wouldn't keep her but they had called the police and she had refused to make a complaint as she didn't want the boys taken away from me, AS IF!!!
I told him my side of the story and asked him if at any stage had she admitted that she could have been at fault. Oh, also, before he said anything I told him how, in the fight, H had tried to push her out of the door and she had banged her face on the doorframe....turns out she told him H had punched her in the face.
As expected, she had said that she had been ' a bit lippy' but hadn't deserved what he 'had done to her'. She will never admit to any responsibility, when the boys scream it isn't because she has pinned them down, it's because they are brats. When a teacher gives her a low grade it's because they hate her. When someone she is friends with stops being her friend it is because they are stupid and who gives a shit?

I had to go out, take Seth to the eye hospital, meet mum and look over a house with her, have a lovely lunch, pick up Isaac, talk with his teacher ( who is in love with him, of course) I got back just after 4pm, Sophie was in Jordan's room and as I walked past she laughed, LAUGHED and said " Ha, how's H's hand then?"
I tried 3 times to discuss what had happened with her, before she laughed that is. She told me to shut the fuck up, la la la la la la not listening, shut up, get out, don't give a shit, get out.
When she laughed and then said she was on her way to the doctor to show him what H had done to her leg ( which, from where I was watching, must have got bruised while she was kicking the door or him, or just fighting, he DID NOT kick her)
Well, that's when I began to feel as though the time has come for me to give up. When she left, I locked the doors. I called her and said that as she was so traumatised and afraid, that she had involved the police, social services and the doctor, then it was probably wise that she stay away. I would hate for her to have to be somewhere that she feels so threatened. She has texted me and asked that I pack her some clothes and makeup and leave it outside, she has told me where she is staying. I haven't packed her a bag yet because I can't be bothered, when I am ready I will throw some things in a bag and leave it outside and I won't cry. Much.
It is time that she find somewhere else to live. Be grown up, you know the way she keeps telling me she is.
I have no idea how or where she will go, but I will help her, as much as she will let me. I won't just fill the bin bags and watch her walk.
It isn't possible, with Sophie, to learn and try again. Nothing changes. How much more of these little boys' lives must be filled with seeing this and hearing the filth that comes out of her mouth?
Nobody tells you any of this when you take home that precious bundle of sweet smelling babyness. When you first encounter those toddler tantrums, you think this must be hell. When they make a mess of their rooms and don't try hard enough in school, you think THIS must be the toughest of all times.
Maybe it's for the best that we don't know what lies ahead. How marvellous that we see other people's teenagers and tut tut, imagine, not MY kid though, mine will never do that, be like that, treat me like that.
Animals have the right idea, if they don't eat their young, they turf them out when they have a new litter. Who says we are the superior species?