He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not

Once upon a time there was a little boy who was smart and verbal and very talented at many things. He thought he knew everything there was to know and always felt like adults were bossing him around and doing so for no good reason.

He believed that it was the obligation of everyone around him to cater to his every whim and to wait on him. In particular, his mother was obligated to do his laundry and clean up after him at all times. He answered "No!" to requests to do simple things like clear his dishes from the dinner table "you can't make me!" brush his teeth "It isn't important!", put his dirty clothes in the hamper "it's your fault the dirty clothes are on the floor", and talk respectfully to his parents -"blah, blah, blah, blah" while simultaneously rolling his eyes was his general demeanor inside the house.

While his mother felt an incredible urge to slap him across the face when he did the "blah, blah, blah" business, she refrained. But she was regularly pushed to the brink of her sanity with his indignant, entitled behaviors, especially when he felt it acceptable to raise his hand to her, as if to punch, or on the regular occasion that he ignored "stop" and "no" and continued his annoying behaviors for the sake of attention. 

The "I hate you", "I wish you were dead", and "I want only Dad" remarks were tough to swallow but all part of the package, she recalled from the conversations she'd heard. Nothing made this person listen to anything she said. He was opposite boy - not everyday but on certain days it was beyond intense.

She couldn't grasp when it all began or how it got out of hand (initially or for each instance, that is) much less what to do about it. She tried respectful communications, noticing when he did things the way she expected, paying allowance (for doing what he was *supposed* to do), offering good times and restricting, modeling, and lots of other stuff. None of it worked and she was at a loss (and physical child abuse seemed over the top - but certainly crossed her mind) so she became more restrictive, more punitive, more childlike in her responses. Even that backfired. It would make him acquiesce for a moment or two - to resume his acceptable tone and use of niceties, to be cooperative and helpful even. But the restrictions just made him need her undivided attention even more. And that made her need her independence, his independence, even more. It was an awful combination.

She saw the pattern, understood it in the context of history to some degree, and didn't know how to get her to change it when she was a kid. As an adult, she's still at a loss. She knows he loves her, that intrinsic kind of love a child automatically feels for a parent. But these interactions are weighing heavily upon that love. Canceling it out even - she knows he's beginning, as it happened for her, that he loves her not, and she doesn't know how to fix it.