Unchaining the Melody

I am learning that addictions come in all shapes and sizes.  What makes an addiction bad, it seems, is the amount of time and quality of life it takes away from that life.  If you have an addiction to movies (guilty) and you spend a day watching movies, you've wasted time that could have been spent in a more productive way.  One movie a day is okay;  ten, not so much. 

I have a parent who I think is addicted to chaos and sick children. She is a master manipulator and can compose another's caring emotions into a montage of disjointed and frenzied tunes.  For a few years, now, she has been trying to get her son tested because she's sure he's autistic and stutters.  I know the child. He's neither. He's been tested over and over and all of the experts say the same: normal boy.  She has been 'luckier' with her daughter.  Each time her daughter shows improvement (she's in my class) all of a sudden the mother has to up the meds, which causes major problems. The situation is static for a while, and I get frantic emails and phone calls, and slowly, things get back to normal, and we start all over. It's like a sick version of Groundhog's Day.  (I think she has a form of Munchhausen by proxy syndrome, but I'm not a medical person, so that's just an opinion.)  This girl's best friend is a cat at her father's house. One day a few months ago, I was checking my email and there was one from the mother. Panicked, she wrote that the cat was dead!  Oh, no!  This was going to send the girl into a spiral!  The email said the mom wasn't sure but the dad has texted her saying the dead cat looked a lot like Smokey.  There were four emails back and forth about this cat, and the tsunami of emotions that would be coming if it were true that the cat was dead.  Then I get the email that said, "It's a miracle!  It wasn't Smokey!"  Whew! So, for an hour of back and forth, we were all panicked. We were doing the Crazy Dance.  (I should say here, that I normally don't have the emails up when I'm in class, but I checked on my prep and saw that one, and kept them up to keep updated so that I would know how to handle the girl at the end of the day).  Anyway, after the kids left and I was alone, I started thinking about how that mother had controlled my afternoon;  and I had let her.  I realized that she did that, a lot.  It made me angry.  If the cat was dead, the girl would have managed.  Sadly, death is a part of life and we all experience it at some point or another. 

That day was a moment of clarity for me.  That day I decided to change the tune. I wasn't going to dance to this mother's manic music anymore.  I put up those healthy boundaries.  I have to say, there was some passive aggressive action on the mother's part after I started changing the tune. She had lost a dance partner (me) and it didn't feel comfortable to her.  She would call into my room, while I was teaching. I didn't pick up.  She would email me these exhaustive emails.  I skipped over the emotions and only answered the 'facts.'  I changed the tune, and things have been quieter and more stable.  I spoke with the social worker and guidance counselor and they also, changed the tune. The mother is handled differently. In fact, I handle everyone differently, now. That experience brought some clarity to me.  Without fighting, yelling, or panic, things have changed; everyone is now dancing to a more normal and stable melody.