Miasmatic Review

Evil dad strikes again.

As you all know we've been having trouble with Boopie. It's been a while since I've posted about it, but things have NOT gotten better. Since before Christmas we have been getting letters, calls and notes from his teachers telling us he is acting up in class, not doing his homework, failing tests, etc, etc, etc. It's to the point I'm more surprised when I get home to not have a note. As it is he failed four finals and three classes this semester.

Over the time we've had to gradually take things away from him. It started with the cellphone, went to video games, no TV, Grounded from the phone in general, grounded from friends. He has the opportunity to earn all of it back if he gets his grades up and we stop getting reports from his teachers. Now his daily life consists of going to and from school and studying.

Right after Christmas I came home after work to discover he had been playing the Wii. I had caught him playing video games a couple weeks earlier. After catching him playing the Wii, I told him that if he was caught playing video games while grounded from them again, I was going to sell his game system. Since then I know he was playing them behind our backs, and I caught him once. I just gave him another warning that time. Then yesterday happened.

The schools were closed again yesterday. They say it was because it's cold, but truth be known it's actually because the teachers and the admin really don't like working a full week. Since he was going to be home all day and I know it would just be mean to not let him do anything, I told him he could watch TV. There was no computer, no video games and no friends. He told me he understood.

When I got to work I realized I had forgotten my wallet and cell phone at home. At lunch I ran home to get those items. When I came into the house I caught him playing his Playstation 2. The controllers all out and even though he had turned off the TV, the game system was still on. He had jumped up and started pretending he was making a fort for him and his brother to play when he got home. I asked him if he was playing video games. He gets the same look on his face right before he tells a lie, and that look crossed his face. Before he had a chance to just push my anger button by lying to me, I told him I knew he was and explained how.

I took his PS2 console to work with me before I left and told him when I got home we'd gather up the rest of it. When I got home we had a long talk about his behavior and decision making. I didn't pull any punches, and asked if he honestly thought he wasn't going to get caught. Apparently, he didn't think he would. And he didn't think I'd actually take the game system from him, especially since Guitar Hero 3 and the controller for it was a gift from his Grandmother.

That left me with a decision. Either I just ripped the system out of his room and stored it away and gave it back to him later, thus letting him know that I was serious about the consequence or I take the game system and sell it. I decided that with everything else I was going to do as I had said.

So today on lunch I took his PS2 all the controllers and games for it and sold it. I got a decent amount of money for the system and controllers and no he doesn't get that either. It's now my money. I didn't feel good about doing it, but I needed him to know I was serious. When I got home, I showed him the receipt so he could see that I sold the game and the system.

To be honest, I'm not sure he cared.