Just Sad

Last week I received numerous emails from O’s teacher. O was having a rough week. She was acting out in class, she hit a classmate, she wasn’t doing her classwork. All of this led to lunch detentions and finally an after school detention.

Tom and I talked to her. She was grounded from her tablet and from watching YouTube on the television.

The day after the plethora of emails, I got a single email letting me know that she’d had a much better day.

We had a weekend and a Mon day and things seemed to be fine. We upped her Lexapro dose and continued to talk to her about appropriate behavior at school

Tuesday came and O had an appointment at the eye doctor to get her new glasses fitted. After that appointment, I made her go with me to A’s track meet. I figured we be there twenty minutes tops because Lyss only high jumps. Alas, all good intentions are met with a laugh and a slap in the face.

We got to the track and found out that they’d started the boys high jump first and so Lyss and the other girls would have to wait until the boys were done before they could jump. Which meant we’d be there the entire meet because the boys had to wait for each other to run their races and blah blah blah.

Olivia actually behaved pretty well. She ran up and down a hill, rolled down the hill and across the grass and managed to entertain herself with minimal irritation to her sister. I was glad she was getting some fresh air and exercise; most days she gets home from school, grabs her tablet and the remote and settles in on the couch for the night. Or, you know, until I get home from work and we sit at the kitchen table to do homework.

Sadly, our bright mood couldn’t last.

Tom, champ that he is, had dinner ready for me and the girls when we got home from the meet around 7:10. We ate, Olivia and I finished her science homework and I checked my phone.

There was an email from her art teacher.

She wanted me to know that she’d kept Olivia in from free period because she wanted O to redo an art project. The teacher had left O’s side for maybe five minutes to help another student and when she returned, Olivia had cut her art project into ‘a million little pieces.’ She said that she wants to help O learn to work independently. She said that Olivia is so sweet and works so hard and…whatever. She suggested that Olivia is having a rough week.

Backtrack…at the track, Olivia explained to me that they were doing a project in art based around some artist who paints people with exaggerated features. She said that she’d had to redo part of it because she’d ‘accidentally’ cut the head off her project.

Anyone who knows Olivia at all knows they can’t leave her alone with scissors. Please don’t think I’m blaming the teacher here. I know that Olivia is 14 years old and should be able to work independently without disaster. I know this. Tom’s know this. Hell, Olivia knows this and yet…time and time again, we’re shown that she simply cannot be trusted with certain things. And scissors are one of those things.

I replied to the teacher thanking her for her email. I wiped my tears and finished packing my lunch. I am so tired of yelling at Olivia. I’m so tired of thanking teachers for all the work they’re doing with O. I’m so tired of Olivia feeling like the whole freaking world is against her.

Later that evening, Olivia said to no one in particular, “Why does everyone not like me anymore?”

My heart shattered into a million pieces to resemble the art project she’d destroyed earlier that day. I just…what do I do? How do I help her? How to I reinforce her confidence and self-esteem while reminding her of appropriate behavior?

I’m failing her.

Even though I hugged her and told her how much I love her I felt like she was unsure. I reminded her that we all just want her to do her best and if she destroys her work, she has to do it over again and that’s just frustrating for everyone, including her. But even when she does stuff like that, it doesn’t mean we don’t like her.

But is that enough? Am I doing enough? What else can I do? What more can I do? I want to do whatever she needs from me but I don’t know what that is. She deserves so much more, so much better. She deserves to know she’s loved, to know we LIKE her.

This entire situation just makes me so sad. I can’t even imagine how Olivia is feeling when all this is happening. The idea of her beautiful spirit being crush just breaks me.