My world has flipped. In therapy today my son was called out for oppositional compliance.

No kidding. This kid is so oppositional he was being compliant to annoy us all. Anything we said was met with agreement, no participation whatsoever was involved.

Eventually he irritated himself and switched sides before shutting down entirely. And this therapy was effective today, how?

But I’m finding that kids who need intensive therapy are often the same kids that won’t participate at all.

“Whatever,” was today’s curt, rude and indifferent response to most questions posed by the therapist who noticed aloud that his clenched fists belied his usually affable answers.

He did eventually break down in tears, frustrated by his own ability to comprehend his bizarre behaviors. The therapist pointed out his inconsistencies and asked just enough very concise questions that totally got under his skin.

He ended up by demanding that we not talk to him anymore but within minutes he piped up loudly, “Am I coming home for Christmas?

“Not without working on your issues first, nothing has changed.”

Evidently the price is too high for him to pay. With his odd control issues he is choosing to deny himself the opportunity for family time in order to make a point, rather pointlessly.

This same kid raged all last summer, threatening the family constantly, glowering and tearing up the house, punching in walls, breaking doors, and turning over furniture, escalating his violence until I was afraid to sleep at night.

Then he’d blame us all, accuse everyone of everything and I told him I’d work on finding somewhere that he’d feel safe since he was so obviously out-of-control within his own body.

For a minute today he touched on the anger he has towards his birth parents, the violence he witnessed and was subject to, but he quickly steered the conversation to how angry he was at another kid he’d met who started in on the, “your daddy sucks,” rhymes.

My older son blurted, “Our dad did suck, the kid’s right,” proving again that at age 14 he is emotionally coming to terms with what happened. He’s participating in therapy while his slightly younger birth brother is wrapping his emotional misery tightly around himself, hanging on to his anger, reveling in it, and allowing it to cost him so much of his childhood.

We are all still hoping and praying that something will click in his mind, that he will let go of his past and work towards his future. I’ve seen this happen before so I still have hope even though today was rather discouraging overall with such an oppositonally compliant teenager.

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