I sincerely doubt that there’s a parent on earth, birth or adoptive, who has not been accused at some time or another of playing favorites. With 39 kids even the perceived favorite of the moment will accuse me a minute later of favoring another.

I’ll play into the game as well at times, “You’re my very favorite 17 years old!” to one of the few ages that I only have one of, or “You’re my favorite third grader in Ms Carr’s class,” getting specific enough to boost an ego and always provoking the response of, “but I’m the only one of your third graders in her class.”

No kidding, son.

But there is a germ of truth in the ‘favorite’ theory. I do prefer to spend time with the kid, or kids, that are not raging, not lying, not kicking holes in the walls, or not pulling down brand new light fixtures. Who wouldn’t rather hang around with someone who does not deliberately smell of urine? May I be blunt here?

If someone has been rude to me, I’ll avoid their presence. Ya got me kids, I’m guilty of that.

“Why doesn’t Jack go to time-out all the time like me?” wailed JoJo.

“Hmm, son, maybe because Jack didn’t throw all the dishes off the kitchen table because Pepe was looking at him?”

“Why do I always lose my computer privileges?” wailed the one who peed in my heat vents. I bite back my sarcastic reply. Did he think I’d reward that poor choice of a urinal?

Natural consequences, an over used phrase in my house, an explanation that springs off my lips like a constant refrain as I squelch back the DUH part. Over and over and over again. Maybe it is the FAE in all my kids that begat the misconnections between cause and effect, action and resulting consequence, if this, then that; but there seems to be a huge lack of understanding of these simple concepts, a group inability, or refusal, to understand.

My RAD daughter, after all these years, nearly a decade, does not understand that if she acts normal, just mimics normal behavior even, she’ll get to have friends come over and she’ll get to go places like football games at the high school, but instead she steals anything and everything, useful to her or not, and now faces a residential, punitive place recommended by the juvenile justice system. She’s had years of therapy, even intensive family intervention but to no avail. It just doesn’t compute. Period.

Frustrating for me, of no importance to her; it’s going to be difficult to change a behavior she holds so dear to her sense of who she is. The IFI team explaining that a life of incarceration appears to be her only option if this larcenous behavior continues. She still doesn’t care.

That is a sad state of affairs.