My 15 year old son, who is in an Outdoor Therapeutic Program, is getting a three day pass to come home for the Easter weekend. He’s not been home for months as he was led away in handcuffs over his family violence charges. The police had been called; he was on probation anyway, I’ve been very vocal and insistent that we need help, that he needs consequences, and that we’ve been in danger from his rages.

That translated to him as, “Mama doesn’t love me. She kicked me out.”

Not, “my behaviors kicked me out, but Mama did.”

So not only must I try and help him overcome his ‘professional victim mentality’ and learn accountability, his penchance for violence and mayhem must be addressed and managed. The camp has a good reputation and I thank God everyday that we’ve been given this opportunity.

Last night he called me, excited to be coming home, told me that a counselor, a fairly new one, has simply quit; had walked away, saying that these boys are rude, mean and hopeless.

You better believe I jumped on this story, telling my son, “I’ve felt that way also. Son, you need to think about how your behaviors affect everyone else, how people get sick of dealing with the constant negativity and oppositional crud. It gets old and boring; you do not appear to be very manly when you act like that.”

I have hardly two and a half more years to get his hatefulness turned around before he gets unleashed on society. This is where our criminal population comes from, from angry, non-directed, violent children who did not work through their issues. He has every reason in the world to be this hurt and mad at the world, he went through tremendous trauma as a young child, but he also must work through this as soon as possible, or it’ll cost him his freedom as an adult.

He’s charming but manipulative, good-looking but hateful at times, he’s stubbornly oppositional past the poster child phase, and he’s lazy and unmotivated…a psychologist’s dream patient in that his issues are obvious and out there for all to see.

I do have hopes for him, I believe that he can pull this out, become a man at some point. He’ll look back and regret that he allowed his past to damage so much of his later years, but hopefully he’ll learn from this, use it all to help others someday.

In the meantime, I’m slightly dreading this weekend, not looking forward to his fits and bursts of negative energy, complaints and finger pointing. Not my idea of a pleasant Easter weekend, but if this is the price I have to pay for his eventual progress, then I’ll do it, give myself pep talks, and I’ll try to continue encouraging other parents to hang in there with this kind of hateful fury.