Yes, This Happens at Our House, Too

On Sunday Jen, over at Couldn't Make It Up If I Tried, blogged about a conversation she had with her daughter after an ugly explosion.  I have had this exact same conversation with our kid at least a million times. I'm going to quote a few lines because it so exactly matches what we see here at our house:

Mom: LT, we need to talk about what happened last night.

LT: Why? I'm over it. Why aren't you?

Mom: I'm not over it because your words hurt my feelings, your actions hurt our home, and I know you can't possibly feel good about what you did.

LT: That was yesterday. I moved on and you need to move on too. It's in the past. Now, I need my ipod. Did you charge it last night?

If you substitute me or my wife where the text reads "Mom," and "Danielle" where it reads "LT," you'll  have an exact duplicate of many of the discussions we've had after Danielle has had a meltdown.  The only difference is that Danielle would be asking for her MP3 player back (as we would have confiscated it) and not asking if we'd charged it for her.

It's conversations like these that make me want to beat my head on the edge of my desk.

I'm over it.  That was yesterday.  You need to move on.

Oh were it that easy to get over physical or emotional injuries.

I've lost count of the number of times that Danielle argued she should be off restriction for assaulting one or both of us while we still had visible injuries from her assault.

That was yesterday.  It never seemed to register with Danielle that, regardless of when the incident occurred, my wife and I were still suffering from the injuries she had inflicted.

Go read the entire text of Jen's conversation with her daughter.  If you are raising troubled kids, it will sound eerily familiar.