Ok heres the situation....
FSS7 has been babied. I know I have brought it up a few times before, it obviously annoys me to no end. I raised my kids to take care of themselves. I step in where I need, and then step back and let them do things on their own. Not so with FH and FSkids.
It bothers me. I am not nurturing, I am not in touch with my emotions at all. In fact I have never felt so many emotions at all until I got with FH. I am very detached. Or was...differnt topic all together though.
That said I can see obviously FSS7 is hurting. He comes home from school and throws screaming fits for an hour or more. These break down to him calling himself stupid or saying it is his fault because he can't behave. And screaming for his mom for another half an hour or so.
This annoys me. I know it shouldn't. But its like, my god child you are 7 why on earth are you screaming like this for hours? My kids miss their dad too. My kids aren't throwing fits, or screaming for hours. My kids aren't lashing out at all the other kids in the house, hurting them emotionally and physically.
I am torn. I want to throttle the child for screaming like this and getting on my nerves, but the fact that he hurts so much crushes me and makes me cry myself.
All that said I know the right thing to do is to talk with him, and see what his problem is, try to fix it and also at the same time set some behavior expectations....But I don't know how. I don't know what to say or what to do. Like I said I am not nuturing at all...
Can someone give me some ideas or pointers, or at least help me validate my annoyance at the behavior, is it just because I am not emotional that I can't tolerate the screaming or is this something I should be able to ignore? I don't even know anymore.
First get the behavior under control
Even if you come off as a cast-iron b*tch, tell FSS that he will NOT be allowed to scream like that anymore. Put him in his room or if you can still hear him, a closet in his room. Tell him he can come out when he stops screaming, but will go right back in if he starts again. As for screaming for BM, my SS tried that one, too, to which my DH calmly, dispassionately said, "You can't see your mom now. You will see her Friday." Or whenever. Period. Screaming for her only gets you put in your room.
When he has managed to gain some control over himself, you are much more likely to be able to have a discussion with him in which you can find out why he always screams after school. Likely something is going on there that bothers him greatly. It could be that others have noticed him acting babyish there as well, and he gets teased. You will be helping him a lot if you can help him deal with his emotions in a more controlled way. And at that age, the only way I've had success in situations like that is to set a consequence for an action and follow through.
I remain, the world's most evil stepmom; ask anyone.
Did pretty much exactly that
I told him if he continued to scream he would continue to add on more punishment. Eventually got him calmed down by simply leaving him in his room until he was screamed out. Then I went in to talk to him to see what was going on to make him act like that.
Turns out....he was getting picked on at school. Nothing major, a kid called him a garbage bag. Got him to laugh at that cause after all he KNEW he wasn't a garbage bag so thats kind of a dumb thing to call someone. Told him he needed to stop playing with this boy, because he was not a friend if he was being hurtful, and you don't hurt your friends.
Told him to report it to the teacher if it continues...this school has a strict zero tolerance policy for bullying, they get expelled after 3 warnings.
Then I gave him the already promised punishment....after that was all over and he was done sulking and whining I played a board game with just him, and then one with just him and BD8.
Now he is happily playing with the other kids.
I think I will write a note to the teacher next Tuesday as well.
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