kids' counselling

stbx actually signed letters consenting to the kids getting counselling from the counsellor of their choice. i put in a line that signing the letter did not imply that she would pay for the counselling just to get past her fixation on being broke.

not that she is. she just says she is. if she was broke she wouldn't spend $300+ a month on cigarettes and wouldn't buy lunch to the tune of $100-$200 a month. or spend $100+ per month on clothes and shit for daughter. or maybe she would.

she said she was broke all through our marriage too. all the time.

anyway - kids are seeing counsellors. she even signed the letter before she got the letters from me and the lawyer on the Hawaii trip fuck-ups.

strange

you see, after son's episode the other week, i tried to get the kids counselling and get it paid through my workplace family assistance plan. they won't do approve it in the event of a marital breakdown unless both parents consent. that is how she was able to fuck with my 3 previous attempts to get the kids counselling.

i decided that i was just going ahead and would find counsellors that would take my kids either way. that somehow i would find a way to get them help - and damn the cost.

monday morning for daughter, monday afternoon for son.

i am to attend the first little bit of the counselling session with them and then it will go private. i will hang around and wait nearby.

daughter's counsellor is a lady with extensive experience in sexual identity counselling. she is the partner of my original pick. it made me happy when the original lady said "she may be just experimenting, or it might be something real and permanent. we'll help her work through it and figure out what it is."

why am i happy? because the lady is a log term lesbian. she is an advocate for the LGBT community and has done a lot of work in the community. i was referred to her by the family assistance dude. Smitten worked on the board of the local women's centre (i later found out) and thinks highly of her. i picked her so daughter would have someone who had been through it - but was also a qualified counsellor. i was happy because it meant that this lady wouldn't be pressing/recruiting daughter to join the ranks of lesbians/bisexuals.

not that there is an issue with that - if it is daughter's choice.

so the counsellor - and i assume her partner - whom daughter will see - is not just assuming that that daughter will be bisexual - it will be healthier.

i am pleased at the lack of militancy i have observed in the people i have asked for help in helping/guiding daughter. in observing this i am feeling a level of self-validation in my judgment in whom i have picked as resources and in the methodology i have employed to arrive here.

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son is still messed. missed more school. having problems with sleep again.

it's funny (yeah - ha ha...) that he was having no problems up until he went out for the evening last night with his mother (to see a cousin who is in town for a short while). i will have to quizz him on last night a little more.

i was talking with Smitten about it at lunch today - he phoned me to say he'd fallen asleep while putting on his shoes (shortly after falling asleep standing up while making his lunch) and had slept in until noon.

son has to make his own choices.

he will have to bear some consequences. he made the choice to stay home a few times when he didn't have to, and so if now it is coming home to roost and he is running out of available absences before he gets suspended from his classes... and i warned him at the time that he would need those potential absences later...

he may end up having to spend a little more time in high school or doing make up classes at university.

it is the price to be paid

the price he has to bear because of the break-up. not that it should still be affecting him - but the break-up removed me as a shield - and he is not sheltered from his mother's psychosis - and it is affecting him

the price may be a year of his life

not that steep a price to pay - plenty of people have fucked around and wasted a year or two of their lives. and if this is the fall-out - the price - that's just what it has to be.

the same as if he were in a car accident and got laid up in hospital for awhile.

he's road-kill for his mother's behaviour and my decision(s) to leave.

i hope the counsellor can help son find his way past his issues

i hope we can find ways for son to sleep again

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i'm on track for my own additional counselling as well

see if that does anything