Stepturd's finest hour was a one hour long screaming fit.

I want to write a little more about what I should have seen coming with SS15, when he was only 10. I wrote an earlier post where I mostly vented about his eating habits and the lenient adults who raised him who let him eat junk food. To continue to answer sueu2, who called me out on my complaint about it (and I agree, who cares what he eats?), I want to talk about the things I couldn't have seen coming, or might have only seen coming had I been through this before. And, it's not about the food.

Below are about four things - out of 100 things that have happened, but I'll just pick four. Some of these things are not happening since I disengaged, but I don't think I caused them by being engaged. I believe these things are inside SS15 and are part of his personality and the potential problem he will be with all the people he is in any kind of relationship with.

SS15 talked about killing people last year. His words were, "Because there is no God, there is no one that is going to come down and stop me as I'm on my way to commit mass murder." And, he said the same thing about if he's going to kill his family. When DW asked why SS would want to kill his family, he said, "Because I can."

When SS15 came back from the two months he spent with his grandparents during the summer, he was quick to reestablish his dominance over his mother as soon as we were driving away from the airport. He said to his mother, "You hate me. Grandpa and Grandma love me more than you do" - and a dozen other comments to pull on DW's guilty parent strings and to put her in a one-down position. DW was overjoyed to see him when he arrived, but SS15 was careful to show no such emotion. I understood that SS was asserting his dominant position over DW, coming from the idea of: the one who cares the least about a relationship is in control of the relationship. And he meant business. (This is something I've explained to DW as "wife beater behavior," and that SS is a mini-husband and that what you see now is how he is going to be with any woman he's in a relationship with, starting with his first girlfriend, and eventually wife, if he gets married.)

When SS had his middle school graduation, his grandparents and relatives came from far away to in order to be there. The school gives out just four family member attendance tickets because of limited space. SS came home that day and when DW asked if he got the tickets, he said that he gave them away to other kids because they pressured him to. But as we asked more closely, we finally understood he had gotten rid of the tickets so no family members could attend. (We were able to get the tickets back with the help of the school.) DW was so hurt by this, she was doubled over with pain and crying, as SS stood there with a cold-blooded look of contempt for her on his face. I explained to DW to take a look at that face, because that's the face you'll be talking to behind the glass when you go to prison visits to see him when he's older.

And, to round out the selection of examples, in my last scenario of engaging (and I don't anymore), I saw how SS was working hard to manipulate DW by using all the tactics he knew. As he did each one, I said to DW, "He's using guilt on you." So, he changed tactics, saying he was going to kill himself. I said to DW, "Now he's using fear on you." Next came an attempt at intimidating her, which I explained to DW. Seeing that someone understood and called him out on all his tactics, SS rolled over on the floor and began to shake and whimper like a wounded dog. When I told DW to ignore this attempt at pity, SS jumped up screaming and ran to his room and kept screaming. It was 7 p.m. At 7:30, he was still screaming. Realizing what DW was about to do, I said to her, "Don't go in there." At 8 p.m., after one hour of continual screaming, he abruptly stopped screaming and took a shower, then came into the bedroom, working DW over with, "When I was screaming in there, I thought you were going to come in and comfort me!"

There is a whole lot more. Thank you for having read through this far. I don't engage anymore. Now that I'm not so preoccupied with SS15, I look back over the last five years and am just amazed (not in a good way) at this and all that has gone on.

In my tag line, I say "Disengaging has brought a measure of peace, what's next?" Right now, I don't know. I imagine the first phone call I may get from an angry father telling me that SS has abused his daughter in some way. At that point, I don't think I'm going to be able to say, "Well, hey, I'm disengaged. Not my kid not my problem."

Does anyone have any comments or suggestions about what happens after disengaging, when you're still in the same household with the same members of that household? So many things could be coming next, such as if SS discovers drugs. Now, this is all negative expectations, yet at the same time, it's hard to think that things just might work out OK. Though, "what you see is what you get," and I see what help disengaging has been. But I also see what goes on between SS15 and DW.