So yesterday I got *the call* from the Day Treatment Center. "Your daughter has left the school". Of course I called back thinking all sorts of crazy thoughts, not the least of which was "how could you let her just walk out?". Turns out something that was really minor got blown into something huge and she just took advantage of it. And they let her.
Yeah, this is the same DTC that for months didn't see any of her issues and were becoming convinced (and even said) all her problems were home based. Well they don't think that way now. In the past 2 weeks she has started showing them ALL her glory. And maybe it makes me a jerk, but I'm happy about it. It's about time they saw what we see on a regular basis. Ha Ha.
But that isn't the point. After hanging up the phone, I hopped in my car and drove the 30 miles to travel the 6.5 mile path that *I* would have taken home from the DTC.. of course I didn't see her - she took a different route (RADs aren't known for taking the more direct route.. why should they? They don't think linear for the most part). But I had to keep telling myself "she's 16.. she'll be OK. I did much more at that age".
Somehow I managed to keep my cool even after not finding her. It wasn't easy to keep telling myself she'd be ok, but I kept at it. And when she arrived at home, acting like nothing had happened, the wife and I didn't make a big deal out of it. We asked what had happened and then just let it go. If there's one thing we've learned, it's that what happens at school needs to stay at school. We can't make that part of our problem as well - we have enough of those already!
And instead of a raging 16 year old RAD, we had a calm, helpful teenager who seemed to appreciate that we accepted her decision to do what she did, didn't give her excessive grief over it (we DID explain to her that we were worried, that the cops were out looking for her, and a brief 'mini-lecture' about the dangers, blah blah blah), and let it go. The afternoon actually went smoothly, and she was not only Responsible, Respectful and Fun to be Around for the rest of the day, but it went even beyond that. We had a helpful and pleasant teenager. Now how often does THAT happen? Plus, we didn't spend our evening all pi**ed off over something we can't control. We didn't waste our energy fighting or lecturing or anything like that... just let it go..
let it go...
