Nuclear Meltdowns
It all began yesterday evening, when I offered Miss 14 half a glass of cider with her dinner. She had been really great for the previous few days, I was pouring some cider out for myself, so I let her have some too – we do this kind of thing from time to time, so alcohol doesn't have some mysterious hoodoo surrounding it.
She ate her dinner, drank her drink, and then somewhere inside her a switch flicked.
“Please can I have some more ?”
“No.”
“Please ?”
“No.”
And so the conversation went on for about another twenty “No” responses, including various attempts at explanation and reasoning. After half an hour she was sat in the kitchen doorway, on the floor, repeatedly saying “Please ?” every five seconds or so. We walked around her, and ignored her as much as we could. While putting washed clothes away upstairs, I discovered her mobile phone thrown on her bed, and quietly confiscated it.
After putting the younger children to bed, my other half had enough and walked over the road to visit some friends. She didn't come back until 11pm. I left Miss 14 sitting on the floor, turned the radio up in the kitchen, and wandered off to the junk room – closing the door behind me. I heard her go to bed half an hour later.
This morning she came downstairs, made herself some porridge, demanded her hair be brushed, and left the house without talking to anybody. Ho hum.
I didn't think much more about it until 3:45 this afternoon, when my other half called my desk at work. Miss 14 hadn't returned home from school, and obviously had no mobile phone – so we had no clue where she was. Everything was becoming my fault in a hurry. I dropped working on the already enormously late project I had been fighting with all day, and starting figuring out what to do next.
A quarter of an hour later – while my other half was calling her friends via her own mobile phone, and while I debated how long until will call the police, she walked in the front door, didn't say a word, stomped off up the stairs, and slammed the bedroom door behind her.
After eating dinner in silence, I talked at length about the things that would happen if her behaviour didn't change. Deletion of Facebook account, no television, replacement of smartphone with a candy-bar handset... she looked down at her lap throughout.
Now we wait.