Exile

We had a new experience last night. It was no longer good enough to send a kid to his room. This time a kid was sent out of the house until morning. Luckily Grandma only lives three miles away, and she was agreeable to having a houseguest until 0630 when she has to get ready for work.

Apparently the two older kids "got into it" again on the bus, coming home from play rehearsal after school, and the antagonism continued at home. Son #2 had sat down at the computer, ready to type in a homework assignment, and had pulled over an end table to use for his books. The eldest didn't want him to use the table, and a struggle ensued. It's not clear whether the table was thrown or just slammed down, but it was cleanly broken in two pieces.

It was rough to take Son #1 over to my mom's last night, after he had dinner and had showered, but this was the culmination of many skirmishes and disagreements either started or fueled by his snarky supremacist attitude toward his brothers. It has already come to blows before, but this was the first time something in the house was destroyed. The table could easily have gone through the television, a wall, or a window. Enough was enough.

We find it troublesome that the older two are sometimes home by themselves for a while in the afternoon, so we felt we had to set a precedent for ramped up consequences. Apparently it's not enough to remind them that they've got to establish strong bonds with their brothers because we have a small family and their grandparents and parents are going to be dead someday. Arggh. Let's see whether anything changes now.

I will say this: for the short while I saw my eldest this morning, he was demure and conciliatory. And his brothers seemed happy to see him. Well, that was a few hours ago, anyway.