Silent, and deadly.

It seems normal here in Mexico that if you harbor an offense, the silent treatment is the best way to go. I’ve seen adults do it, teenagers, and even little kids. I try not to let it get to me. One of my girls gave me the silent treatment this week, just for a day, and I was so worried it'd be a lot longer than that, but she forgave me after about 24 hours thankfully!!!

I came back into my house after being gone for a few hours to see all the down stairs decorations moved. All the photos were removed from the picture frame with only the models in the example pictures to smile at me. My two favorite paintings, while NOT art ( though the best I can have for now), were on the kitchen floor tucked in between the water dispenser and the stove (a great place to get ruined).

All of this because she thought the house looked ugly and dirty, which is ironic, b/c she didn't even dust the frames or clean the ceiling fan or anything. Also she took most of the books off our bookshelf and threw them into various containers, to hide them/get rid of them.** She also nailed our Sequence game board to the wall. I don’t deal well with change generally, but regardless, this wasn’t even, “surprise a decorator came and made your house look better change”, this was “surprise somebody-well meaning took down all the decorations except three, and now we can see where all the nail holes are in the walls, oh and now you have to confront someone”. After spending 12 hours or so calming down I decided to speak to her.

I thanked her for thinking to do something nice, reminded her that she only should be making those choices about her own bedroom area, and would she fix a couple things I thought didn’t look so nice?, i.e. TAKE DOWN THE SEQUENCE BOARD. We’re not a bachelor pad here, nor a trendy neighborhood bar/grill chain with a lot of character to make up for our overpriced hamburgers. She told me she wouldn’t. I waited to see if she’d change her mind.
I did tell her it hurt my feelings that she thought the photos were ugly, (and she had the audaciousness to say a girl in some of the photos is ugly, and that that girl doesn’t live with us anymore and shouldn’t be in the photos).

While she gave me the silent treatment I tried to affirm that I still like her, by smiling at her, but she generally avoided my eye contact. I also engaged her in friendly easy chat, like “have you eaten dinner yet?” or “did you sleep good” or “what was for dinner” and she just stared straight ahead like I wasn't even there. I'm trying to learn to provide unconditional love, not try to instantly fix everyone.

Luckily this has all been resolved. She changed her mind, and re-decorated again, according to the suggestions I made. It doesn't look like the original decorations, but it looks a lot better than her first attempt. I still cannot believe that was a point of contention in this house. When I think of troubled teenagers I think of sex, drugs, skipping school...NOT redecorating without your mom's permission! We have pretty good kids.


**While we may have too many books to put on our tiny bookshelf and it still look neat and clean, but I AM of the opinion that one can never have too many books.