Everyone is Hormonal

I'm feeling the blues coming on this morning...that creeping melancholy that seems to slip over like a cloud. (Interesting I'd think of clouds...there are no actual real clouds outside today.)

A lot of this funk today is over another hormonal member of our family, our older son. He is 17.

Yesterday I received a call from his math teacher telling me that he started out great in his class and now has missed two assignments. My son's grade is now a point or two shy of a B and the teacher feels he would have been in solid B territory if he hadn't missed these assignments.

I think my son is suffering right now from low self-esteem. He's spending hours each day in an online gaming community, has no job, and now is allowing his schoolwork to suffer. I talked to him quietly and calmly about this last night.

And then talked to my husband, who is out of the country right now on business, about helping me with this message: get a job, cut the computer time to 90 minutes a day or less, and get the homework turned in.

My husband is a dear, wonderful person who hates confrontation. Well, of course so do I. But it's fallen to me over and over to hit these issues dead on because, while I hate it, I will do it if it needs to be done. I told hubby last night that he has to make our son his number one priority for a few weeks until they can find him a job. I sincerely believe that once he has one, a lot of things will fall into place.

Another person who is suffering right now is our younger son, who will be 13 in two weeks. He says everything is hard right now, and cites 7th grade, the new puppy responsibilities, and some back and stomach issues. I need to be more available for him right now.

And so we will need to do some family re-alignment in the coming weeks so that all three of us hormonal people can get what we need: a lot of TLC and the occasional kick in the butt.