It's my parsley and I'll cry if I want to - 10/10 thread. All welcome!

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For anyone who wants a boost to their general health. The suggested goals are:

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TooT 100x is giving better advice than I ever could, so I will just agree with her. Does ds1 possibly need a Project? Something musical? Get him a guitar? School, social stuff etc. can be terribly rough on children. That may well be part of the anger.

Franny, I am sorry the fanjo and the bickering have been a pain. I very much doubt ds is scared of you , i suspect he is maybe having more of a time establishing the boundaries with dp, or thinking the boundaries might be more up for a challenge, because he is with you more?
dh and I have done a fair bit of bickering today - par for the course atm, tbh I never, ever thought it would happen to us, particularly in light of the circumstances of our getting together, but we have actually come quite far away from each other iyswim

We were at a church book fair today, and ds1 was so lovely playing in the church garden, picking seed cases apart, lying down for a 'sleep' in the grass... I want a garden so badly it hurts... it actually did hurt today. I find that living in Berlin (lovely as the place is, really) with children is making me into not-such-a-nice person - my default mode when we are out is watch-out-be-aware (oh, it's not dangerous, but you have to constantly swerve dog shit and watch for people whose huge dogs are off the leash or who walk past with their cigarettes at child height or drive too fast round corners and it's just general city stress), and it makes my general underlying attitude defensive-aggressive. I don't like it Anyway, I got some nice books, we came home and hung around and listened to story CDs, and I made tomorrow's lunch (lentil and mushroom roast) in advance.

Apple juice, carrot, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, red pepper, banana, spinach and ricotta lasagne (just like you UR ). 7. 8 if you count the so-called 'vegetable bread' I had for breakfast - bread with grated carrot and courgette in.

Yes, dd1 is HE for this year. She has a place at secondary school for September.

And yes, ds1 would dearly love to leave school but I don't see how it would be possible.
Because, apart from anything else, unless I become a publishable person, I am going to need to go out and work a bit at some point. And anyway, dp would not be suppoertive of more HE and I think it would make things worse.

1. MAKE him join the drama club. It is the way to go.

1. Give him a responsibility which is just his. Something he might like doing - so that could be cleaning the shoes (my dd likes this, weird) or hacking back the brambles, or growing a plant on the window sill and LAVISH praise on him.

1. Tell him his home is his safe haven. It is for everyone. And it needs to be kept so. He must stop with the violence. He must talk to you if he's feeling snarly or afraid. But it must stop. And you will help him by explaining how it is and what the consequences are for over stepping that boundary.

1. Tell dp to find a telly programme the two of them can watch. TELL him to do this. Tell him every so often to make comments to ds on said programme. Try and do it when everyone else is out.

1. Keep talking. Keep enforcing.

That's it.

I'm not wise. I just talk a lot in a upbeat way. In truth I am rather dreamy and aimless and spend my time saying 'ds1 do stop, it's so boring'

I am horrified at how self-absorbed my post just then was. Sorry

Oh, he has a guitar - and my dear friend offered him guitar lessons, but then he chaNGED HIS MIND AND WANTED GYMNASTICS, SO HE IS ON A WAITING LIST, NOW HE THINKS HE MAY PREFER KUNG FU OR TAP OR BREAKDANCING....
Where did thoise capitals come from?

I have Shopped. After window shopping 33 dress shops and 2 mahooosive department stores and about 6 hours , I have seen hundreds of dresses. My feet hurt.

But..........

I found IT!!!!!!! Cheers and applause please.

Now I will settle back and catch up with you lovely folk.

Berolina, I have been nothing but self-centred this evening! Wish I could lend you a bit of our garden.

100x, that is a wonderful list. I will talk to him about drama again and see what he says. You are wise.

avi i am having shocking memory and concentration at the moment

i will email you in aminute i hope

and franny if i dsint do that thing then have no qualms about telling me for the same reason i am hoping it is a bip[olar thing not a menopause thing i think it is the former but maybe in fact the latter would be etter obvs not the former

He has been like this since before dd1 came out of school though. You see how long this has been going on and how useless I am?

You are not useless. It's just hard and difficult and none of us get it right all the time. Good grief, I don't. And I seem to be handing out advice for goodness sake! Ha ha ha.

right. am off to bed.

You know, the worst thing is when ds1 punches ds2 hard in the back. It is too awful. But ds1 doesn't see that it has to stop. I tell him and he says, Yeah. But he doesn't mean it and he does it again.
Sorry, I am going on and on.

you arent useless toot right on the hasndwriting that is one of ds problems does he write very small

does he grip his pen/cil tight

yes, I think avi might be right (re school), but there probably isn't much you can do about it.

Great list, 100x

Fairly small. He finds it so tedious. Why do they have to write so much anyway?

Oh dear, dd2 up and shouting, must go.
Night night, love you all!

ds took a gun to school

his head rang me saying they would have to ask him to leave

no idea where he got it from was a bb gun

he is still keen on guns and knows allthjese fraers who have them

there is a big gun in my golf bag

i cant convince him

i have thrown several out i have found in the house

he used to kick me in the shins

buit he is very charming now mostly

if ds doesnt wantr bto join i woulndt make him

avi - met dh here on degree year abroad 10 years ago. Fell in lurve, against rather very monumental parental opposition, eventually married, years of going back and forth, now stuck in Germany because he needs to be in Germany for foreseeable future. And I will always be employable here because I can write and people here are very, almost annoyingly anglophile. I love Germany, I have a doctorate in German, I feel half-German by now really, but am recently struggling against wild dreams of escape.

I think I know why I have been miserable.