Family Interventions...
So my older sister, Kyllea, and I are planning, or at least considering, some sort of family intervention plan.
For my father.
The reasoning being that he has changed. And I mean drastically in a short period of time and it affects the family in a negative way.
So the situation is that the place he has worked at for 25+ years is now turning into hell on earth for him. Even before this conversion thing, the new boss was making his life difficult with evaluations and threat of firing and everything. We understood he was upset about this, he was looking into a new job, his stress levels rose and we took some extra heat from him because we understood, and by we I mean the family including my mother, that he was stressed and some leniency was in order.
Now that the conversion is almost due and things aren't working as they're supposed to, things have gotten even more hectic for him. He has his previous work, plus more work, plus working and supervising the conversion. So he goes into work at 8 in the morning, and doesn't come home until around 8 at night. When he used to come home at 5.15 everyday. He hardly gets to see his family. He is taking a lot of heat because the conversion isn't going smoothly at all. He is staying because the other supervisor is a friend of his and if he quit now, she would get stuff with all the work he leaves behind. So he's staying to help her. But he's planning to leave once the conversion is over.
This has been going on for months. The early going in, the late coming back, working on the weekends, etc. As a family, we have given him a hell of a lot of leash regarding his attitude and what we put up with when he comes home. He is not a pleasant man, but we forgive him because we understand his situation. And that he would never do this on purpose. We realize we're being punished unjustly for the frustration he gets from work, but we put up with it because we think it helps him.
Only now it's just too much. He's inflicting a lot of emotional pain on us, especially mom, and we have to tell him that it's time to take a look at what's going on with him and why he's hurting the people who are trying to support him. It's just little things too.
Kyllea says on Skype that when she talks with dad and mom through the video chat, he makes jokes about how they got married because otherwise mom would have been deployed to Germany and when mom says that even if that wasn't the reason, they still would have ended up together and dad says no. Which I can't imagine the pain that causes mom, feeling like Dad felt forced into the marriage and that he wouldn't have married her if he wasn't under pressure to. Because I know how much she loves him. And I know that if Dad loves her that much back, he doesn't show it. I've always hated how he treats mom, but that just isn't right. He can't make her feel that way. Especially with all the work she does to make him happy, with all the shit she's put up with all their marriage.
And with me, it's just small, but there's a shift in his mood from playful jerky-ness, to hostility. And it's so imperceptible I'm not sure if anyone else would see it, but I have three instances.
I worked an 8 hour shift at FCO and I had to work one the next day and I was tired. Dad told me I should suck it up and play ping pong with him. Called me a baby. Kept telling me to suck it up because I could sleep in until noon, which was when I had to be there. So I played ping pong with them until 1 and went to work half asleep.
The second was that I went into my parents' room as they were getting ready for bed and I was on the bed with Mom as Dad changed in the sitting room and he said something about me helping with the raking in the yard. And I said if he was helping with the dishes. The deal with him is that the girls do the kitchen work and the house work and he doesn't help with that because he does the repairs on the house and he does all the yard work and we don't help him with that, so he won't help us with everything else. And I think it's unfair, but whatever. I believe he has a point that if he helps us, we help him. So I brought that up because I thought he was joking about the raking anyway. He said he had been doing a lot of dishes lately, which isn't true because we have them done before he gets back from work. I've seen him wash dishes once and I haven't really been out of the house. So I said that doing them once doesn't count because I've done them every other day of the month and it was the look he gave me that seemed hostile. Like we were pack animals and I was a lesser animal trying to test his authority and he was daring me to do it again.
The third time was with the fire alarms. All the alarms in the house have been steadily losing battery and they make this awful blipping noise that freaks the dog out. It was my room first, then the babies, then my parents room and then the basement. This is all in the course of a few months. And I do recall my father saying, "So you're going to go out and buy new batteries and fix all the fire alarms, right?" but he always tells me to do things as a joke and that was one of them. If he starts the request with "so" and ends with "right" it's a joke. I know this, he knows this, he's done it since I can remember. So when the basement alarm went, he asked if I had changed all the batteries in the fire alarms yet. And I said no, was I supposed to? And he said he had told me to fix them a while ago. And when I said I thought he was joking, he was exasperated. Said no he wasn't joking.
It's small instances like that. I feel he's getting angry at me over little things. Like when I used to pinch Kat and Chelse as a joke, but I did it too hard and it hurt them. I was angry like Dad was and I did things with the cover of a joke, but I intended them to hurt. Whether consciously or unconsciously.
I talked with the younger ones and they feel the same way I do. They feel he's changed for the worse. But I feel we're coming from the right place with this. We're not angry with him. We're not attacking him. We're worried about him and we know he isn't happy and we want him to be happy and we want to be happy with him. I think this will work. We'll have our father back and dad will have his family back. It's win-win.
If anyone has any advice about this, I'm all ears.
For my father.
The reasoning being that he has changed. And I mean drastically in a short period of time and it affects the family in a negative way.
So the situation is that the place he has worked at for 25+ years is now turning into hell on earth for him. Even before this conversion thing, the new boss was making his life difficult with evaluations and threat of firing and everything. We understood he was upset about this, he was looking into a new job, his stress levels rose and we took some extra heat from him because we understood, and by we I mean the family including my mother, that he was stressed and some leniency was in order.
Now that the conversion is almost due and things aren't working as they're supposed to, things have gotten even more hectic for him. He has his previous work, plus more work, plus working and supervising the conversion. So he goes into work at 8 in the morning, and doesn't come home until around 8 at night. When he used to come home at 5.15 everyday. He hardly gets to see his family. He is taking a lot of heat because the conversion isn't going smoothly at all. He is staying because the other supervisor is a friend of his and if he quit now, she would get stuff with all the work he leaves behind. So he's staying to help her. But he's planning to leave once the conversion is over.
This has been going on for months. The early going in, the late coming back, working on the weekends, etc. As a family, we have given him a hell of a lot of leash regarding his attitude and what we put up with when he comes home. He is not a pleasant man, but we forgive him because we understand his situation. And that he would never do this on purpose. We realize we're being punished unjustly for the frustration he gets from work, but we put up with it because we think it helps him.
Only now it's just too much. He's inflicting a lot of emotional pain on us, especially mom, and we have to tell him that it's time to take a look at what's going on with him and why he's hurting the people who are trying to support him. It's just little things too.
Kyllea says on Skype that when she talks with dad and mom through the video chat, he makes jokes about how they got married because otherwise mom would have been deployed to Germany and when mom says that even if that wasn't the reason, they still would have ended up together and dad says no. Which I can't imagine the pain that causes mom, feeling like Dad felt forced into the marriage and that he wouldn't have married her if he wasn't under pressure to. Because I know how much she loves him. And I know that if Dad loves her that much back, he doesn't show it. I've always hated how he treats mom, but that just isn't right. He can't make her feel that way. Especially with all the work she does to make him happy, with all the shit she's put up with all their marriage.
And with me, it's just small, but there's a shift in his mood from playful jerky-ness, to hostility. And it's so imperceptible I'm not sure if anyone else would see it, but I have three instances.
I worked an 8 hour shift at FCO and I had to work one the next day and I was tired. Dad told me I should suck it up and play ping pong with him. Called me a baby. Kept telling me to suck it up because I could sleep in until noon, which was when I had to be there. So I played ping pong with them until 1 and went to work half asleep.
The second was that I went into my parents' room as they were getting ready for bed and I was on the bed with Mom as Dad changed in the sitting room and he said something about me helping with the raking in the yard. And I said if he was helping with the dishes. The deal with him is that the girls do the kitchen work and the house work and he doesn't help with that because he does the repairs on the house and he does all the yard work and we don't help him with that, so he won't help us with everything else. And I think it's unfair, but whatever. I believe he has a point that if he helps us, we help him. So I brought that up because I thought he was joking about the raking anyway. He said he had been doing a lot of dishes lately, which isn't true because we have them done before he gets back from work. I've seen him wash dishes once and I haven't really been out of the house. So I said that doing them once doesn't count because I've done them every other day of the month and it was the look he gave me that seemed hostile. Like we were pack animals and I was a lesser animal trying to test his authority and he was daring me to do it again.
The third time was with the fire alarms. All the alarms in the house have been steadily losing battery and they make this awful blipping noise that freaks the dog out. It was my room first, then the babies, then my parents room and then the basement. This is all in the course of a few months. And I do recall my father saying, "So you're going to go out and buy new batteries and fix all the fire alarms, right?" but he always tells me to do things as a joke and that was one of them. If he starts the request with "so" and ends with "right" it's a joke. I know this, he knows this, he's done it since I can remember. So when the basement alarm went, he asked if I had changed all the batteries in the fire alarms yet. And I said no, was I supposed to? And he said he had told me to fix them a while ago. And when I said I thought he was joking, he was exasperated. Said no he wasn't joking.
It's small instances like that. I feel he's getting angry at me over little things. Like when I used to pinch Kat and Chelse as a joke, but I did it too hard and it hurt them. I was angry like Dad was and I did things with the cover of a joke, but I intended them to hurt. Whether consciously or unconsciously.
I talked with the younger ones and they feel the same way I do. They feel he's changed for the worse. But I feel we're coming from the right place with this. We're not angry with him. We're not attacking him. We're worried about him and we know he isn't happy and we want him to be happy and we want to be happy with him. I think this will work. We'll have our father back and dad will have his family back. It's win-win.
If anyone has any advice about this, I'm all ears.