Deck the halls

So, I am more then ready for christmas to be over. I went ahead and took the little guys to daycare today. She made such a big deal about being paid weather they were there or not, seems like I ought to be able to take them. I thought it would be nice to take Isaiah over to Joplin and try to have anice time with him and give him some Mom/Isaiah time. 

Well, he whined most of the day. Didn't want to do much of anything, anything I offered him, icecream, a teeshirt from the christian store, nothing was good enough.  Things got worse when we got home. His brothers had both gotten little token presents from daycare. They managed to get the packages opned in the chaos that followed coming home. Once they opened them, I figured there wouldn't be any problem with letting them play with them. Well, Isaiah thinks that he should get an early present too. and he whined and cried and pouted and begged all night for one. 

He was mean to his brothers. disrespectful to his grampa on the phone, nasty to me when I didn't give him what he wanted. 

I don't know what to do. I try to set aside time with him becuase I know the little guys take up a lot of my time and attention, especially Gideon who is a handful. But then when I try to do things like this, he ends up making me wish I had left him at the daycare too and gone alone. A mom shouldn't feel like that about her son. 

He is so ungratful for what he has. I'm not saying he should thank me every time I feed him. But he acts like I owe him presents. Like I owe him a nice time every day. Like its my fault he doesn't hear from his dad. 

I don't know how to handle the dad thing. The man has emailed me once about christmas, and hasn't followed up, except to say he was mailing the presents, which implies not seeing the kids. If I tell Isaiah every time Shane does something like this, it would be devestating, but he is aware that other kids whose parents aren't together see their other parent much more then he sees his. I see him getting angrier and angrier. 

I am hesitant to seek counsiling or whatever because I think most of those people are full of shit. They are the same people who medicated my mother to the point of oblivian and who medicated TOm and stood by and watched him circle the drain. Psychiatry failed my family, how the hell am I supposed to trust them with my precious oldest son. 

And then there is the matter of gratitude. I don't want to make him ashamed of himself. But I want him to be aware that not having a big house with a yard is not abusive. That mom saying it isn't fair to the dog (I'm gone ten hours a day, it isn't fair to keep an animal that way) isn't abusive. That a kid who has toys and blankets and a warm home and a mom who works hard and loves him and two little brothers and computers and tvs and all that is a very very lucky child. But I don't know how. I just don't know how. Something tells me that that one thing is probably one of the most important things I can teach him. And I jsut don't know how.