The Girl With No Bedroom Door: A True Short Story by Angela Hart

Author:Angela Hart [Hart, Angela]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, General, Personal Memoirs
ISBN: 9781509824076
Google: bd0hCwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B018XOJPUA
Publisher: Bluebird
Published: 2016-05-18T23:00:00+00:00

5

‘She’s really winding me up’

Despite her promise to persevere with the alarm system, Louise continued to wet the bed every night.

Thankfully, we were making progress in other areas, as after the shopping spree Louise did begin to take more pride in her appearance. She showered every day, washed her hair regularly and stopped wearing dirty clothes. She even asked me if she could have some flowers from the shop for her bedroom, and every night I’d replenish her vase with the best of our leftover stock, which she loved.

Unfortunately, once she’d found her feet in our home and felt more comfortable around us, she also started to display some very irritating traits. Pestering me and Jonathan was her most annoying habit.

‘What’s in that pot? I don’t like it! Can I have something else?’ she’d say when I was in the middle of cooking dinner.

‘Why are you doing it like that? That’s not right. You’re making a mistake there,’ she’d say to Jonathan when he was trying to set the video recorder or polish his shoes.

Telling us we didn’t look very well, following us around, standing too close and saying: ‘Oi! I was talking to you!’ when we tried to sidestep her to avoid being badgered were also regular occurrences.

‘She’s really winding me up,’ I snapped one day after I’d become so cross I had to take myself to the bedroom to calm down. ‘She’s trying to deliberately provoke me!’

As I said the words Jonathan and I shared a knowing look. We’d seen this problem in a troubled teenager before, and we both remembered that pressing buttons like this is extremely common in children with low self-esteem. They do it because they are feeling bad about themselves, and they subconsciously want to create that feeling in other people. I’d had this explained to me on a training course the previous year.

‘It’s a way of drawing you into their problem and effectively saying “this is how I feel and it isn’t nice. If you feel it too maybe you can see my problem and help me deal with it”,’ the trainer had told me.

‘I should have spotted this sooner!’ I said, remembering the words of the expert. ‘It’s so obvious isn’t it? This is all wrapped up in Louise’s low self-esteem.’

‘You’re right,’ Jonathan said, ‘but you mustn’t be hard on yourself. Don’t forget, you identified Louise’s low self-esteem right at the start.’

‘Yes, so I should have known better than to let her pestering get to me like this. I should be tackling her problem, not complaining she is winding me up!’

‘You are helping her!’ Jonathan reassured. ‘Look at the positives. Louise has started taking more care of herself since she realised she felt better after having a shower and wearing clean clothes, and you’ve done nothing but encourage her in that respect. You just need to carry on the good work.’

Jonathan has a knack of saying the right thing at the right moment, and I felt very fortunate to have his wise guidance and support.

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