Chapter VII – Timmy and Tyler Move In

Anthony was five years old when Timmy and Tyler came to live with us. In the beginning everything was fantastic, Anthony had an older brother to play with and I had someone to help me with Anthony.  Things couldn’t be any better right? Wrong.

Not long after Timmy and Tyler moved in I found out I was pregnant. Timmy and I agreed we should get married so this baby would be raised by both of his parents. Since neither of us attended church we decided to get married in Wynne at the church I attended when I was a little girl. Not only that but it was the same church my mother and father, Aunt Georgia and Uncle Bill, Aunt Nellie and Uncle Neal got married in. We wanted the boys to be in the service so Tyler was the ring bearer, Lauren was the flower girl, and Anthony escorted the flower girl.

Around my fourth month of pregnancy I found out I was having a baby boy. Since the baby I was carrying was going to be the half-brother of both of the boys we decided to let them name him. Tyler came up with the name Kevin and Anthony came up with the name Michael so Kevin Michael it was.

When Timmy and Tyler first moved in we gave Tyler Anthony’s playroom but once we found out we were expecting a third child we turned that room into a nursery.  Therefore, Anthony had to give up half of his room to Tyler and he wasn’t too happy about that.

One day Tyler came to me and showed me the bottoms of his shoes were worn out so I took him to Wal-Mart to buy some new shoes. He was very proud of them and when we got home he showed them to Anthony. Even though Anthony had new shoes himself, I guess he was jealous. That very night he took it upon himself to pee in Tyler’s new shoes.  Yes, you read that right, he peed in them. Needless to say I wasn’t happy with Anthony at all. I tore his little fanny up and the next day I took Tyler back to Wal-Mart to get him another pair of shoes.

That wasn’t the only thing Anthony peed in. Timmy loved to fish and most of the time he would take the boys with him.  We didn’t have a lot of money so little by little Timmy would buy what he needed.  One Friday he bought a Styrofoam cooler to put his fish in because he was taking the boys fishing the next day.  Anthony was very excited about going fishing so Timmy let him keep the new cooler in his room.  Later that night, I went in Anthony’s room to kiss him goodnight and when I looked down I noticed a yellow liquid in the cooler.  I looked at Anthony then looked at the cooler again and asked him if he had peed in the cooler.  He just smiled and nodded his head, for some reason or other this was funny to him.  I jerked him off of the bed and again I tore his little fanny up. It was getting very frustrating having to replace the things we’d worked so hard to buy. What was this child’s problem?

After a couple of weeks, Anthony stopped peeing in everything so I figured things had finally returned to normal.  Boy was I wrong I should’ve known better, nothing Anthony ever did was normal.

One Saturday afternoon Anthony and Tyler came in the house from playing outside, I noticed they each had a brown bag full of candy.  I wasn’t sure where they got the candy because I hadn’t given them any money to go to the store and to my knowledge neither had Timmy.  I asked them where they got the candy and they both started stuttering over their words and looking at each other for help making up their story.  I just sat there watching them do their best to make up a lie as to where they got the candy. Then I asked them if they had stolen the candy from the convenience store just around the corner. After realizing they weren’t very good at making up stories they confessed they had each gotten a lunch bag from the house and gone to the convenience store and filled their bags up with candy.  The scary thing is they were both very proud of the fact they managed to get out of the store without getting caught.

I sat there for a few minutes trying to figure out a way to punish them for what they had done. Then I realized if I made them take the candy back to the store and apologize to the cashier they should be humiliated enough they would never steal anything else again. So, I put the boys in the car, drove them to the store, then made them go inside and tell the cashier what they had done.  The cashier told them that it was okay. I looked at the cashier and told him what they had done was not okay and he should watch them every time they came in the store from that day forward and he did.  

Not long after that my neighbor, Denise, called me and told me Anthony had stolen $10.00 from her.  I was shocked he had done that since he had recently gotten in trouble for stealing the candy from the convenience store.  She explained to me the money was on her bedroom dresser and she’d seen Anthony go in her room. After he came out of her room the money was missing.  I confronted Anthony about this and he told me he stole the $10.00 because he wanted some candy and he needed it to pay for the candy at the convenience store.  I just stood there shaking my head, he had the right idea to pay for the candy but he’d still not grasped the concept of stealing.

I made him go to Denise and tell her he would do whatever she wanted him to in order to pay her back the $10.00.  She told him he would have to mow her yard to make it up to her but he would have to do it another time because she had the chicken pox. Another time never came and he got away with stealing her $10.00.

Just when I thought the boys had done the worst thing ever, they would always manage to top it by doing something even worse. One day I got a phone call from the principal at school telling me Tyler and Anthony had gotten in trouble on the bus for bringing a yellow knife to school.  I was very surprised when I got the call because I didn’t even know we had a knife at home. I didn’t say anything to the boys when they got home from school because I wanted to talk to Timmy about this first. Timmy told me he had a yellow army knife he had put up above the washer and dryer and there was a possibility that was the knife. We looked and sure enough the knife was missing. 

Once we discovered the knife was missing we went in the boy’s room to talk to them about the situation.  We asked them if they’d taken a yellow knife to school and they both told us, “No.”  We then told them their principal at school had called me and told me they got in trouble on the bus for bringing a knife to school, they still both denied it. Finally Timmy told them his yellow knife was missing and we knew they’d taken it.  That is when they finally came clean about taking the knife.  I started yelling at both of the boys for taking the knife to school, explaining to them how serious that was and they could’ve gotten expelled from school.  Neither of the boys seemed to care about what I was saying, this made Timmy very mad and he started taking off his belt.

Timmy went a little overboard when he’d spank the boys, his spankings turned into beatings which left bruises on the boys and I wasn’t happy with him about this.  I knew when he took off his belt things were fixing to get very bad.  I begged him not to whip the boys but he did anyway. I left the room and all I could hear was the sound of the belt hitting a child and then Anthony screaming, “Stop it!” Then a second hit with the belt and Anthony screaming, “Stop it!” Then I heard the sound of the belt hitting a child and Tyler screaming, “Stop it!” Then a second hit with the belt and Tyler screaming, “Stop it!” 

I had finally heard enough and I walked in the room just in time to see Timmy going back to Anthony’s bed and hitting him again.  I started yelling at Timmy to stop so he did. The two of us went into the living room to talk about what happened but while we were in there Tyler kept crying very loudly.  Timmy had enough of listening to Tyler cry so he got up and stormed back in the boy’s room. I just sat on the couch praying nothing would happen.  Then it got very quiet and Timmy came back in the living room. I was a little concerned because it got quiet and nothing at all was said.  A few minutes later I heard Tyler whimpering so I walked in their room. I asked Tyler what was wrong because by that time he had been crying for a very long time.  He tried to tell me what was wrong but I noticed he couldn’t get enough air to talk to me.  I talked to him long enough to calm him down then he proceeded to tell me what was wrong.  When Timmy went back in the boy’s room, Tyler was sitting up in the bed crying and Timmy hit him very hard in the chest and knocked him down on the bed and walked out of the room.  When Timmy hit Tyler in the chest it knocked the breath out of him and that is why he couldn’t talk to me. 

The next day Anthony had bruises on his back, sides, and his legs. Tyler not only had bruises on his legs but he also had a huge bruise on his chest in the shape of a handprint where Timmy pushed him down for crying. That night I came unglued and told Timmy he was never to spank those boys again because he didn’t know the difference between a spanking and a beating and the next time he left marks on the boys I was going to call Social Services on him.

Those were just a few of the problems we started having with the boys. Anthony had been potty trained for two years by the time Timmy and Tyler came into our lives, but if he had a bowel movement he’d call me to clean him up.  I had no problem with this at all because if it meant he would use the bathroom in the toilet instead of in his clothes I was all for it. 

The first time Timmy heard Anthony call me to come to the bathroom to clean him up he told me to tell Anthony to clean himself because he was a big boy and he could handle it.  I sat there for a minute and realized Timmy was right Anthony was five years old now and should be doing that by himself. I explained this to Anthony and from that day forward he started cleaning himself, or so I thought.

About a month later Anthony had an accident in his pants which I over looked because at that age it is common for a child to have an accident every now and then plus he had an upset stomach. However, I noticed this started happening on a daily basis, it was then I realized Anthony had stopped using the bathroom in the toilet and started going in his pants.  Using the bathroom in his clothes was unacceptable. So in order to make him stop doing that I would spank him every time he had an accident, however, that didn’t work.

Desperate to find out what was causing Anthony to continue having an upset stomach and using the bathroom in his clothes, I took him to a doctor.  The doctor explained to me Anthony wasn’t actually using the bathroom in his pants but he’d been holding his stool for close to a year now and it was leaking out around the impacted stool. This explained why we thought he had diarrhea all the time. He told us going forward any time Anthony had an accident to give him an enema and flush him.

I started thinking what might have changed in Anthony’s life to cause this and I realized everything was fine before Timmy moved in.  Anthony was using the bathroom in the toilet and I would wipe him then all of a sudden he had to wipe himself and that is when he started using the bathroom in his clothes.  I agreed with Timmy, Anthony was old enough to clean himself but what was it hurting if he needed me to do it for him until he was ready to do it himself.  As a result of not being able to ask me to wipe his behind, Anthony just stopped using the bathroom all together, poor baby.

I was losing the close relationship I had with my son before Timmy and Tyler moved in and it was very upsetting to me. Keep in mind I wanted Timmy to move in so I’d have someone to help me discipline Anthony but now I wasn’t so sure about that. Once Timmy started telling Anthony what to do and punishing him if he didn’t do those things I realized maybe this wasn’t what I wanted after all. Anthony was my child and I didn’t want someone else disciplining him. Looking back, I don’t think Anthony liked Timmy telling him what to do.  Anthony acted out before but nothing like this.

With all that was going on Anthony destroying everything in sight, the boys getting into trouble all the time, and Timmy beating the boys, I realized I was in over my head and something needed to be done. I called my mother and told her I couldn’t manage Anthony anymore and I was going to send him to a Military School of some sort.  Believe it or not, she agreed with me.  When I called the school they told me he had to be sixteen before he could attend. 

When I heard this I got very upset because I was to the point of losing my mind.  I called mother and told her what the school said and I started crying because at this point I was at my wits end. Mother didn’t know everything that was going on, she just knew Anthony was a handful and something needed to be done in order to get him under control so she told me to let him come live with them.

Sending Anthony to live with my parents was a very hard thing to do because even though I had threatened to send him away I didn’t truly mean it. As soon as Anthony left my house I went in his bedroom, laid on his bed and cried.  I then walked in the living room where Timmy and Tyler were sitting and I pointed at them both and yelled, “It’s because of both of you my child is gone!!!” They both just stared at me with this blank look on their face. I then went to my room, locked the door and cried the rest of the day.  From that day forward, my relationship with my son changed.  I had chosen my boyfriend and his son over my own son and that was the worst mistake I could’ve ever made.