The Nintendo ds.  My husband and I have been married for 5 years, together for 10.  He has been a parent to Joshua since he was 2.  My husband is a cancer survivor and was given limited odds for fathering a child. We tried for months at a time a few times, but nothing ever came of it, so we decided to give up. We all know how this story goes.... in Feb of 2010 we got pregnant. I did not know how Joshua would take the news being my one and only for so long.  We did our best to include him in the excitement of the pregnancy, trying to create a strong base of him wanting to be a great big brother.  He already had a half sister from his father and new wife.  The night I went to the hospital to be induced I have give a card and a gift of a new Nintendo ds that he'd been wanting for a long time.  (That particular ds was only around for 2 weeks when he took it to his father's house, left it in the pocket of his jeans, and took a ride through the washing machine. His father did replace it on his 11th birthday).  We had beautiful healthy baby girl in September.

Joshua continued to struggle in school.  We literally had to sit with him every night 4-5 hours to get homework done.  I got frequent calls from his teacher, nothing we tried every made a bit of difference.  His 5th grade teacher strongly questioned why I took him off the Concerta, but I could never tell her that I walked in on him choking the dog and believed the medicine was the cause.  So the school situation totally sucked to keep it short.

His behavior at home was also getting increasingly bazaar.  The constant talking to himself, play fighting with himself-physically throwing him self against walls. Breaking things all the time, not in anger, but so many things to blame on plain clumsiness.  His interaction with my daughter was off putting. I recall the day we came home from the hospital I was sitting on the couch holding the baby, and Joshua had the coldest look on his face staring at her.  I actually said to him, "don't look at her like that!"  Instinctively I would never leave them alone together,  This instinct was reinforced when she was a little over a year old.  I was changing her diaper in the living room and he was fixated on whatever was TV at the time,  But when I look up I saw him staring at her in a way that sent chills all through me.  I decided to never change her diaper in front of him again.

Joshua is a big child, not just overweight but well over 5 foot by 10 years old and he started the signs of puberty around 8-9. I caught him fondling himself more than once while sitting on the couch watching TV.  Not sure if that is what he was doing at age 11, I would say to him "you got an itch" and he would go to his room and shut the door.  There was an old winter coat stored in the back of his closet, didn't fit him anymore.  I kept finding the coat out in odd areas.  Once in his floor and it had been urinated on.  Of course I blamed the dog for the pee and questioned him why he ever had it out in the first place....he said he was cold.  I washed the coat and hung it back up and a few days later found it in his bathtub soaking wet.  His sleeping bags were also being urinated on and again the dog felt my wrath.  Joshua's shorts would be on the bathroom floor wet....could it be poor aim on his part, or over splash from the shower, something else?  He would change shorts 2-3 times between after school and bedtime. I'll be the first to admit I had no clue how to handle a conversation if he was indeed masturbating at 11.  My husband and I were very taken aback and of course googled it and read stories of kids starting at his age.  So we knew we were going to have to have a talk with him soon.

One day he and I had been arguing about school work and the usual stuff. I told him to get in the shower and I was going to bring him in a towel.  I returned to his bathroom a few minutes later to find the shorts he'd been wearing soaked with urine.  Light bulb moment, it was never the dog.  I was so furious with him, confronted him and he told me he was just too tired to use the toilet.  I never told anyone about these findings at the time.

So the ds, lots of history with this but we'll cut to the chase. Right before Easter of last year I found pictures that Joshua had downloaded from the Internet.  They were all of women partially clothed, but here's the kicker...all the girls had urinated or defecated in their panties.  So we had to have a talk quick, I was not prepared , no clue what to say.  We talked about masturbation being a natural process and a part of growing up, but that it needed to be done in privacy and kept to himself.  I questioned him as to why he wanted to look at these particular types of picture, never got a true answer.  I made it clear that those images were completely inappropriate and he was going to be grounded from the Internet until further notice.  He even thanked me for talking to him and I felt good about the talk, as good as I could.  But he continued to fondle himself at inappropriate times.  His bedroom is right off the kitchen and I would go down at night to get a drink and he would be in full view with the door open going to town.  The first couple of times I would sternly tell him to close his door.  You think having your mom catch you would be so embarrassing that you would be extra careful to not let it happen again, but it didn't seem to bother him.  One night during those couple of weeks he came to our bedroom and knocked on the door.  I answered it to find him standing there with...and I'll just say it....a huge ejaculation stain on the front of his pants. It was fresh.  This creepy, almost distorted look on his face asking me if he could have a snack.

It's safe to say I knew we had some sort of problem when he turned 11 in November of 2011.  At night once he was in bed I'd feel a since of relief and I would start going through a check list in my head.  Did I catch him doing you know what today, did he say anything disturbing, how awful had school been that day, did he look at or say anything to my daughter in his intimidating way. Feeling like a horrible mother I'd ask myself "did he give me the creeps today?"  But I had no idea how close were we to the boiling point.