the meeting- the bad stuff part 2

Practically, what did voldemort and I talk about?  She brought up the issue of the summer trombone lessons, and the ongoing orthodontia debate.  Voldemort explained in great detail while I listened, how she felt so steamrolled in these two co-parenting debates. 

---With the trombone lessons, she simply "had an idea for (my) daughter" and wanted to implement it.  Yet when she suggested the idea to the King, the idea got stolen away from her and we said basically "screw you, we already have plans to do that."   She went on to say that she could take "the high road", and just go along with our choice of teacher.  But she is innocently weary of the games, when all she wanted to do was give her child music lessons.  And who is the one who suffers? Buttercup.  ...So I explained our side of it.  That we already had a plan in the works with my friend for trombone lessons.  That we felt it was perfectly ok for Buttercup to have two trombone teachers, should voldemort decide to seek lessons elsewhere.  And that we were certainly not trying to "steal her idea," or thwart her good intentions to give her daughter trombone lessons, we simply had other plans.

As often happens, voldemort will make a request of us, in a polite way.  And then when we say no, she flips out on us.  Now, my understanding of request is that when one person asks something of another, the other responds according to their preference.  They have a right to say yes, or no.  The act of requesting does not imply consent or agreement.  Yet somehow when voldemort "asks" she is implying that we will go along with it, or clearly we are poor parents.  Mind boggling, really.
And I could write a fucking book filled with all the incidents when the King or I "had an idea" for Buttercup, or something good we wanted to share with the child, which was then "stolen away" from us by voldemort.  Without a care for anything but herself and her experience with her daughter.  Perhaps what goes around comes around.

---With the orthodontic fun, voldemort explained how she had spent many months working with Dr. First, going to meetings (all of which she invited the King to attend), and planning for Buttercup's dental treatment.  Had the King simply come along from the beginning and gone through that process with her, it would have saved us all, and mostly Buttercup so much suffering.  (that is, the suffering of boredom of waiting around the office for various appointments, but not getting much actual work done on her mouth).  She again felt steamrolled, because we suggested that we preferred to work with Dr. Body Part.  This steamrolling forced her into having to make an appointment with Dr. Body Part, and see what he had to say, and isn't that inconvenient for her.  And the overall result from the King and I wanting to get a second opinion and determine for ourselves the validity of this 5500$ investment, was that now the whole process has been delayed and put off, and poor Buttercup is still waiting to find out what will happen.   ...All I could say to this one was that it was not the King or my intention to switch Doctors on her.  At first the King was happy to allow voldemort the responsibility of working with Dr. First to get Buttercup an expander.  A minor procedure.  When the treatment jumped from a small piece of hardware and a few dollars, to oral surgery, full braces, and serious money, we felt we had better find out for ourselves what was going on, and not simply trust voldemort's judgement.  When we did so and Dr. First allotted us all of 5 minutes of his time, it seemed reasonable to look for a second opinion.  Which we did.  And we happened to like that Dr. better.

While I feel like voldemort's anger about this issue is slightly irrational, I think I can see this from both sides.  I certainly would have been annoyed too if I had put in a lot of work on something, only to have the other party I needed consensus from suddenly want to do it differently.  And I have to agree that had she been working with the King AND I from the start, we perhaps could already have the braces on the kids teeth.

BUT, her dramatics about "Buttercup's suffering" is hard to swallow though.  Yeah, it must have been hard, and boring, and annoying to sit around that office on numerous occasions waiting, meeting, hearing the adults blabber on about her teeth, with nothing happening.  But I am sorry, that is NOT suffering.  That is inconvenience.  And I think there are a lot of worse things in life than sitting, reading magazines in a safe, warm, clean office, missing school, and being with your mom.  If it was so terrible for Buttercup to go through that, then why are we signing her up for 36 months of treatment, where she will have to visit that office monthly, and probably sit and wait for part of that time?
The other BUT, is voldemort's insistance that by delaying this treatment we are somehow ruining Buttercup's chances for a good life.  Seriously, she went on about how there is a great possibility that we will never come to agreement and get this treatment started.  Then Buttercup will get older, her teeth will grow crookedly, or get infected and fall out.  Or worst case, she will get that terrible facial infection that Dr. First warned of should we not move that stuck canine tooth.  And who does that reflect on?  Her parents.  People will ask a grown up Buttercup why she has so many teeth problems and she'll have to explain how lame her parents were for not getting it fixed when she was 11.  (I am not kidding, she actually talked me through this scenario).   What the hell do you say to that?

The kid is 11.  Her life will not end if we do not get braces on her teeth today, tomorrow, or even this year.  There is time.  Plenty of time.

Conclusions...?  None really. 
I have a trombone lesson set up with my friend for Buttercup this afternoon. 
We are waiting to hear voldemort's report of her visit to Dr. Body Part, and how she wants to move forward in this.

Nothing got decided in the meeting, but that wasn't the point.  Maybe a little understanding was created.  Maybe not. Maybe that will help us.  Maybe maybe maybe...