The answer should be yes. Not "how can I get my loved one help?"

Category Archives: difficult behavior.

Pete and repeat – say again?

So for what seems like the hundredth time, I had the talk with David, our 10 year old about how his behaviour will follow him for the rest of his life.  Do I think I got through to him this time?  Sadly, no, I don’t.

This is the child who just got out of a residential facility, where he was placed in part because of his behaviour.  I explained that there are worse places for him to be, and gave him specific examples.  I talked about how when I was a kid, I was in trouble with the law and was taken from my home in handcuffs.  Yes, even at the age that he is, they might not use handcuffs, but they could decide that this isn’t the proper environment for him.

So the question is, how do we protect him from himself?  When it is just him, and myself, there are no major issues, but bring the other kids home from school… and he has to act up and do all kinds of things to get attention.  I have taken away computer privileges, I have taken away toys, I have taken away special treats like oatmeal creme pies, which are his favourite.  To no avail.  He continues to do what he wants when he wants it.

Friday is amnesty day.  He gets amnesty if he gives back everything that he stole throughout the week.  Today I gave him amnesty and he didn’t give me anything.  So when I was making one of many intervention trips into his room to keep his brother from killing him, I went through his things and found…

  1. One hole punch.
  2. One cat food can, partially empty.
  3. Two cat food can lids.
  4. A half dozen AA batteries.
  5. 4 pens.  (not allowed because he writes on everything, whether it is his or not.)
  6. Candy wrappers. (we control his candy intake because of the severity of his ADHD, he isn’t allowed any except under very controlled circumstances.)

Earlier this week,  he had managed to break into our bedroom and steal a netbook from his mother….

So how do we protect him from himself?  How do we protect him from his brother’s and sister’s?  How do we protect his brother’s and sister’s from him?

Today, I went so far as to explain what his behaviour does to my health.  I have a number of illnesses that respond negatively to stress.  I am not going to delude myself into thinking that it will change his behaviour.  I told him, as much for his information as it was for me to admit it to myself.

Tomorrow, mentor time.  Which means for 5 hours he won’t be in the house.  5 hours of relative quiet.  Am I wrong to look forward to that break?

buttons, buttons, who has the buttons?

Well, I am either looking for my remote control or I am trying to figure out how to prevent our youngest from pushing every button he can find to anger everyone in the house in one night.

He is ten years old.  He created a facebook account, and we figured that as long as it was monitored, we would be able to keep it under control.  We set the password and told him that an adult needed to log him in to it.  He then started resetting the password for the account.  So I changed the email address associated with the account and told him that one more time would result in the denial of access to facebook.

Simple right?  Nope.  He created another account.  Took away his computer privileges for everything except school work and he started using his brother’s computer.  We told his brother that if David isn’t allowed to use any computer’s so he started locking his computer with the password that we setup.

Simple right?  Nope.  He stole a laptop from his mom.  Yep.  Mom was given a netbook for work and he stole it from our bedroom, which was locked.  Yep.  no idea how he got in there.

So now, we have to redo the lock in our bedroom door. (used to use a skeleton key which he has figured out how to pick)

Time to use the old hasp and padlock option.

 

and so ends the great debate

Our youngest son David loves to argue.  Everything for him is something that can be debated.

Tell him that he needs to clean up his kleenex, and he will tell you why he can’t do it, and he might use something you said yesterday to him as an excuse.  Tell him he needs to eat his supper before he has a snack, and he will tell you that he ate his supper and then will tell you what he ate for lunch.  When you ask him who made this supper, he would say, so and so made it for me at lunchtime.  Well, since it is 6:30 in the evening, you need to eat a regular meal before you have a snack.

For discipline, one of the few things that works is to have him cover his head.  Normally we don’t keep him under there for more than about 10 minutes.  1 minute for each year of his life.  But, he will pop in and out with different questions, excuses and arguments for the next hour and never fully be disciplined for 10 minutes.  It doesn’t matter to him that he has been there for an hour, all that matters is he didn’t have to be under the blanket for 10 minutes.

So why had the debate ended?  He fell asleep. 🙂  I love him and tomorrow is a brand new day!