Posts for category ‘children’

Max has been having a lot of problems and issues lately.  He has been unmanageable, explosive, and angry.  It seems like he has taken major steps backward after improving quite substantially.

It is not that he has been intentionally getting into trouble.  In fact, even though he is 10 years old he has been crying when he finds out that he has been misbehaving.

The crying in itself is unusual because he has never really cried since he was a baby.  I mean he can fall and bang or scrape his knees.  He can bang his thumbs with hammers so badly they swell and throb in pain.  But he will jump up and walk it off while saying:

“I’m okay, I’m okay!”

When he says this we know he really got hurt but he has always tried to hide it.

But in the past few months he has been misbehaving and crying more and more often.  And as I said he is not doing it intentionally.

A lot of things have been happening that have been affecting him badly.  These are some of them:

• His dad (me) came down with pneumonia and it took several months to get well.  As a result I hadn’t been available to play or go different places with him

• A month ago we had a pre-season snowstorm.  We lost power for 24 hours which wasn’t too bad but his grandparents were without it for 3 days.  His granddad is paralyzed from the waist down and his grand mom has slowed down quite a bit; they are both in their 80s.  Since they couldn’t take care of themselves through this it fell to us to make sure they survived.  We ended up taking them to different hotels each night since we could only book one day at a time.

• Two days after the power came on they had to move to a handicap accessible apartment.  And of course, we had to take care of it.

• But with all of the moves and disruptions Max’s grandmother has been terribly disoriented. So as result we have two more children to take care of.  I make breakfast every morning for them and take it to their apartment.  On days when their pcas don’t show up it falls to me to get them up and ready for the day.  My wife makes dinner for them, takes it over to them, and washes their dishes.  Later on she goes back to put them to bed.

• And then there was the big one. I got a call from a close friend of mine a few weeks ago informing me that his oldest boy had committed suicide.  He was 16 years old.  Max and I have been spending as much time as we can with the family.  My friend is a single parent with 3 boys (2 now) and the youngest is a close friend of my son.  And Max looked up to the older boy.

This is not everything that has happened but these are the biggest.

Max has been a trooper.  He has helped my friend and his grandparents whenever asked.

But with all of the stress over these situations and our exhaustion we hadn’t noticed that he was becoming very unhappy….until the bad behavior.  He can’t listen, he does what he wants, and he is very explosive when he doesn’t get his way.

We’ve had to call in child services and it has been recommended that if he breaks anything or hits us to be ready to call the police.

He’s a far cry from where he had been over the summer.  He is basically back to where he was when he was 7 and 8 years old.

We can see now that the stress has been unbearable for him too even though we didn’t notice it for awhile.

He has also told us that he hasn’t been getting enough time with us.  Well he has, a lot, but there haven’t been any close and happy times.  None of us has been in the best shape.  My wife has been exhausted as a result of taking care of the two of us while I was sick which doesn’t help her disability at all.  And now to be her parents’ caregiver is taking a toll as well.

But our priority has to be Max right now.  Yes, her parents need help but he needs more from us.

As I write this I can hear him in his toy room which is right next to my office.  He is working with his advocate cleaning up the thousand different messes.  He is acting calm and collected with her but this is following an explosion he had after his mother requested he turn down his music.

And it’s raining again.

Okay, so today is Monday.  I just got off the phone with Max’s teacher.

We have an issue but the school is trying to downplay it.  It might not sound very major to people but I think it does to a young child.

Basically what happened was that my son brought a box of fish fingers to have for lunch.  He is on a special diet and we had sent them in a gluten free batter.

Now he was only supposed to eat half of them and save the rest in the school refrigerator.

He didn’t understand that so he cooked them and only ate what he could; the rest he through away.

This happened on Thursday last week.  My wife made mention of it in the daily record that gets passed to and from school every day.

Apparently her comment was misunderstood.  Max was grilled about what happened and afterwards they concluded he was lying about the situation.

The result was he was placed on red!!

For those who don’t know what that is about some schools rate behavior with colors:

• green – safe
• yellow - some issues
• red - unsafe behavior

But wait a minute you might ask.  How is lying an unsafe behavior?

Good question.

It seems that unlike some of the other kids my son rarely or never does anything unsafe at school so they treat him differently.  For him, lying puts him in red territory.

To me this is funny…sad.  Max may have a lot of behaviors that aren’t so good but lying isn’t one of them.  It’s not that he doesn’t know what a lie is; he just likes telling the truth about everything.  Even things he shouldn’t.

So he was punished on Friday.

When he got home he was very angry.  Why did that happen?  Why had we called the school and gotten him punished?

He had no idea!

We called the school but it was closed for the weekend.  The teacher called us back this morning.  And oh, she said, it was just a misunderstanding.

“But you know that he had no idea what you were talking about?”  I asked her.

“He must have.  He admitted to lying about it.”

“I’m sorry but when Max is put on the spot and doesn’t even know what you are talking about he will tell you what he thinks you want to hear.”

She said she would talk to him about it and smooth things over.

I mentioned to my wife that he was now out of the running for the monthly prize.  All the kids that are on green for the whole month get to have a private lunch with the principal.  Because he has been on red forget about it.

My wife shrugged.  She said it’s not so bad; he doesn’t even care about the prize.  And he’ll forget about the punishment.

I’m not so sure.

I’ve heard the experts (therapists, doctors, well meaning parents) say things like “he’ll get over it” when something they consider minor happens.

Sometimes maybe and with some children but in a lot of cases I don’t believe it.

When I was growing up I spent a lot of time at my grandparents’ house.

One time their shower rod fell down and my granddad had to fix it.  I was blamed even though I had not been near it.  They claimed I had been swinging on it and that’s why it broke.

They weren’t generally like this so it was a shock that I was being blamed.  It hurt me very badly.  But guess what, everyone said I’d get over it.

I didn’t.

I ended up cutting back my time with them because it made me feel uncomfortable being there.

Same thing happened with my uncle.  I used to spend a lot of time at his house as well.  But then one day he blamed me for something that I had nothing to do with.  This man that I idolized ignored me for three days.

I was wounded.

I didn’t spend very much time with him after that either.

Well of course a lot of people will say that I was overly sensitive.

Perhaps I was.

But you never know what child is not going to just “get over it”!!

Will Max get over this punishment?

I don’t know.  I do know that there are a lot of things that he is keeping to himself that have hurt him over the years.

Parents, teachers, just well meaning people in general can hurt a child without knowing it.

I am becoming more aware of my actions around my son.  I can even see how other people’s actions can hurt him.

I think some actions may be unintentional and may be ignored by the kids but how you handle fixing these mistakes can affect them.

This was a misunderstood situation for Max.  How the teacher handles it could affect him adversely.

Do you ever wonder if you are raising your kids correctly?

A lot of parents don’t…

I was one of those.

I knew how my parents raised my siblings and me. We all turned out okay.

No we didn’t! We all have problems of one kind or another.

When it comes to raising my kid I had vowed that I wouldn’t raise him the way my parents and my uncle did me.

But this is what I know and I’ve noticed that I am doing the same thing.

I’ve been hearing and seeing a lot about abuse and good parenting.

I’m the first to admit that my skills are certainly not the best. But I started thinking…how bad are they?

So I started researching what is considered abuse, what is good discipline, and what is the difference between them.

It really seemed like a lot of “what one person considers abuse another person sees it is good parenting”.

I used to belong to a church that believes that when disciplining a child you must put a wooden spoon to good use.  In fact, in one family I know just the mention of the spoon causes the children to behave properly.

But I noticed that they get very frightened and begin to tremble at the thought of it.

This church believes that abuse is not using the spoon at all…because your kids won’t grow up to be fine adults.

But what ever your beliefs do you know what abuse is?  Do you really know what good discipline is?

It really opened my eyes to discover that yes I had some good parenting skills but some of the things I was doing can be considered abusive.

Now that I am aware I’m trying to doing things differently.

I decided to take what I learned and put it together in an eBook to help other parents out that are like me.

Where are you at?

• Are you satisfied with your parenting skills?

• Are you, like me, unsure that everything you are doing is “good parenting”?

• Do you know that “something isn’t quite right”?

Where ever you are at with your parenting skills, read my free eBook.  Find out what I have discovered.  For each of your skills you can decide: is it abuse or not.

‘ve been hearing the expression “mean girls” a lot from my wife lately. I’ve only heard it before from the movie starring Lindsay Lohan.  It is about a girl that joins a clique and is required to do mean, deceitful, and untrustworthy things.

But my wife informed me that it isn’t just a “movie thing”. Teenage girls deal with this every day either by being harassed by mean girls or becoming one themselves. What this means is, they become bullies.

Now I experienced bullies when I was growing up. 48 years ago I was in second grade. My bully sat next to me in class. He was always very polite and did what he was told to do in the room. But when we got outside the trouble would start. He would pick on me mercilessly. He would call me names, push me around, and knock me down. I took it for a long while but then I got fed up…and punched him. For the rest of the year we were friends. But he disappeared before third grade started.

Before you ask, I never mentioned the bullying to my dad so he didn’t recommend that I punch the boy. However, he was always big on standing up for yourself. He also made sure I understood that I should be protecting people that are weaker than I am. Therefore I never became a bully myself.

But you cannot stand up to a bully nowadays. If you do you could be suspended from school or even brought up on charges. Today kids have to tell their parents or their teachers and hope that someone will protect them. I’ve posted about the bullying my son is receiving on his van and what we’ve tried to do about it.

This mean girl thing is something new for me. Yes, in the passed couple of years I have seen videos of girls being beaten by other girls pretty severely. I didn’t know that girls either see it or experience it every day. My wife says there is a “mean girl” phase that they go through.

And it has hit home. The girls on the school van are taller and older than Max. According to my wife they are at that “mean girl” age. Not having other girls to pick on they’ve chosen my son. He knows that boys don’t hit girls but I don’t know what he’ll do if he is pushed far enough.

This is a new arena for him. He has always had issues with other boys. He plays with them. He fights with them. They split up. They become friends again.

But with girls it is different. They have always liked him. From the days when he was two years older and picking flowers for “older” women to today when he has always had a girlfriend, girls want to be with him. He has never fought with them or called them names. But now he has girls that don’t seem to like him at all. And he doesn’t know why. He has lately been feeling that he is worthlessness and this is only increasing his anxiety over it.

We continue to talk to the school and we finally got onto the school bus company. They have decided to install a camera in the van. But here is the problem. The monitor has been reporting Max lately for swearing during the ride to and from school. He believes my son is just being belligerent. He misses the different things the girls are doing to rile him up. It’s the things they quietly say and do to push his buttons. And the camera will miss it too. It will show my son getting angry but since there won’t be any sound no one will see what leads up to it.

This is something I have seen before. A close friend of mine has a daughter with Asperger’s syndrome who is in her late teens. When she was growing up her classmates would whisper hurtful things to her. They liked to see her get upset because then she would lash out at her “assailants”. And then she would be suspended from school. This was happening regularly and her parents could not get the teachers to understand or perhaps believe what was going on. As a result it was a constant battle with the system.

Now it seems the same thing is happening with Max. Even though the school is trying to do something, what can they really accomplish if they can’t see the instigators’ actions? It will be my friend’s daughter’s situation all over again. Max will be punished constantly for trying to defend himself and perhaps even get a suspension or two.

One thing we can look into is getting Max, or the girls, on a different bus. Another option is that I drive him to school and pick him up afterwards. I don’t like this idea but if it needs to be done I will do it.

While reading up on mean girls I came across the book the movie was based on: Queen Bees & Wannabees.  It describes this phenomenon and was written to help young girls understand and survive the “mean girls”. Maybe there is something in it that will help Max too.

November 14-20, 2010 is Bullying Awareness Week. This is a great way to learn how to effectively deal with bullying. Maybe if we all learn the lessons the website teaches then we will be able to protect our kids.

Queen Bees & Wannabees

At the start of the school year I wrote about the new van company that had taken over Max’s route.  As far as the driving is concerned things have been working out pretty well.  But a new concern has arisen that totally eclipses any problems we might have with transportation.

In the passed couple of weeks you may have seen this video on the news.  It concerns a dad, who fed up with his child’s treatment on the school bus, decided to take matters into his own hands:

Whether you agree with how he handled the situation if your child has been bullied you want to applaud him for doing something, anything to resolve the issue.

It has come to our attention that Max has been suffering from this, not by one child, but by all the children on his van.    As a result it has increased his feelings of worthlessness.  And when we discovered what was happening I wanted to react the same way as that dad.  But cooler heads, specifically my wife’s, prevailed.

There are several boys and two girls on his van.  The harassment started with all of the kids razzing him because he didn’t own a DSL game.  That is, my wife and I think this is when it started.  It continued to get worse when the name calling and swearing started.

Now, when he gets home, Max immediately tells us how he hates the van!  This is from a kid that had no problems all last year and through the summer.  When we initially questioned him and found out what was going on we called the school.  This resulted in all of the kids being put on “red” and spending time in the “quiet room”.

Like many schools Max’s is set up on a “green, yellow, red” discipline scheme.  Green means that the child is doing well; yellow means they have broken some of the rules; and red happens when a child is violent, threatens another child, or swears.

Finding out what was happening prompted my wife to immediately call the school.  They promised to look into it and they did it quickly unlike the dad’s school in the video.  His school only responded when the story hit the news.  Regarding his bus however, we understood why the monitor and driver never reported the incidents as is required; neither spoke English.

As I mentioned, Max’s van mates were disciplined.  The next day when my son was getting on the bus one of the students spoke to my wife about what had happened.  The child was angry that the kids had been punished and all of them assumed we were the ones that got them in trouble.  My wife responded that they got themselves in that situation not us.

She again called the school to report what the child had said.  They were surprised; the children had been admonished not to take revenge on Max or his family.  At the end of the day the one that had spoken out brought a letter of apology to us that he had written.  My wife hugged him and thanked him for it but suggested that all the kids start being nice to each other while going to and from the school.

But this didn’t stop the harassment.  Max’s dislike of the van only increased.  One child actually gave him a note that said “F*&k You”.  My wife sealed it in an envelope and sent it back to school.  More consequences.

My feeling is that talking to the school and then the van company should be the first steps we take to combat this kind of bullying.  What the video dad did could only be used as a last resort if nothing else was working. But at the same time he is now facing jail time for his actions so this would have to be thought about long and hard first.

In our case, we ended up getting a new monitor; this one speaks English.  The problem with this is that Max is now required to sit in a corner with the monitor between him and all the other kids.  My first thought was that this would single him out for more torture.  Bullies on the bus don’t give up very easily.

For 3 years we have been seeing family therapists. The goal has always been to help my wife, Max, and me to be a family as we work through his ADHD, Asperger’s, and Bipolar issues.

It hasn’t been easy. This is not because Max has been resisting us; even though he has. And it isn’t because we haven’t been learning anything; because we have.

It is because there hasn’t been any consistency. We have gone through 5 or 6 different therapists. As each one comes in we have to start from the beginning. And they all start with what I call “the happy face” pages. That is, Mom, Dad, and Max are handed our own piece of paper. They have a number of faces drawn on them; each with a different emotion. One is happy; one is sad; one is angry; and so on.

As we go from individual to individual we must choose a face and describe what it means to us. Quite often we pick the one that we are feeling at that moment and talk about it.

The next week there will be another session similar to this. Then the following week we get another variation.

But we never see any changes!!

And Max doesn’t like to sit in these sessions. He is a doer. He doesn’t like just sitting around and talking about his feelings. It is okay if he is working on his bicycle while doing it. But he isn’t going to stare at a piece of paper and chatter on and on.

As usual our current therapist started just like all of the others: with “the happy face”. He soon discovered this wasn’t working for any of us. He changed things up to make sure Max is involved. And now he comes in with a schedule:

• We do 5 minutes of check in. That is, how is each one of us feeling today? Pick out a day since the last meeting that meant a lot to us and talk about it.

• Following that is a formal meeting which lasts about 20 minutes where we now talk about different issues. This is the time that Max hates the most and we generally cannot get him involved.

• Then we continue our conversation for 20 minutes through play. But we don’t do it by sitting on the couch. Recently we all moved out to the driveway and stood in a circle far enough away so that we could toss a ball to each of us. Before throwing it we would specify who was going to get it. That person would then say something nice about us. For example, Max has the ball and he wants to throw it to me. I would say something like “you are a great engineer.” He would then toss the ball to me and it is my turn.

• At the end it is Max time. For the last 15 minutes Max takes the therapist off to see his new project. Mom and Dad retreat back to the house.

This week something different happened. We went through the 5 minute check in and as expected Max would not get involved in the formal session. We continued on without him. The therapist brought out several sheets of paper which contained the following diagram:

As you can see it is a triangle. At the bottom right is the word “Actions”. On the bottom left is “Feelings”. At the top is the word “Beliefs”.

Our first goal was to list some of the actions that Max does that bothers us:

• Swearing

• Yelling and screaming

• Smashing

• Poking

• Inappropriate attention-getting

The words on the diagram are related. What are the feelings that Max has that are causing these actions? We came up with the following:

• Anger

• Anxiety

• Fear

• Sadness

• Insecurity

• Loneliness

Since Max isn’t here we are just guessing that these are what he is feeling. They aren’t numbered because they don’t necessarily correspond one on one with his actions. For example “sadness” does not necessarily incur “poking”.

Just like actions are caused by feelings; feelings are a result of the beliefs we have about ourselves. In this case we came up with:

• “Nobody loves me”

• “Nobody understands me”

• “I’m a horrible person”

• “I can’t do anything right”

• “I’m stupid”

These were our best guesses as to how Max feels about himself.

What I have described here is the furthest along we have ever gotten during the last 3 years of therapy. Forget about everything else I’m now seeing something we can work with in helping our family.

But this wasn’t the only surprise for this session. Max joined us once we had gotten this far. He came and sat between his Mother and me and looked at what we came up with. We showed him his actions and we told him how they were connected to his feelings. He looked through the list and pretty much agreed to what we had.

We then explained how beliefs fit into the picture and how they cause the feelings which spark the actions. We told him we didn’t really know what he believed but we had made some guesses. He read the list and nodded but then he said something else:

“I feel worthless.”

He said it very quietly.

We were stunned. We had always thought that we had done our best to build him up: “You did a great job on that project”, “Thank you for cleaning the sink. It looks very nice.”

But now we are seeing that something is being lost in translation. And the worst part is this path feeds on itself. What I mean is:

• Max feels worthless

• It makes him angry, sad, insecure, and lonely.

• So he screams, swears, and smashes things.

• People get angry with him so he feels more worthless and this continues the circle.

We’ve had a break through! Finally after 3 years! This is wonderful!

So now what do we do with this information?

But as the psychologist says to his patient, “Our time is up. We will continue this at our next session.”

So this week we should be discovering the next step.

Could this help in your family situations?

“Mrs Corr? This is Max’s van company. School starts tomorrow and we wanted to let you know that we will be picking him up at quarter of 8 in the morning.

“That won’t be enough time. School starts at 8:20 and it takes an hour to get there.”

“It will work. We’ve done an assessment and we know how long it will take.”

Funny, after 3 years of sending our kid to school on a van they still don’t believe we know what we are talking about. After 7:30 in the morning the traffic gets so bad that there is no way they can do it in less time. Hey, as it is when we drive down during a non-traffic time of day it will take us 40 minutes.

So on Max’s first day of school we were waiting at 7:30. He was so excited; he really missed being there.

At 7:35 it was: “Where’s the van?” “It’s on its way. It will be here in 10 minutes.”

At 7:40 it was: “Where’s the van?” “It’s on its way. It will be here in 5 minutes.”

At 7:45 it was the same thing.

At 7:50 it was the parents’ turn to ask: “Where’s the van?”

It actually showed at 8:00. Now we know that it isn’t going to get the kids to school on time that day. We talked to the driver and told her that just maybe she may want to pick them up a little earlier the next day. She agreed and informed us she still had 2 more to pick up before she headed off to school.

We got a call from the school at 9 o’clock to inform us the kids arrived safely…at 8:50; a half hour late.

True to her word though the driver showed up earlier the next day. She was out front at 7:30. We don’t know yet what time they got to school.

Max’s school started on September 1. Public schools don’t start until September 8. Traffic always becomes quite heavy after that. I can’t wait to see what time Max will be getting there then.

As my wife said the vans are required to get the kids there on time so this is their problem not ours.

But it bothers me too. I mean, as I mentioned earlier we have been doing this for 3 years. Every year we go through the same thing. A new van company gets the town contract and they have to be trained all over again by the parents.

We tell them one thing and they insist they know better than we do. They always try to do it differently. But in the end they find out we were right and they conform. Of course they don’t admit that we know what we are talking about. They call it their “learning process”.

It’s always the same. They don’t seem to understand that we parents are always thinking about our kids. And we have been doing it longer than the van companies.

I shouldn’t really complain. They are getting my son to school. Not only that, most, if not all, parents with special needs kids go through this. And it’s not just with the van companies. Every year a friend of mine ends up suing the town he lives in because they aren’t providing the services required by law to his daughter.

But really it is all a result of these different organizations trying to keep costs down while providing the best services they can. Add to that the dire straits our economy is in right now. I can really understand where they are coming from but even so it’s my kids or it’s your kid and we always want the best for them…don’t we?

So maybe the ride wasn’t that great but on the first and second day of school Max came home excited! Things are going great; he’s happy; he even has a new girlfriend.

So welcome back to school and no worries with the van company…

Ever since he has been a baby Max has been afraid of dogs. Big dogs. It is because he used to spend a lot of time at his uncle’s and aunt’s house. They owned three large German Shepherds and Golden Retrievers.

Now, they were never very frightening dogs; they were just so happy to see us when we would visit. They would come galloping at us; tails and tongues wagging; looking for attention. You can just imagine what this would do to a baby who was just starting to crawl to see these giants coming to play.

My son is nine years old now but he hasn’t gotten over his fright. If we meet one out walking he will hide behind me until the threat is gone.

On the other hand he loves horses. He can’t get enough of them. If we are at a carnival and there are pony rides we can’t keep him off them.

This year we discovered a horse camp. When we asked him if he’d like to go for two weeks he was ecstatic! He understood though it would not be all fun and games. The program requires each child to get involved in brushing and cleaning the horses; mucking out the stalls; and taking care of the saddles and bridles.

He has always wanted to live with horses so for him this wasn’t a problem.

Imagine our surprise when he, and we, discovered he is afraid of them. No, he doesn’t have a problem climbing up on top of one and riding. This he loves. The problem comes in when he stands beside them. Even ponies are taller than he is. To get close to brush and wash them is very difficult.

At this camp volunteers are assigned to each child to teach them what to do but it is the kid’s responsibility to get the work done. On the second day of camp when we picked Max up we received a complaint from the program manager. He was not doing his job. He was only standing at the side watching his volunteer do all the work.

At the end of the day the kids get to actually ride “their” horses. The manager complained that Max still expected his turn even though he hadn’t earned it. On the way home we asked him what was going on. This is when we learned about his fears.

On Wednesday, the third day, on the way to camp we suggested that he just try to do a little bit. If he could do that each day it would help him get over his fears. He promised to try.

At the end of the day I picked him up. The manager cornered me to complain yet again that Max wasn’t doing his job. Not only that she informed me that if he wasn’t going to do it then she didn’t want us to bring him back the following week. The worst part of it was she said this in front of him.

I stopped her and informed her what we had planned with Max and I asked her:

“Did he do a little bit more today?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Well that is our plan. Since he is so afraid of the horses we are trying to get him through this by getting him to do a little bit more each day.”

She seemed to like this idea and agreed to keep him a little bit longer.

On the way home Max told me that he had cleaned the bridle. I then told him a story:

“I once knew a nine year old boy that grew up on a farm. Like you he was afraid of horses. One of his jobs was to go inside stalls and clean them out every day. He didn’t have a problem with this except when the horses were still in them. This always made him nervous.

One day he decided he didn’t want to be afraid so he pushed himself to do a little bit more than the day before. Then each day he did more and more until one day he discovered he wasn’t afraid of them anymore.

But this required that he decide that he didn’t want to be afraid.”

Max liked the story, “Who was the little boy?”

“It was me.”

His eyes got big and round, “Really?”

This was when he resolved that he could do it too.

My wife and I had great hopes when we dropped him off on Thursday but the fates weren’t going to be kind that day. We dropped him off and discussed the plan with the program manager. She claimed to understand his fears and told us that she would design Max’s training so that he would do ten percent of the work and his volunteer would do the rest.

When we picked him up we were informed that he had done absolutely nothing that day. As a result they didn’t allow him to ride the horses.

We asked Max what it was all about; especially since he had had big plans to start working and get over his fears. He gave us a list of complaints:

• His volunteer ignores him.

• She refuses to help him when he is confused on how to do something.

• On Wednesday she apparently tried to force him to ride standing up in the saddle with his arms outstretched. When he expressed his fear of doing that she tried to drag him to the horse.

• She informed him on Thursday that he would be required to clean the horse’s hooves. This entails standing beside and against the horse while facing its tail. You then bend over, pick up the hoof, and use a pick to dig out dirt and muck from around the shoes. When he told her he was afraid to do it because the horse might kick him, her answer was “too bad you are doing it”.

When we complained the head of the program told us, “Max is lazy and really doesn’t want to be here.”

“Um, not after the way he has been treated by your volunteer. Work has never bothered him. He loves horses and loves to ride them. It was his choice to come here. It was also his choice to keep coming back.”

Of course, the volunteer denied that any of his complaints were true. Because she was the “adult” the farm decided Max was lying. Funny thing is he hasn’t really learned how to lie yet. Any attempts he has made in the past never worked out for him so no matter what the situation he tells the truth.

Certainly he is a child and everyone’s actions may have seemed much worse to him than to the adults around him. So perhaps they were both right. But at the same time I got the strong feeling that both the volunteer and the program manager did not like him. They didn’t have any problems expressing their dislike either.

The results left him in a bad mood for the rest of the day. Nothing went right for him. And in the end, after the upset he refused to go back on Friday. We called the farm and told them Max had decided not to go back at all and they were welcome to find another child to fill his position.

Funny thing is the next Monday morning we received a call from them, “Where’s Max?”

“He’s not coming.”

“Is he going to be here the rest of the week?”

“This was discussed last Friday.”

“I know all about the discussion but if he is not coming back we have to fill his slot.”

“Hmm, since you know all about it then you already know he isn’t going to be there this week.”

I’m not really trying to point fingers. I just want to express some of the difficulties Max had last week. We will be looking for another horse farm that might be able to help him through his fears.

Catchy title huh? Why would anyone want to reinforce negative behaviors? Certainly not parents! We don’t want to raise our kids to be adults who have tantrums or scream or steal or any number of other bad things.

When I was writing my post on Modeling Behaviors I had been reading a lot of information on that topic. I came across something today about how parents knowingly or unknowingly reinforce behaviors in our kids that are inappropriate.

How do we do that?

You can probably guess one that a lot of people do. Their kid has been acting badly all day and they are exhausted. The kid now asks for something he really want and the parents refuse. But the child keeps asking. Constantly. Over and over again. Now he is having a tantrum.

To stop all of the noise the parents give in. The child has learned a huge lesson: to get what he wants he only needs to have a meltdown.

I don’t know how many times my wife and I used to see these actions as being part of his adhd or his bipolar disorder or his asperger’s syndrome and just let things go. We would end up giving him what he wanted. But this only made him happy for a few minutes before he would find something else he wanted and the cycle would start all over again.

And you know, I can’t say that he was even happy for that short amount of time. It always seems that he is not happy unless he is unhappy…however that works.

But there is more to it than just that. What happens when a child misbehaves? She gets her parents’ attention! Every time we lose our temper, yell, or lecture she has won!

Yes she has.

It happens so often in my family. Max will begin doing inappropriate things and will be oblivious to our reactions until we scream. Then it is “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” and he has the expectation that everything will be fine.

It doesn’t matter if the attention is good or bad it is now focused on him. He has learned how to “push his parents’ buttons”. What is going to happen when he grows up? He will probably continue to use these methods to either get his way or get the attention he craves.

We all, as parents, have to decide whether we want our children to learn good techniques to use when they grow up or continue to use inappropriate ways to interact with other people.

If we decide that we want these kids to be good and moral adults then we have to “practice what we preach”. That is, stop the swearing, the yelling, and the tantrums. Not only do our children see it is okay to do these things because their parents do it but they also get all the attention they want.

Oh, and about that attention. Why are we giving them all of this when they are doing bad things? They know what they are doing is wrong; we don’t need to spend 15 minutes or more explaining it. Tell them what you expect of them and then go away.

This serves a two-fold purpose:

• It lets the kids know that they must stop what they are doing.

• It doesn’t give them all of the attention they are looking for.

If they need attention give it to them for better reasons. Recognize them for a job well done.

“Great job taking out the trash.”

“I love how you straightened up your toy room. What do you say we play a game now?”

“Hey, you kids are playing really well together. Let’s go for an ice cream.”

There are a lot of ways we can give them good attention. You probably give them some already but do you find that they receive more bad attention then good? Turn it around.

And I’ll bet you that the more good attention they receive there will be less need for the bad. They will find that they are much happier without all of the yelling, swearing, and tantrums.

What do you think?

It is now the middle of the summer. What would it be for a nine year old boy if he didn’t have his first job? Max was approached by our next door neighbors to see if he would be willing to water their plants and vegetable garden while they were away.

His answer? “Well, duh!”

Not really, he said he was interested.

“How much would you like to be paid?”

“Ummm, $2.00″

“Okay, we were thinking of paying you $2.00 per day. That would be $20.00. Would that work?”

“Yes, Yes!” And the deal was set.

The job was not a surprise to me. They had come over originally and asked me if it would be okay to hire him. I thought it was a great plan. It is time that he started learning about working and paying jobs.

Just before they left they dropped off a map of their yard and a schedule. Hmm, more complicated than I thought. But really, the first part was simple: use the sprinkler on one section of their lawn every other day. That’s easy enough.

On the other days the vegetable garden gets soaked three times; each flower bed in the front, back, and side yards get watered twice and the 3 potted plants get simple sprays.

Max was excited; he was now going to be earning money for doing work in the neighborhood. He is already planning to open a landscaping company…when he is ten years old. The new company will water plants and trim lawn edges.

The first day was easy; all he had to do was set up the sprinkler on one section of lawn and let it run for twenty minutes. Instead of going off to play he stayed and danced through the water. You can bet Mom made a rule that from now on he had to wear a bathing suit when doing this job.

The next day was not very difficult but it was very boring to a nine year old boy. He had to soak seven separate gardens in the yard by hand. When completed he had to do it all over again a second time. The vegetable garden actually got three separate soakings. But he managed very well.

Day three was the sprinkler again so this went well. It was the following day when things really fell apart. This was soaking day again. He started out okay but it was late in the day and he was losing control.

It started with distraction. He became absorbed with changing the settings on the hose nozzle over and over again. He started with “mist” which was a very light spray and moved up through each until he got to “jet” which just pounded water out of the hose. This would have been okay if he hadn’t been pointing directly it at the vegetables at the time. Deep ruts started appearing in the ground and leaves were crushed.

I now had to guide him over to the plants but he couldn’t keep his mind on the job. He kept flipping the water over his head and at his mother. It all culminated in him dropping the hose and scrambling up the lone tree on the front lawn in the dark. While his Mom finished the watering I spent my time talking Max down and leading him around the yard in an attempt to settle him down.

Every once in awhile he would remember that he had a job to do. He would run over to Mom and wrest the hose from her hand and continue watering. But this wouldn’t last very long before he would be off in his head again.

On the plus side, by the time the day’s job was done he had calmed down and was ready to go on into bed.

These people have two driveways, one on the front of the house, and the other on the side. Two days later at Max’s watering time we discovered the front drive being paved. This meant that there would be no watering that day. And he had just done the back the night before so this was out.

The next night he was able to start over again but had to adjust the schedule to make sure the garden and plants got enough water. Then the side drive was completed and more planning had to be done. The paver knew that he was cutting into my son’s schedule and therefore was losing money. He hired Max to do a little paving with him. He paid him $2.00 per driveway covering any lost wages.

For the rest of the days Max watered everything and did his best to get on schedule. My neighbors arrived back last night so he hasn’t had time yet to settle up with them.

Except for the one day when his ADHD and Bipolar kicked in Max did an excellent job. But I think it also gave him a chance to start learning what it will be like in the real world when he gets older and needs to earn money.