Posts tagged ‘kids’

‘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.

“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.

Have you ever heard the phrase “The Honeymoon Period”?

A honeymoon is a trip or holiday that is taken by a couple that has just gotten married. The honeymoon period is the early harmonious time in their relationship.

The phrase can also be applied to other situations such as the first few months of a newly elected president. People generally give their new officials a lot of freedom in that period; then assess their performances at the end of that time. Then, as is often the case, discord results as it becomes apparent that their leaders cannot live up to expectations.

But it can also refer to changes in family life. Recently I have written several posts about the new House Rules we have been implementing in our home. My son Max was not thrilled initially with them; especially when they were posted on our living room wall.

But then he conformed to them. They went up on Monday. He was great Monday and all of Tuesday. Some of the rules required the loss of some of his allowance for infractions. He was okay with that. In fact if he thought we were too lenient he would take more money out himself.

But then Wednesday morning the “you know what” hit the fan. He woke up angry and attacked anyone and anything in his path. Before the school van arrived at 7:15 a.m. he had lost his whole allowance for this week from all of the hitting, swearing, screaming, and throwing things. The only thing that finally settled him down was the required time out. Because of all the problems it lasted twenty minutes. He also lost his current most favorite toy for the day.

Not only was that unexpected for him but the bigger shock was when next week’s allowance chart was posted and he started losing money from that as well. He has informed us that he will not follow the rules anymore. He blames them for the increased number of tantrums he has been having. And you know, he is probably right. He doesn’t like the idea of losing his freedom no matter how unhappy it makes him.

The “honeymoon period” is over. Monday and Tuesday he was testing the waters. On Wednesday was the beginning of the resistance. According to our counselors if we stick to it these problems should all be over in a week. I hesitate to mention it but it takes three to four weeks to break habits, no matter how bad they are.

At the same time we have to remember that Max has been diagnosed with:

• Bipolar Disorder – with the accompanying rages and explosive temper tantrums, and oppositional and aggressive behaviors.

• ADHD – including interruptions and intrusions on others; and not appearing to listen.

These issues may make it harder in the near term to enforce the rules.

So Wednesday was day one of the resistance. He battled us constantly. My wife and I were strong and consistently enforced the consequences.

By Friday morning Max had started to conform again; he has only lost twenty cents since Wednesday night. But he was unhappy. He has finally realized he is really losing money from his allowance. He has been telling us that it is too hard to follow the rules. We asked him why:

• Swearing is too much of a habit; he doesn’t know how to stop. We responded that he never swears in school. Not only that he has already been doing it less at home since we instituted the rules.

• He doesn’t understand the yelling and whining rule. I assume it is based on the fact that his parents still do it a little bit and he sees that.

• There are other rules he doesn’t get. These are obvious ones like disobeying and threatening. We think these are really delaying tactics. They are pretty straight forward.

Even though he has the disorders which may make the rules harder to enforce; just the fact that he is a child who hasn’t had a consistent set of rules will cause him to fight back.

At the same time, this is only the start. The rules were only defined on Monday; this is only Friday. He will learn them and he will eventually conform to them.

As long as we stay consistent.

In my first post on house rules I mentioned five problems my son Max has that we have to resolve:

• He isn’t clear on the rules.

• He isn’t clear on the consequences.

• In school he has a defined set of rules and consequences but at home there is nothing.

• His parents are not always together on what his consequences should be.

• His parents haven’t been modeling the required behaviors.

In the following post on house rules I addressed the first four issues. But what about issue number five?

What does it mean to “model behavior”?

First of all, children imitate the adults around them. This is an excellent way of learning. A child wants to know how to open a door. She cannot figure out how to do it herself so she watches those that can do it. She takes note of how they grasp the knob; turn it; then pull it open. With a little practice she will be able to do it herself.

It is the same thing with bad habits. If a child notices that his parents are constantly swearing they will do it as well. It doesn’t matter that he has been told that swearing is wrong he has seen it in action so he will continue to do it. Not only that he might become very confused. He will wonder why his parents are telling him that it is bad to swear; it must really be okay because they are doing it.

We set up several rules for Max including:

• No swearing

• No hitting or kicking

• No yelling, whining, or screaming

• No disobeying parents

• Ask politely for things

It is our job to model the behaviors we want our son to use. This means when we are angry we have to talk calmly and assertively. If we want Max to do something we must respect him by asking him politely. If he disobeys we don’t hit or kick him.

How are we doing? Swearing is kept to a minimum; every once in a while you will hear an expletive in the house. We yell if things aren’t working properly and sometimes we are rude in asking for things.

Max listens and hears all of this. And because he is learning from us he is repeating them, and he practices these actions. But as you can see from our house rules these aren’t the behaviors we want. For him it’s “you are doing it, why can’t I?”

It is our job to show him the best behaviors; we can’t just tell him. That means we have to stop the yelling, swearing, and rudeness. We have to be good role models.

We want Max to grow to become a good, responsible adult. It is our responsibility, just like with all parents, to “up our game”. That is, be the best role models we can be. No matter where we are at today we can always find something to improve upon.

If we don’t suit our actions to our words then our children will not become the kind of adults we want them to be.

Recently I wrote about raising my 9 year old son Max and the fact that there were no consistent rules in our house. My wife and I had been at our wits end trying to figure out how we were going to raise this kid right.

We read a lot of books and listened to parents, educators, and counselors. We tried implementing all of the suggestions but nothing seemed to work.

Recently we started working with both a family and a parent counselor. The first comes a couple of times a month, generally on Saturdays, so that Max will be involved in the session. The second comes every week in the morning to work with just my wife and me.

Several weeks ago they both asked us the same questions independently:

What are our house rules?

So we rattled off several things: no hitting, no swearing, and no yelling, among other things.

What are the consequences if the rules are broken?

We gave some answers like “he gets a time out if he does A” but then sometimes “we take a toy away” and “we have been known to take away a privilege or a special outing.”

Where are the rules and consequences posted?

Umm, nowhere.

Does Max know the rules and consequences?

He knows the rules; we tell him all the time. And, well, he has experienced the consequences so he knows something will happen if he does anything wrong.

Both counselors shook their heads. They suggested it might be best if we had a joint session with both counselors to come up with some rules. We agreed.

Hooray, finally we are going to find out what we can do about House Rules!

We all joined together last week and hammered out a list of rules. These are some of them:

• No swearing

• No hitting or kicking

• No yelling, whining, or screaming

• No disobeying parents

• Ask politely for things

You get the idea. We have several more but these will do for examples.

We didn’t come up with consequences on that day but one thing was suggested. We had recently started giving Max an allowance. With it he could follow his passion with buying as many things as he could or put it in the bank. But that’s another story. In this case the idea was brought up that for some of the consequences he could lose some of his money. That was something to think about because our consequences weren’t working.

We scheduled a second group meeting for this passed Monday. This time it was going to be after school so Max could contribute to the discussion.

When the day came both counselors arrived and sat down in the living room. Max was dropped off from school, came in the house, and asked the usual question: “Who’s coming today.”

When we told him he was disappointed. We were surprised because he likes both people and generally has fun with them. On this day, we think that with both parents and both counselors present he may have felt intimidated. He adamantly refused to join in the meeting.

“But Max, this is about setting house rules. Last week you were excited when we told you this was happening.”

“Yeah, well, not today.”

We told him that we were going to do it anyway with or without his contributions. He shrugged and told us that we had better make tougher rules for the parents otherwise he won’t follow any of his.

So we got down to business. We pulled out a large cardboard sheet and in one column wrote out our list of rules. While we were doing this we could hear Max muttering and swearing in the other room; he wanted one of us to play. He even went so far as to disrupt the discussions several times.

The counselors just shrugged and smiled. Their response was that he didn’t like what we were doing and didn’t want it to happen. We persevered. Once we were done listing the rules we started on the consequences for each:

• Loses five cents for each swear.

• Five minute time out and a loss of privileges for hitting and kicking.

• For yelling, whining, or screaming Max will first get a warning. Then he will lose five cents each time he does it.

• The first time he disobeys he will get a warning. After that he will lose twenty-five cent for each incident.

• If he doesn’t ask politely he won’t get what he asked for.

When we were done we called Max in to see our results. He started to read the board and then complained it was all about him and there was nothing about the parents. We reassured him that we would have to follow the same rules.

But he wasn’t happy and he tried to tear the sheet down the middle. We stopped him and taped it up on the living room wall so that we would all be able to see it.

At the same time we attached a weekly sheet of pictures of one hundred nickels. For each transgression nickels would be crossed off. Whatever was left at the end of the week would be what he gets for allowance.

Max asked a very smart question: “What if I do so many bad things that I go over the amount of money I get?”

We told him that it would then carry over into the following week.

The counselors think that it will only take a week before Max starts following the rules. That would be nice and we will be waiting with bated breath.

Twenty four hours later we have only heard two swears coming out of his mouth. Amazing! There has been very little screaming or whining. Awesome!

So far we have only crossed out a half a dozen nickels but we have noticed that he has been punishing himself too. He personally has scratched out another forty. He says it is because he deserved it. Seems like he doesn’t think our consequences were powerful enough.

Another interesting reaction was that when he realized each swear was worth five cents but disobeying would cost him twenty-five cents. His eyes widened; his mouth opened in a circle; and he clapped his hand over it.

Do I think this is it? Is he now going to follow all the rules?

I find it hard to believe that it would happen this quickly. I think that he will probably start testing us to see what he can get away with. It may get worse before it gets better. As long as my wife and I keep a united front it should eventually work.

As the counselors were leaving after the meeting my wife said “If we had realized it was so easy to set up these rules we would have done this a long time ago.”

But they told us that most parents know how to do it but they don’t realize it; they, and we, need to be shown the first time.

This takes care of four of Max’s five problems mentioned in the last post. I’ll talk about the fifth one, modeling behaviors for him, in my next one.

For a long time my wife and I have been working with our son Max to teach him right from wrong, respect, and discipline. The problem was that we were letting some things slide. That is, we would let him get away with doing things he shouldn’t.

Why were we doing that?

Max has been diagnosed with ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, and Asperger’s Syndrome among other things. We noticed, for example, that some bipolar children swear constantly. It is part of their “condition”. Parents of this kind of child tend to ignore the bad language because there are other things more important to resolve like bad tempers. We were doing the same thing.

We also looked at Max’s brother who is quite a bit older. He is a great kid; the things we did to raise him were the things he needed. We tried to raise our younger son the same way but it wasn’t working. We have felt clueless at what to do.

We finally learned that Max is no different than “normal” children. Yes, he may have a lot of disorders but there are things he should not be getting away with. If a disorder is preventing him from “naturally” learning what he needs to do he needs to be provided the tools to help him. Let’s face it, it won’t matter that he has a disorder when he is an adult; if he does something wrong he will have to suffer the consequences just like anyone else.

He has several problems that are his parents’ responsibility to resolve:

• He isn’t clear on the rules. Why? Because they keep changing for him. Today he might swear and he will get a timeout. The same swearing tomorrow may cause him to lose a favorite toy for awhile. And yesterday it may have been just ignored.

• At the same time he isn’t clear on the consequences. I mentioned above how they can keep changing.

• In school he has a defined set of rules and consequences. He knows what to expect and he is comfortable with that. At home there is nothing. In some ways he feels unsafe because there is nothing in place to help him. Sure, one day a parent will tell him that swearing is not allowed but guess what? A lot of times he gets away with it. In school he would get a consequence automatically.

• His parents haven’t been modeling the required behaviors. As a result he is unsure what is right or wrong. Dad might hit his thumb with a hammer and swear a little bit but then will turn around and tell Max that swearing is wrong. Which is it? And why is it okay for Daddy to do it and not him?

• His parents are not always together on what his consequences should be. Mom may require a time out for swearing and Dad may just ignore it. At school everyone, adults and children, follow the exact same rules.

My wife and I knew that something had to be done. We had tried out some structure at home on weekends and that works a lot better for Max than just a lot of free time.

A doctor one time told us that we would be great parents for some children but not for Max. He needs strict parents with a lot of structure. We were too laid back to handle him. The doctor suggested we watch The Dog Whisperer and Supernanny to get some ideas on how we should be acting.

Okay we tried that, Supernanny suggested setting up house rules and consequences but never gave concrete examples on what they could be and how to implement them.

For awhile we have been allowing Max’s counselor, child advocate, and mentor teach him a lot of the proper ways to be. I’m not saying we stopped being parents; we kept trying different methods but nothing seemed to work for us. But I think it has more to do with the fact that we, as parents, are not always together on the things we should be doing.

Finally a ray of sunshine opened up. In my next post I will talk more about what has happened recently.