Posts tagged ‘respect’

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.

Recently my wife, son, and I went to see the new “Karate Kid” movie:

Even though I liked the old version for me there were two pluses to this one:

1. It stars Jackie Chan; I will go to see anything that he is in.
2. It also includes a rising young star named Jaden Smith. I don’t know much about him but I am a big fan of his parents Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith.

It took a long time to get there though Max kept saying, “Not today.” We were finally able to convince him to go. When we did he was mesmerized. He loved it and so did we.

Not only that, there were things I could take away from it. I don’t want to give away much of the story but part of it is about a karate master that trains a young boy. His methods are a good way to teach children respect. If you’ve seen the old version with Pat Morita and Ralph Macchio you may remember the “wax on, wax off” scene where the boy is required to wax a car with one hand and remove it with the other:

This continues until he learns a lesson from it.

It reminds me of the television show “Strict Parents“.  If a child needs a consequence she is generally required to complete a chore over and over again until she understands what she did wrong.

With all of the discipline he receives the boy in the movie goes from being unhappy and sullen to enjoying life.

It seems like there are things we can use with Max. He tends to get belligerent if he is told to do things even as minor as “pick up your clothes.” Generally he gets time outs and the loss of a favorite toy for awhile. Maybe if he has to do something over and over again he will finally understand.

But there is a problem; Max has become more aggressive since seeing it. If he is in a pool with other boys he has been convincing them to karate chop each other with him.

He has also been coming up behind his mother or me when we are sitting down. He will then wrap his arms around our necks to hug us. He then starts squeezing tighter and tighter, oblivious to us telling him to stop. He only ends it when we yell and then he feels like the victim. He runs into his room and slams the door.

A karate kid he’s not…yet. A lot of parents will send their kids off to martial arts school to teach them discipline. These children learn that it is not good to use it as a weapon. I have no doubt that Max can pick up this skill without a problem. But I’m not sure he would understand that he is not to use it on other people. I mentioned the playing around in the pool he does.

I am also speaking from experience. He is a very good wrestler and the coaches love having him on their teams. The problem is that we have not been able to make him aware that he cannot just perform a wrestling move on his elderly grandmother just because she happens to be in the room.

So perhaps a “wax on, wax off” style will work better. This is one way of teaching kids respect; maybe he can learn it too.

My son Max is an “old soul”.  There are many different meanings for this term such as:

I don’t believe my son is one of these.  When people meet him, however, they get a sense he may be older than he is.  I believe this is because he thinks so himself.  He considers himself an adult trapped in a child’s body.

Because of this he believes that he should be able to converse with adults on an equal basis.  He should also be able to tell other adults, including his parents, what to do and when to do it.  This can be a cause for annoyance when he needs to be disciplined.

The one thing, however, that other people find initially cute but later can annoy them is the way that he assumes that he can automatically call them by their first names.  I first noticed it when I heard him being very personal with his Cub Scout den leader.  He wasn’t calling him “Mister ….”; it was just “Bob”.  Finding this a little disconcerting I pulled Bob aside and asked  him what he preferred.  It turns out he would rather “Mister” along with either his last or first name.  ”Mister Bob” works fine for him and he thanked me for asking.

Ever since then I will correct Max if he forgets the terms “Mr”, “Mrs”, “Ms”, or “Miss” when addressing adults.  For example, he always refers to his teacher as “Dana”.  I will respond with “Miss Dana”.  The first time I did it he told me that she was married and didn’t like “Miss”.  My answer was that he should then call her either “Mrs Dana” or “Ms Dana”.  I didn’t bother with the last name since all the teachers use their first names preceded by “Mr” or “Miss” in his school.

In a recent post I talked about a trip we made to Battleship Cove in Fall River, Massachusetts.  While there I noticed he was constantly referring to one of the dads as “Jack”.  When I mentioned it to the dad he said that Max had asked him if it was okay and he said yes, it didn’t bother him.  I smiled and shrugged; Jack didn’t know what he was in for.

For the next 12 hours Max was constantly insisting that “Jack” look at this or come over here or get him that or…  Literally every 2 minutes he was demanding something of Jack.

Shortly after our conversation I heard him calling another parent by her first name, “Barbara”.  Again, I asked her if this was okay and she told it me it was fine.  Several hours later she found me and told me it was bothering her that she had agreed to it.  No wonder, like with Jack, Barbara was hearing her first name being used constantly by this 9 year old boy.  She was finding it very disrespectful.  But she did not want to be called by her last name; “Ms Barbara” worked better for her.

Okay, from then on whenever Max called her or mentioned her name I would correct him by saying “Ms Barbara”.  At the same time Jack seemed to be ignoring him more and more when he would call him.   I started referring to him as “Mr Jack” from then on.  By the end of the trip my son was calling them both by their preferred methods.

I noticed two things as a result of this change:

When I was my son’s age there was a program on television about a young family.  After 45 years I can still “see” it in my head and I can “hear” their interactions.  One thing that struck me was that instead of calling their parents “Mom” and “Dad” they used their first names.  The first time I heard it I thought it was cool.  I tried referring to my parents by their first names but they stopped that very quickly.  They found it very disrespectful and I’ve never forgotten it.

I wasn’t doing it out of disrespect and I certainly don’t think Max is.  He has very few friends; most kids don’t know how to handle him when is showing asperger’s, bipolar, or adhd symptoms.  As a result he spends most of his time with adults: his teachers, counselors, advocate, therapist, and parents.  So not only does he have difficulty relating to other kids but he also ends up trying to treat adults as equals.

My little “old soul” is learning how to be respectful.  He is also learning how to play with other children his age.  This is because we are not only introducing him to more and more kids but his counselor is teaching him how to play with them.

Will he always be an “old soul”?  Only time will tell.

Do you ever find, like me, that there are things that you want to get done but other things just show up to push them off?  I find this happens a lot when I am writing my posts.  Today is one such example.  I have several posts in mind but this idea showed up this morning.

Among all of the odd jobs I do such as PCA work, website development, leg work for a charity, writing; I also have several clients that I do handyman work for.  Working like this allows me to be home on a regular basis for two very important reasons.  Reason 1 is my son Max.  I have talked about him a lot in my posts.  He is 8 years old and has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, adhd, odd, and aspergers/pdd.  With all of these issues he can be very difficult to manage.

Reason 2 is my wife who is disabled.  Because of this she cannot care for Max all by herself.

In previous posts and those I write in the future I address all of this but today I got to paint.  One of my clients bought a fixer upper with her husband a year ago.  He is gone now but the work still needs to be done.  Her problem is that she has to pay the mortgage and the bills so she works 50-60 hours a week.  Then she has to come home to housework and food shopping.

This doesn’t leave much time to make the repairs.  This is where I come in; I spend one day a week working for several hours while Max is in school.  Today, I’ve started the painting in the kitchen;  I had time to prime and paint several of the cabinet doors.  Eventually when all of this is done I will be tiling the floor.

Today also happened to be her day off.  When I was finished my work she we started to talk.  Even though her husband is gone she doesn’t live alone.  Her daughter and 3 grandkids live there as well.  And for a short period of time the daughter’s 28 year old boyfriend was there to.  My client threw him out when he started swearing at her and being very rude and disrespectful.  It makes me wonder if this is how he treats his own mother.

I focused in on this because I can see Max being like this when he gets older.  Right now even at 8 he knows the words.  He is very rude and disrespectful to his mother and swears at her constantly.  Something has to be done before he gets older.

First, I don’t believe in beatings; all this kind of violence teaches is more violence.  The child may not disrespect mom anymore but he learns that violence is okay.  I view spanking the same way.  This is an “in the moment” response which doesn’t have a long term effect.

Timeouts could work; Max gets timeouts for a lot of other things that he does.  He also gets them for the disrespect and swearing as well but it isn’t having any effect.  Taking away privileges and toys don’t work; he tends to move on.  In a few hours for privileges, days or weeks for toys, he may remember that he has lost something and ask for it back but in the mean time nothing changes.

His psychiatrist insists this is part of the bipolar disorder.  Bipolar kids can swear constantly, be abusive, and disrespect people.  According to him the medication should help this to a degree.  His counselor also insists that even if this is a result of his diagnosis that we shouldn’t be relying on the medication to resolve the issue.  We still have to find the tools that will teach Max respect.  My wife and I are constantly on the look out for the things that will work for him.

This all brings us back to the boyfriend.  He treats my client disrespectfully and swears at her.  I assume he probably does this to her daughter as well.  And I wouldn’t be surprise if this is how he treats his own mother.  He is 28 years old!  I don’t want to see Max end up like this.  My dad taught me to protect those that are weaker that I am.  Now I’m not saying women are weak; most can be pretty powerful.  But physically and mentally we hear of so many being subjected to abuse by their fathers, husband, boyfriends, and sons.

This is one of the symptoms of bipolar disorder that I want him to overcome not only for him but also his mother, his girlfriends, and their mothers too.  Do you have a child that has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder?  Do they swear and are they disrespectful?  What tools have you been implementing to address these issues?