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Wow, what a tough week we have had. We have two adopted brothers, age 6 and 11(more like 8 year old-special needs)Anyways we also have two sisters age 1 and 14 in foster soon to adopt. well our boys have come a very long way since they were first placed with us 3 years ago. We have done the family counciling and have experienced a lot together.Oldest child set himself on fire 2 years ago. Anyways, every day for the past 7 days we have gone on a downward spiral. They can not be trusted out of our site because they are making such bad choices. Then they lie to us, break things, basically all the crappy things we went through a long time ago. There are no changes right now in our home(what usually happens when these behaviors come forward.We have taken away their favorite thing(nintendo DS) for 1 week, lectured till we are blue in the face, yelled, sent to bed, been under parent constant supervision, tried positive reinforcment, explained not bad kids, wonderful kids making bad choices. Gone over what we need to do to be happy, do our best care for others, and use our skills. Approach every day as a fresh start, but then they start acting out all over again. We just got back from picking them up at school a hour ago, only to find out 11 year old wrote all over his clothes in marker, and 6 year old told another student he was going to kill him half to death. What do we do now. Nothing is working. I'm so frustarted I am crying. They are great kids and they know how far they have come. Why are they choosing to go backwards? Our family motto is keep moving forward, put our garbage in the past. This is the second time our 6 year old has threatened someone at school with the word kill. Last time was his teacher. I'm at a lost for punishment? Anyone else have these days? I have noone close to help. I wish I had a psychologist in our family! Sorry so long, had to vent. Thanks:hissy: :hissy:
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I'm sorry, I don't have any suggestions. But if you haven't already, I suggest you post this in Special Needs Adoption forum - most of the parents who have special needs kids like yours hang out there, and they'll probably have some things to try.
I do have some questions for you - you say nothing has changed in your home, but you say that you are soon to adopt the girls. Is there anything in THEIR case that's "new" that the boys could be picking up on? Maybe afraid they'll be replaced? Or afraid that if you're talking about adoption and judges that it's their adoption that will be thrown out instead of a new one for other kids started? Kids can blow some things really out of whack from a few sentences.
Or maybe another kid is talking to them about adoption or their different family? Is the 14 year old sometimes mean to them? Are there neighborhood or school kids who could be causing problems?
Is this by any chance near an anniversary date for the boys? When they moved in with you, when they entered foster care, when the girls were placed and your attention became divided, the last time they saw their bios - anything like that? Anniversary dates can trigger all sorts of behaviors, even if the children cannot consciously remember the date it still often becomes an issue (even if it didn't in previous years).
Hang in there!
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Your right about all kinds of triggers. Who knows, maybe it was just a bad week. No, the 14 year old is a real sweetheart. The girls came last sept. and we aren't openly talking about the adoption yet. But I apprieciate you listning to me. I do go into special needs forum quite often, but for my 6 year old I like the input of discipline from a christian perspective. After talking to him last night, he says he heard the term 'Kill you half to death' from TV. We did allow him to watch Spiderman 3 over the weekend. So we decided no more superhero stuff right now(which he really loves). He can watch bibleman, but thats it. He is very mature for his age, and watched far terrible things when he was young at bio's house, so we thought he could handle it. Obviously not. Today he is going to talk to the school social worker.