Discipline ideas??

I am SO hoping people respond because I have his brother. Right now I am trying to figure out how to afford $200/hr therapy sessions a 100 miles (one way) away with therapist who is reported to be amazing just so i can get a grip on his behaviours. Time outs/time in, priviledge reductions, etc so not effective. Its tough when all anyone else sees is how "cute" they are!

bumping up

A poster on another thread had recently mentioned christinemoers youtube videos, and they are great! She's a mom dealing with RAD kids and doing it well. You might get some good ideas! She shares a lot of what has worked for her. It's all very gentle, warm and non- punitive... all the best. Susan

Well, our 7 y/o is the king of perverse and we're still trying to find our way with him. One thing we've learned is that we don't acknowledge or pay attention to any behavior that we don't want repeated. Once he knows that something irks us, the gloves are off. The men in the white coats will be ready to carry us off in straight jackets before he's done with us. Examples: shoes on the wrong feet, shoes untied constantly, underwear on backwards, dropping his pencil repeatedly while doing school work, breaking the pencil points and crayons, needing to use the bathroom constantly. His most recent annoying trait is walking around with his zipper down. I'll admit, I'm not good at keeping my cool and acting like it doesn't bother me. That's the best plan, but our plan B is our ticket system. Ds starts out with 3 tickets a day (we use the carnival type that come in a roll, or you can make some). We stick them on the fridge where he can see them, along with 3 target behaviors like leaving his towel on the floor, lying, wasting time, whatever behavior is grinding on us at the moment, but only 3. If he violates any of the target behaviors, he loses a ticket. 3 tickets gone, he loses the next important event like a birthday party, event at church, play date, etc. Sometimes I'll mix it up by assigning chores like scrubbing a floor or weeding a garden or a very early bedtime (which he hates). In the summer he loses pool privileges. He takes his tickets very seriously but some days he does lose all of them and the boom is lowered immediately. He knows what he needs to do (or not do) to keep his tickets. Don't show any emotion, just be matter-of-fact. "Sorry, you did it, not me." ETA: We're doing the "cute" routine with him, too. He sure knows how to lay it on with other people but we got wise to that early on. I'm sick to death of people going on about how cute and sweet he is as he's handing out hugs to everyone and kissing the ladies' hands at church. Ugh.

About the crayons, I did that all the time at his age, I also loved melting them. Can't explain the facination it's just really satisfying to do idk. .....Kind of soothing?? I still can't leave candles alone without messing with them at some point. :P It drove my mother crazy, I also used to (and still do sometimes when I'm bored) take apart every pen I could get my hands on, that really drove her nuts as I'd almost always end up losing the spring for the clicky ones! :prop: I wouldn't even be thinking while doing these things, I'd do it sort of absent-mindedly. I'm also really scatter brained. I have a diagnosis of adult ADD (primarily inattentive). I think it's all connected.

Thanks for your replies!! Giselle, can't imagine having to think about $200/hr therapy with 200 mi. roundtrips everytime!! Guess I'm really blessed to have access to therapy less than hour away.... just not convinced the therapist is adequate. Maybe given more time... we probably do need to get him started on therapy again. Suzeb1, I'm gonna check out the Christine Moers videos this week after getting kids to bed. Thanks for that link! Daisy, that ticket system sounds interesting.... I'm going to think on that one awhile and see if I could make it work for us. And my son does some of those things too! The shoes untied ALL the time, shirts on backwards or inside out, breaking pens, pencils, constantly. Eventually he stopped climbing in every woman's lap that came to the house! And Susannah.... wow.... that's wild, you confessing to a fascination with crayon smashing and melting! He loves to melt them too! So what you're saying is, somehow, someway, it serves some kind of purpose. Maybe it isn't just another indication of insanity.... My adult son who's twin brother is starting his PhD in neuroscience was reminding me today of how quirky he was at that age (& still is).... and that maybe this kid is another one like that. Your post reminded me of that.... he does some random weird things that just don't make sense whatsoever to me, and have been driving me nuts, but they make perfect sense to him and he's just a different kind of kid. The really bad thing is, he has lived his life perceiving himself as cute, charming, fragile, needing and DESERVING everyone to do everything for him, which is obviously NOT cool, but the resulting behavior makes it really hard to stop and focus on the good things about him and enjoy him. It's really really good for you to tell me that about yourself. I think it will help me to slow down and think about his behaviors-separating them into quirky kid-accept his little idiosyncracies- vs the RAD or just being obnoxious. I know I'm ADHD myself (my older kids have laughingly given me that diagnosis), and my brain doesn't always work like I want it to. Your few little words have somehow turned a key in my brain. Tomorrow I'm going to be more patient with my son. Tomorrow I'm going to try to be more understanding and slower to aggravate with him. Thank you.

We haven't dealt with all of the same behaviors but I even showed my husband all of these posts because of how similar some of them are to the behaviors we deal with. We have a 10 year old boy who has a lot of "weird" behaviors that no one would believe he is doing on purpose....they just seem so innocent and cute (not to us anymore). He went through a phase where he all of the sudden didn't know which shoe went on which foot. A lot of the stuff he does, he does it for attention. He also faked a foot injury because he didn't want to take a walk with my husband and I. He was playing outside with his friends and running around playing kickball and soccer. Then all of the sudden he was so dramatic about his foot. So instead of calling him on it right away, we totally played along. We told him that since his foot was hurt that he probably would not be able to play on it and he would need to lay in bed with his foot propped up. You could see how his face faded a little as he tried to keep up his act. But he didn't give up. He had to work the lie he had told. So then before bed we told him we would have to send a note in to school telling his teacher he has to sit out at recess because of his hurt foot. The next morning on the way to school he was not feeling the lie as much but trying to keep it up. Recess is his favorite, of course. So I sent a book for him to read while all his peers played outside. Well then in the carpool line, I find out that he has gym class that day. So I made sure he had to sit out at that too, since his foot was hurt so bad that he was in tears. He tried to ask the teachers if he could play and then if his foot hurt if he could sit out then. I made sure that that was not an option. Then when I picked him up from afterschool care that day, he said, "mommy, guess what. My foot feels better!" So I said "that sounds like a miraculous recovery." He says "what?" So then I bust him on his lie and tell him until he decides to tell the truth and come clean, we are acting as if his foot is hurt and he will be sitting in bed with his foot propped up. He was silent on the way home but then told me he was ready to tell me the truth. I told him he had to wait until dad got home and until then he needed to go rest in bed. A rather lengthy scenario but it was one of our finest :) At least it was kind of fun beating him at his own game. But our son also breaks stuff, leaves his belongings down the street on the side of the road. We have thought about just leaving it out there and no doubt someone would steal it. But since we bought it, we just ground him from it for a few days or whatever. He has gotten a bit better about taking care of things. Still not the greatest but getting better. Another idea might be making him buy new crayons when they are needed. Like if he gets allowance, make him use that money on that. Don't know if that would be a motivator at all. Sometimes it's hard to know what privilege is the one to take away to really get their attention. Sometimes our son likes to act like he doesn't care if he has an early bed time (although we know he hates it). So we just trust that even though he wants to play it off, we are really getting his attention with that. Hopefully you can find some things that work! You are not alone!

oh yeah, and when our son was doing the whole "I don't know what shoe goes on what foot" routine, we took away his preferred shoes and made him wear shoes that were "easier to tell apart." May sound rude, but it worked. We did this for one week and told him he needed to learn and pay attention when we were teaching him how to tell shoes apart. Although I'm pretty sure he knew. But just in case, we would teach him a few times. We haven't had problems since. But again, don't know if that's a motivator for anyone else's kid or not. For our son it was, because he hates tying shoes. So he wanted to wear his slip on shoes. So he couldnt' have those back until he knew how to wear them right.