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Hi,
Ill try to be brief as possible.
adopted siblings, 2 boys.
older one, 16, has mental issues and has very low IQ.
14 yr old has dyslexia and always had this minor anxiety issue.
He has been in therapy and HATES it.
We did have him on medication, but he hated taken it.
I think he looks at his brother and doesnt want to be anything like him.
when he was 11, the dyslexia was so bad that the school put him in a pvt school for LD. He couldnt read.
He is dong great now in school. There have been behaviors, but overall, he has been reading.
The school is a whole other story but I wont go into that now.
My son really didnt have many friends, he had one good friend in the neighborhood (also adopted) and they had gotten very close, did everything together.
However, when my son moved to a different school, they slowly parted ways.
My sons friend took a course of drugs, sex and running away, a chins was made on him.
My son, for all his issues, really did not want to hang out with him anymore because of it.
However, the friends that he has made at his schooll all have LD issues. My son has hung out with them and he invited them over for his birthday and such, but I can tell his friends had more issues then dyslexia and I can tell my son hung out with them because there was no one else.
The kids were a great bunch of kids who probably wouldnt even know how to get in trouble.
My son discovered Xbox. :hissy: the evil of all evils.
He is addicted to it. We have tried everything around this xbox and even at one point took it away for 6 months.
When we ask him to get off, he just growls at us. He is so freaking nasty and is very demanding. If I let him, he will wake up, go on the xbox and never get off.
He actually even lost a lot of weight where people have noticed it and asked if he was taking drugs.
He wont eat or sleep when he is on it.
so you get the idea on what i mean by addicted.
Don't worry, im getting close to the problem.
Now the pros of the xbbox. He is on live, so he has a lot of 'friends' that he talks with and play with. Its set up in the living room where I can see him play.
He laughs and has a good time. When he discusses it with me, he is so animated and happy.
One day we had a real tough day. It was one of things that i needed him to do and he just went off on me (yelling, disrespect, swearing, just plain mean) because he couldnt play the xbox.
I finally had a heart to heart talk with him after things calmed down and he said he is just depressed.
(I could see the tears in his eyes)
He said he has no friends and the friends at school are just too 'weird' and really doesnt want to hang out with them. He said he misses his best friend a lot but doesnt want to hang with him because of the drugs.
He also said he has no interest anymore to do anything. I told him we can do a lot of fun things together, but he says he really has no interest in doing them.
He doesnt want to go back to therapy, we actually took the summer off. He always put up a fight when we had to go, so im not sure how helpful it was because he doesnt talk.
He had been on meds before but really doesn't like taking them because, as he says it, "IM not the crazy one, my brother is" (his brother is in a 5 day school. resi program and has been for 2 yrs now.)
I feel so bad for him, inspite how he has been treating me lately.
any ideas?
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What meds is he on? He may need to have them changed. My 12 yo could be addicted if I didn't take it away. and my 12 yo, who has been on the honor roll in the past, decided to do minimal school work and came home with a 70 average. I'm limiting his playing the xbox. I don't let them do live because I'm not home during the day. Limit his time. Have him do some physical exercise. Does he like bike riding, skating, skateboarding?
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It sounds to me like he needs another hobby, with real face to face interaction with other people. Can he try different things? Martial arts? Boxing? Bicycling? Skateboarding?
Online interaction is good, but it simply doesn't increase social skills like face to face interaction.
Did the medication help him while he was on it? If so, consider putting a medical spin on it. It's medication. It's what his body needs. It's not that he's "crazy", it's that his body isn't doing what it needs to do for him to be happy and healthy. Would you call a diabetic 'crazy' for taking insulin? Would you call someone with cancer 'crazy' for having chemotherapy? Would you call someone with asthma 'crazy' for using an inhaler when they couldn't breathe? Of course not!
Best of luck to you!
thanks for answering
The medication really didnt do much for him. He was only on clonidine however.
we used the 'medical' talk before. but he far too smart to know its because of 'his mental status'
Even taken melatonin (vitamin for sleep) he has problems taking them.
we do have restrictions around the xbox, but when he is not on it, he is just miseralbe.
we had him hooked up with a bike club for a week, which he loves.
He tells me he has no interest in doing anything. Anything WE suggest, seems to be like im "bothering him" .
I would keep him in that bike club if it is daily. It sounds like he needs a place where he can make other friends. If the bike club isn't daily, you may wish to find something that is. Get a list together of clubs/classes that are available every afternoon, and will continue to be during the school year. Then let him choose which one he wants to do. Karate type things are good, they are physically demanding, teach some discipline, and most kids enjoy it.
Then restrict the XBox to an earned activity, and only on the weekends, even when there is no school.
You might also want to consider getting him to volunteer somewhere with younger kids, or no kids. I have a friend whose kid was a pretty big problem with behaviour and lack of friends. Now after volunteering in an office (of adults at a church) and occassionally at a daycare, she has matured tremendously and has a few (though, not many) friends. While they are not close friends, it's a start. And the teen is no longer crying about the Internet/games/etc...
xbox is evil for some kids. My DS is just a nasty humanbeing if he gets too much screen time. We literally have to occasionally cut total screen time to an hour a day. After a couple of days he is a much happier kid. I really reccomend trying completely cutting it out for a week and see what that does. I think you will see a huge difference even without drugs. Just fill the day with some other activities. We have also done it as trade screen time for reading time. That might be torture on your kiddo though. Maybe putting him in a team sport.
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