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9M difficult child... I'm wearing thin fast.
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<blockquote data-quote="Aimless" data-source="post: 613753" data-attributes="member: 17346"><p>Thank you so much MidwestMom, for your kindness and honest words. I unexpectedly burst into tears while reading your reply to my post, even tho I know and agree with everything you said, because I feel my soul has been starving for SOMEBODY to just be *bleeping* honest with me about this child!!! No one, not pdrs, case managers, teachers, gparents, neighbors, church, even spouses, and siblings want to admit outloud that this little boy may just be too broken for us to maintain a normal relationship with. No one wants to hear or even contemplate that someone in our inner circle should be handled as a potential threat to our personal, emotional, and physical safety.</p><p></p><p>I have to share with you that two weeks ago, difficult child's teacher finally became frustrated enough with his stealing of little worthless objects like paper clips, pushpins ( a favorite of his) andother little junk from her desk and then sitting at his and destroying them that she pulled me aside afterschool when I was picking him up to tell me. She still didn't even use the word "stealing", which it was, as she recounted multiple occasions when she caught him twisting and destroying the junk that she knew had been in or on her desk. She shared that she had had many one on one talks with him about how it made her feel, it was wasteful to ruin the objects and that he needed to respect her space and that he did not have permission to take things from her desk without first asking her. difficult child LOVES these intervention attempts by authority figures. They come down to his level, try to really reach out and connect with him about HIS bad acts that he KNOWS are inappropriate. These little talks always end in them forgiving him, telling him everything is okay, and he never never admits to ANYTHING! difficult child actually an expert at making sure that in all verbal communication, he is never directly responsible or connected in any way to accountability. For example, if he bumps a book and it falls off a table, when asked what happened, he will reply "oh, the book fell on the floor." me (in a very casual, almost disinterested way): How did that happen? difficult child: "It fell" me: wow, how did that happen? difficult child: It got on the floor." me: oh, what made it fall to the floor? difficult child: "the table." me: Hmmm, I don't understand, please tell me what happened starting with I... difficult child: "I...it...I...it...I........knocked it off the table." (difficult child withdraws and goes totally flat in affect) me: oh, pick it up please. (I walk away and avoid eye contact). For being diagnosed as having a poor grasp of the English language, he can very quickly think of his feet to edit and recount whole events, completely removing himself from being there, if it suits him. This covert behavior has made me hyper-vigilant about where he is and what he is doing because the ONLY thing I trust about him is that he is going to be sneaky and self serving. My unwillingness to trust difficult child has become a huge issue between me and my husband. He thinks that I am unwilling to see difficult child in an objective light, and he's right. I could throw difficult child further than I will trust him. I am constantly catching him doing all manner of sneaky deceitful things, mostly insignificant, ranging from not doing things like using soap when washing his hands, not using toilet paper after going number two, not flushing the toilet, not putting the seat up before going number one, dropping trash or leaving spilled food and just walking away, stepping on the important personal belongings of others, like purses, backpacks, cell phones, ipods, blankies of younger twin brothers, and toys, etc. But he will see me out of the corner of his eye and immediately correct his behavior, even though I say nothing and act like I don't see him. Its like I'm his conscience. He clearly knows the right things to do but doesn't want to. And yes, he does the same thing whether I around or not. I have video taped him without his knowing to settle this for myself. My thinking on this behavior has ranged from concluding that he just lacks the personal perseverance to follow thru with the actions required to do these things correctly, as he has been lovingly taught and is modeled by 9 others in the home constantly. Other times I think that he actually sorta gets off on the "it feels good to be bad" notion. Its almost like the stepping on stuff is a passive aggressive manner to show distain or contempt of the item's owner. All that being said, it is endless and ongoing. </p><p></p><p>We have a seven bedroom home and up until difficult child was 7.5 years old, our four oldest kids had their own rooms and difficult child and 8F easy child(who is exactly 1 yr and 2 days younger than difficult child) shared a room and our twin boys (4 years younger than difficult child) shared a room. Then, two years ago, we decided to separate difficult child and PC8F. We put difficult child in a room by himself and PC8F in with PC5s. Nothing has ever happened or given us any reason to think or suspect that either difficult child or anyone else has done anything even boarderline inappropriate and believe me I have been watching! We do not even allow sleep overs at our home or anyone else's for any of our kids, and never have. I was molested as a child by a neighborhood friend's older sibling and am very aware of how these things can happen, even under the best circumstances. Also, difficult child is very avoidant of physical touch up to this point and PC8F and PC5s are huge tattletailer about difficult child's behavior. They are not afraid or intimidated at all by him and all physically dominate him as he is so small. difficult child hated being in a room by himself. He had no one to blame anything on and it was nice to have a place to send him to go when I needed a break from him. Then last year, our home was broken into during the night while all 10 of us slept and my purse and husband wallet were stolen. It was very disturbing. PC17M is a Police Explorer, police cars come and go from our home regularly, as well as men in uniform, AND we have a 95lb black German Shepherd that does police work! It was so unexpected. We think it was a kid in the neighborhood who is not friends with any of ours and is very odd. Anyway, difficult child convinced my husband that he was too scared to sleep in his own room and PC8F offered to switch with him, so difficult child would now be sharing a room with PC5s. I didn't like it from the start but HD seldom pushes for anything and he thought it would be good for difficult child to be a "big brother" and sharing a room with the PC5s would inspire him to mature. Feel free to curse under your breath now, I know I did. Well, he didn't mature. They did, and he resented them for the privileges they earned and he did not. I intentionally took all of the toys out of the room so the kids never went in their except to sleep. difficult child is always adamant about wanting the door open and says he's scared of the window, which is all ok with me. On a side note, I haven't said much about the other PCs but feel I should share a bit about them now.</p><p></p><p>The PC5s could really be described as gfg5s by others outside our family because they did not escape being marinaded in meth and PCP, with a side of repeated domestic violence and chaos, unscathed. They were delivered prematurely at 7 months, when BM was admitted to hospital due to DV. They are her 8th and 9th children, all of whom were taken by the state previously for profound abuse and neglect, and were immediately placed for adoption, not foster care. The short version of how we ended up with an "unplanned adoption" is that we closed our foster care license after second adoption of PC8 but state was desperate and kept calling us. We kept saying no but eventually kids talked me into taking a call for twins because school had just gotten out for summer and they thought it would be fun. Fostering has always been a highlight for all of us and our kids love to care for babies. Well, we got to hospital and CPS case manager fills us in with info overload, which seemed odd. Then we were asked to sign intent to adopt paperwork. We said, Whoa, Nellie! Come again?? Apparently there was some mix up and we were chosen to adopt, not foster, and had been picked by BM. Apparently birth parents agreed to terminate parental rights voluntarily if they could have some say about twins' adoptive placement. They chose us due to big, bi-racial family and faith. We didn't ask to be considered, we just happen to be a foster family that had an AC# due to previous adoptions. Case manager was mad, didn't know how it happened, told us we had ten minutes to decide if we wanted to be their forever family because they were going to have permanence today! Holy potatoes! This **** never happens in foster care. We had already had the opportunity to and did adopt two infants who we had fostered and now two more? I honestly don't know what it was about those tiny little sickly brown babies that stole my heart, but they had us at hello. They had been in the NICU for two weeks tweeking from the drug withdrawls, but were now just 4 lbs and ready to go home. And for no good reason, we took them home. They were so tiny. They shook, seized, twitched and were wound tight as drums. They had such bad hypertonicity that it took two people to unravel them long enough to change a diaper. They had poor sucking, they barely slept, and no one here cared. I don't think that they were ever actually put down until they started to crawl. They hit, scratched and head-butted us all almost constantly due to sensory integration issues, but they also smiled, cooed, and bonded deeply to everyone, but especially me. They slept in our bed until just a few months ago and even then still sneak back in with us by midnight about half the time. I let it continue because I just didn't like them sharing a room with difficult child. Something just seemed very wrong to place younger, impressionable little boys with an older, maladjusted sibling. Our oldest PC17 didn't like it either. His room is right across the hall from difficult child and PC5Ms room and he policed it constantly. difficult child does not like PC17M for this reason. difficult child resents that in our home, we have 4 adults speaking into his life, and he seldom is ever out of the watchful governing of one of us. Also, PC5Ms have a very good relationship with PC17M and they look up to him and live for his attention and affirmation which he is very generous with. difficult child has no interest in pleasing PC17M and resents that he is not allowed in his room because he has stolen and broken things in there when allowed in the past. In fact, he tried to start a fire in PC17M's room last May by intentionally placing different items on the hot light bulb. I had put him in the room to use PC17M's desk to finish his homework that he was working on and difficult child got caught by PC17M instead carving his name into the desk. PC17M told difficult child that he was really disappointed that he would treat his family's belongings that way. PC17M told him that he would not be allowing difficult child in his room anymore since he didn't feel like respecting his things. While PC17M left the room to tell me about the carving on the desk, difficult child proceeded to try to start a fire placing first his eraser, then his paper on the hot bulb. It set off the fire alarm and when ran in and asked what the smell was and why the alarm was going off, difficult child acted like he had no clue. It was a very compelling act, sold my husband on it, but I searched around and found the melted eraser on the bulb. Then my husband took difficult child into our room to talk about everything and difficult child advised him exactly what PC17M had said, word for word, and that his plan was to start a fire on the light and then leave the room, closing the door, and burn up PC17M's "whole room up." He is very straightforward when he tells these things, kind of one dimensional, like we too would see how the revenge made perfect sense. difficult child only regretted that he forgot that there was a smoke detector so "whole room" wasn't likely to get burned up because we would find out too fast. difficult child said that since PC17M wasn't going to let him in his room and that made difficult child mad, difficult child wanted PC17M to feel as mad as he did thru the loss of his stuff to the fire. Can you say CRAZY??? Anyway, that finally pushed husband over the edge and outta lala land so he was willing to pay the $3500 for the neuro psychiatric evaluations. </p><p></p><p>Two weeks ago, the little chat with his teacher about the stealing stuff from her desk, in addition to finding out that he had never given her the apology letter we made him write to her after he spent a day being particularly mouthy and disrespectful to her. He was supposed to read and give it to her. We use this amends letter often when any of the kids hurt other people's feelings. It is a simple form letter that the child uses to confess what they had done, how it had made the person feel, and the steps the child is taking to ensure that it doesn't happen again. It is always shocking how honest the kids are about what they really did and why, but affirming to see them acknowledge how their actions make others feel and the steps they come up with on their own to keep it from happening again. difficult child hates these letters because it is excruciating to have to think about how his actions make others feel. He also struggles to be flexible and think of other ways of handling himself in the future. Life basically stops until the letter is written and he loathes it. He does however usually seem very happy to give them to his victims because he gets the attention from them coming to him and saying all is forgiven. Except this time. He did not read it to his teacher, but instead chose to stash it under a stack of books on her desk. When I asked him after school if he'd read it to her, he said yes and that she had told him that she wasn't even mad and that everything was ok. I told him that based on the report she had given us, she wasn't likely to have said she wasn't upset by his rudeness and that it was now okay. He agreed. The next day when his teacher pulled me aside, was when I found out that she knew nothing of the letter and they had not talked about any of it. I decided to act on my maternal instincts and my husband was just gonna have to let go of his fantasies of difficult child continuing in with the PC5Ms. I drove home, parked difficult child at the next door neighbor's in timeout on a chair, rallied my other 7 kids, and together we did a swift but massive swapping of bedrooms. We moved difficult child into the smallest bedroom, which is right next to mine, all by his lonesome. I took every toy, book, and scrap of his personal stuff out and boxed it in the garage. His room consists of a twin bed in the middle of the room, a dresser, and empty book shelf, a small desk, chair and trash can. We moved PC8F together with the PC5Ms into the largest bedroom across the hall from mine. PC8F is up on a loft bed by herself, and PC5Ms are on a queen bed below loft. PC17M is now in the room formerly belonging to difficult child and PC5Ms, which is right across from difficult child now and he can see right in difficult child's room perfectly. It felt like the rightest thing I'd done in a long time. husband was kinds disappointed but I don't care. We have to parent difficult child for who he IS and not who we want him to be. We can always give him more privileges and things but we cannot undo negative family experiences that he causes in our lives. husband over identifies with difficult child because he struggled as a child. husband is the youngest of 12 in a big, chaotic black family, father was an alcoholic, DV, drugs, too much openness and no boundaries. husband felt vulnerable and was fearful a lot. He was also very small, and slight in stature. husband felt verbally and physically dominated and victimized by the actions of others. He has a reading disorder that went undiagnosed in school and struggled to understand much of what was said at school because his mother speaks in a broken English-geechee dialect. It took me years to understand anyone in his family because they speak so differently.</p><p></p><p>Long story short, I am heeding your advise and leaving nothing to chance. I ordered a tiny hidden wifi camera that I can view from my phone to place in his room and I hang a plastic hanger on his closed door at night that make a loud pop sound that he can't prevent on the outside of his door at night for right now. He is taken to the bathroom at bedtime and told not to get up during the night. neuropsychologist advised us not to inspire difficult child with our rules as to what he could can't do. He said we should not ever let him know when he scares or riles us. And never ever let him know if he has caused a riff between parents or others. difficult child will exploit it to the fullest. Npsydr also told us to tell difficult child that choices like fires, hurting people, or any other threats to family will result in him being separated from all of us and he will be alone. He needs to know that we will not tolerate any one in our family, including him, being threatened or hurt. Anyone threatening our family will not be allowed to live here, visit here, or be anywhere near us. Npsydr said that difficult child's self centered desire to not be alone could motivate him to avoid situations or threats that would result in the family physically removing themselves from his life. difficult child has to hear it that way. We will go away from him, not he will be sent away, because he believes that he has total dominion over himself and wouldn't let that happen. He cannot, however, keep the 9 of us from walking away from him and his behaviors. I already feel like the other kids are reinforcing this without even knowing it as they will get up and leave the room to go to theirs and close the door when difficult child is "stuck" and being blk/wht argumentative about stuff no one cares about or is ludicrous. He likes to sit and make off the wall comments and conclusions while everyone is watching TV together. For instance, we're watching shark week and theyshow the shark swimming and then the next clip is a marine biologist, from the waist up, talking calmly about sharks. difficult child will say, "wow, that shark bit her legs off!" and the other kids will say "what are you talking about. That didn't happen. and difficult child will argue endlessly that "see, her legs are gone." Even though now the show has progressed and the camera angle shows the marine biologist's whole body, legs and all. God help us. It usually ends with everyone just tuning difficult child out and ignoring him. </p><p></p><p></p><p>Thank you all so much for just letting me vent and affirming my strong maternal instinct to protect all of our kids, including difficult child, from himself. I will try to keep it shorter in the future. Just so much pent up anxiety in me. I have actually started biting my nails again after years without doing it. Please pray that my husband and I stay close and unified as we work to meet our difficult child's special needs and continue to love him for who he is, and not hate him for what he does. You guys are my saving grace.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Aimless, post: 613753, member: 17346"] Thank you so much MidwestMom, for your kindness and honest words. I unexpectedly burst into tears while reading your reply to my post, even tho I know and agree with everything you said, because I feel my soul has been starving for SOMEBODY to just be *bleeping* honest with me about this child!!! No one, not pdrs, case managers, teachers, gparents, neighbors, church, even spouses, and siblings want to admit outloud that this little boy may just be too broken for us to maintain a normal relationship with. No one wants to hear or even contemplate that someone in our inner circle should be handled as a potential threat to our personal, emotional, and physical safety. I have to share with you that two weeks ago, difficult child's teacher finally became frustrated enough with his stealing of little worthless objects like paper clips, pushpins ( a favorite of his) andother little junk from her desk and then sitting at his and destroying them that she pulled me aside afterschool when I was picking him up to tell me. She still didn't even use the word "stealing", which it was, as she recounted multiple occasions when she caught him twisting and destroying the junk that she knew had been in or on her desk. She shared that she had had many one on one talks with him about how it made her feel, it was wasteful to ruin the objects and that he needed to respect her space and that he did not have permission to take things from her desk without first asking her. difficult child LOVES these intervention attempts by authority figures. They come down to his level, try to really reach out and connect with him about HIS bad acts that he KNOWS are inappropriate. These little talks always end in them forgiving him, telling him everything is okay, and he never never admits to ANYTHING! difficult child actually an expert at making sure that in all verbal communication, he is never directly responsible or connected in any way to accountability. For example, if he bumps a book and it falls off a table, when asked what happened, he will reply "oh, the book fell on the floor." me (in a very casual, almost disinterested way): How did that happen? difficult child: "It fell" me: wow, how did that happen? difficult child: It got on the floor." me: oh, what made it fall to the floor? difficult child: "the table." me: Hmmm, I don't understand, please tell me what happened starting with I... difficult child: "I...it...I...it...I........knocked it off the table." (difficult child withdraws and goes totally flat in affect) me: oh, pick it up please. (I walk away and avoid eye contact). For being diagnosed as having a poor grasp of the English language, he can very quickly think of his feet to edit and recount whole events, completely removing himself from being there, if it suits him. This covert behavior has made me hyper-vigilant about where he is and what he is doing because the ONLY thing I trust about him is that he is going to be sneaky and self serving. My unwillingness to trust difficult child has become a huge issue between me and my husband. He thinks that I am unwilling to see difficult child in an objective light, and he's right. I could throw difficult child further than I will trust him. I am constantly catching him doing all manner of sneaky deceitful things, mostly insignificant, ranging from not doing things like using soap when washing his hands, not using toilet paper after going number two, not flushing the toilet, not putting the seat up before going number one, dropping trash or leaving spilled food and just walking away, stepping on the important personal belongings of others, like purses, backpacks, cell phones, ipods, blankies of younger twin brothers, and toys, etc. But he will see me out of the corner of his eye and immediately correct his behavior, even though I say nothing and act like I don't see him. Its like I'm his conscience. He clearly knows the right things to do but doesn't want to. And yes, he does the same thing whether I around or not. I have video taped him without his knowing to settle this for myself. My thinking on this behavior has ranged from concluding that he just lacks the personal perseverance to follow thru with the actions required to do these things correctly, as he has been lovingly taught and is modeled by 9 others in the home constantly. Other times I think that he actually sorta gets off on the "it feels good to be bad" notion. Its almost like the stepping on stuff is a passive aggressive manner to show distain or contempt of the item's owner. All that being said, it is endless and ongoing. We have a seven bedroom home and up until difficult child was 7.5 years old, our four oldest kids had their own rooms and difficult child and 8F easy child(who is exactly 1 yr and 2 days younger than difficult child) shared a room and our twin boys (4 years younger than difficult child) shared a room. Then, two years ago, we decided to separate difficult child and PC8F. We put difficult child in a room by himself and PC8F in with PC5s. Nothing has ever happened or given us any reason to think or suspect that either difficult child or anyone else has done anything even boarderline inappropriate and believe me I have been watching! We do not even allow sleep overs at our home or anyone else's for any of our kids, and never have. I was molested as a child by a neighborhood friend's older sibling and am very aware of how these things can happen, even under the best circumstances. Also, difficult child is very avoidant of physical touch up to this point and PC8F and PC5s are huge tattletailer about difficult child's behavior. They are not afraid or intimidated at all by him and all physically dominate him as he is so small. difficult child hated being in a room by himself. He had no one to blame anything on and it was nice to have a place to send him to go when I needed a break from him. Then last year, our home was broken into during the night while all 10 of us slept and my purse and husband wallet were stolen. It was very disturbing. PC17M is a Police Explorer, police cars come and go from our home regularly, as well as men in uniform, AND we have a 95lb black German Shepherd that does police work! It was so unexpected. We think it was a kid in the neighborhood who is not friends with any of ours and is very odd. Anyway, difficult child convinced my husband that he was too scared to sleep in his own room and PC8F offered to switch with him, so difficult child would now be sharing a room with PC5s. I didn't like it from the start but HD seldom pushes for anything and he thought it would be good for difficult child to be a "big brother" and sharing a room with the PC5s would inspire him to mature. Feel free to curse under your breath now, I know I did. Well, he didn't mature. They did, and he resented them for the privileges they earned and he did not. I intentionally took all of the toys out of the room so the kids never went in their except to sleep. difficult child is always adamant about wanting the door open and says he's scared of the window, which is all ok with me. On a side note, I haven't said much about the other PCs but feel I should share a bit about them now. The PC5s could really be described as gfg5s by others outside our family because they did not escape being marinaded in meth and PCP, with a side of repeated domestic violence and chaos, unscathed. They were delivered prematurely at 7 months, when BM was admitted to hospital due to DV. They are her 8th and 9th children, all of whom were taken by the state previously for profound abuse and neglect, and were immediately placed for adoption, not foster care. The short version of how we ended up with an "unplanned adoption" is that we closed our foster care license after second adoption of PC8 but state was desperate and kept calling us. We kept saying no but eventually kids talked me into taking a call for twins because school had just gotten out for summer and they thought it would be fun. Fostering has always been a highlight for all of us and our kids love to care for babies. Well, we got to hospital and CPS case manager fills us in with info overload, which seemed odd. Then we were asked to sign intent to adopt paperwork. We said, Whoa, Nellie! Come again?? Apparently there was some mix up and we were chosen to adopt, not foster, and had been picked by BM. Apparently birth parents agreed to terminate parental rights voluntarily if they could have some say about twins' adoptive placement. They chose us due to big, bi-racial family and faith. We didn't ask to be considered, we just happen to be a foster family that had an AC# due to previous adoptions. Case manager was mad, didn't know how it happened, told us we had ten minutes to decide if we wanted to be their forever family because they were going to have permanence today! Holy potatoes! This **** never happens in foster care. We had already had the opportunity to and did adopt two infants who we had fostered and now two more? I honestly don't know what it was about those tiny little sickly brown babies that stole my heart, but they had us at hello. They had been in the NICU for two weeks tweeking from the drug withdrawls, but were now just 4 lbs and ready to go home. And for no good reason, we took them home. They were so tiny. They shook, seized, twitched and were wound tight as drums. They had such bad hypertonicity that it took two people to unravel them long enough to change a diaper. They had poor sucking, they barely slept, and no one here cared. I don't think that they were ever actually put down until they started to crawl. They hit, scratched and head-butted us all almost constantly due to sensory integration issues, but they also smiled, cooed, and bonded deeply to everyone, but especially me. They slept in our bed until just a few months ago and even then still sneak back in with us by midnight about half the time. I let it continue because I just didn't like them sharing a room with difficult child. Something just seemed very wrong to place younger, impressionable little boys with an older, maladjusted sibling. Our oldest PC17 didn't like it either. His room is right across the hall from difficult child and PC5Ms room and he policed it constantly. difficult child does not like PC17M for this reason. difficult child resents that in our home, we have 4 adults speaking into his life, and he seldom is ever out of the watchful governing of one of us. Also, PC5Ms have a very good relationship with PC17M and they look up to him and live for his attention and affirmation which he is very generous with. difficult child has no interest in pleasing PC17M and resents that he is not allowed in his room because he has stolen and broken things in there when allowed in the past. In fact, he tried to start a fire in PC17M's room last May by intentionally placing different items on the hot light bulb. I had put him in the room to use PC17M's desk to finish his homework that he was working on and difficult child got caught by PC17M instead carving his name into the desk. PC17M told difficult child that he was really disappointed that he would treat his family's belongings that way. PC17M told him that he would not be allowing difficult child in his room anymore since he didn't feel like respecting his things. While PC17M left the room to tell me about the carving on the desk, difficult child proceeded to try to start a fire placing first his eraser, then his paper on the hot bulb. It set off the fire alarm and when ran in and asked what the smell was and why the alarm was going off, difficult child acted like he had no clue. It was a very compelling act, sold my husband on it, but I searched around and found the melted eraser on the bulb. Then my husband took difficult child into our room to talk about everything and difficult child advised him exactly what PC17M had said, word for word, and that his plan was to start a fire on the light and then leave the room, closing the door, and burn up PC17M's "whole room up." He is very straightforward when he tells these things, kind of one dimensional, like we too would see how the revenge made perfect sense. difficult child only regretted that he forgot that there was a smoke detector so "whole room" wasn't likely to get burned up because we would find out too fast. difficult child said that since PC17M wasn't going to let him in his room and that made difficult child mad, difficult child wanted PC17M to feel as mad as he did thru the loss of his stuff to the fire. Can you say CRAZY??? Anyway, that finally pushed husband over the edge and outta lala land so he was willing to pay the $3500 for the neuro psychiatric evaluations. Two weeks ago, the little chat with his teacher about the stealing stuff from her desk, in addition to finding out that he had never given her the apology letter we made him write to her after he spent a day being particularly mouthy and disrespectful to her. He was supposed to read and give it to her. We use this amends letter often when any of the kids hurt other people's feelings. It is a simple form letter that the child uses to confess what they had done, how it had made the person feel, and the steps the child is taking to ensure that it doesn't happen again. It is always shocking how honest the kids are about what they really did and why, but affirming to see them acknowledge how their actions make others feel and the steps they come up with on their own to keep it from happening again. difficult child hates these letters because it is excruciating to have to think about how his actions make others feel. He also struggles to be flexible and think of other ways of handling himself in the future. Life basically stops until the letter is written and he loathes it. He does however usually seem very happy to give them to his victims because he gets the attention from them coming to him and saying all is forgiven. Except this time. He did not read it to his teacher, but instead chose to stash it under a stack of books on her desk. When I asked him after school if he'd read it to her, he said yes and that she had told him that she wasn't even mad and that everything was ok. I told him that based on the report she had given us, she wasn't likely to have said she wasn't upset by his rudeness and that it was now okay. He agreed. The next day when his teacher pulled me aside, was when I found out that she knew nothing of the letter and they had not talked about any of it. I decided to act on my maternal instincts and my husband was just gonna have to let go of his fantasies of difficult child continuing in with the PC5Ms. I drove home, parked difficult child at the next door neighbor's in timeout on a chair, rallied my other 7 kids, and together we did a swift but massive swapping of bedrooms. We moved difficult child into the smallest bedroom, which is right next to mine, all by his lonesome. I took every toy, book, and scrap of his personal stuff out and boxed it in the garage. His room consists of a twin bed in the middle of the room, a dresser, and empty book shelf, a small desk, chair and trash can. We moved PC8F together with the PC5Ms into the largest bedroom across the hall from mine. PC8F is up on a loft bed by herself, and PC5Ms are on a queen bed below loft. PC17M is now in the room formerly belonging to difficult child and PC5Ms, which is right across from difficult child now and he can see right in difficult child's room perfectly. It felt like the rightest thing I'd done in a long time. husband was kinds disappointed but I don't care. We have to parent difficult child for who he IS and not who we want him to be. We can always give him more privileges and things but we cannot undo negative family experiences that he causes in our lives. husband over identifies with difficult child because he struggled as a child. husband is the youngest of 12 in a big, chaotic black family, father was an alcoholic, DV, drugs, too much openness and no boundaries. husband felt vulnerable and was fearful a lot. He was also very small, and slight in stature. husband felt verbally and physically dominated and victimized by the actions of others. He has a reading disorder that went undiagnosed in school and struggled to understand much of what was said at school because his mother speaks in a broken English-geechee dialect. It took me years to understand anyone in his family because they speak so differently. Long story short, I am heeding your advise and leaving nothing to chance. I ordered a tiny hidden wifi camera that I can view from my phone to place in his room and I hang a plastic hanger on his closed door at night that make a loud pop sound that he can't prevent on the outside of his door at night for right now. He is taken to the bathroom at bedtime and told not to get up during the night. neuropsychologist advised us not to inspire difficult child with our rules as to what he could can't do. He said we should not ever let him know when he scares or riles us. And never ever let him know if he has caused a riff between parents or others. difficult child will exploit it to the fullest. Npsydr also told us to tell difficult child that choices like fires, hurting people, or any other threats to family will result in him being separated from all of us and he will be alone. He needs to know that we will not tolerate any one in our family, including him, being threatened or hurt. Anyone threatening our family will not be allowed to live here, visit here, or be anywhere near us. Npsydr said that difficult child's self centered desire to not be alone could motivate him to avoid situations or threats that would result in the family physically removing themselves from his life. difficult child has to hear it that way. We will go away from him, not he will be sent away, because he believes that he has total dominion over himself and wouldn't let that happen. He cannot, however, keep the 9 of us from walking away from him and his behaviors. I already feel like the other kids are reinforcing this without even knowing it as they will get up and leave the room to go to theirs and close the door when difficult child is "stuck" and being blk/wht argumentative about stuff no one cares about or is ludicrous. He likes to sit and make off the wall comments and conclusions while everyone is watching TV together. For instance, we're watching shark week and theyshow the shark swimming and then the next clip is a marine biologist, from the waist up, talking calmly about sharks. difficult child will say, "wow, that shark bit her legs off!" and the other kids will say "what are you talking about. That didn't happen. and difficult child will argue endlessly that "see, her legs are gone." Even though now the show has progressed and the camera angle shows the marine biologist's whole body, legs and all. God help us. It usually ends with everyone just tuning difficult child out and ignoring him. Thank you all so much for just letting me vent and affirming my strong maternal instinct to protect all of our kids, including difficult child, from himself. I will try to keep it shorter in the future. Just so much pent up anxiety in me. I have actually started biting my nails again after years without doing it. Please pray that my husband and I stay close and unified as we work to meet our difficult child's special needs and continue to love him for who he is, and not hate him for what he does. You guys are my saving grace. [/QUOTE]
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9M difficult child... I'm wearing thin fast.
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