A hypothetical difficult child question...

[Shari]

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that you are an avid baseball fan. You are a baseball NUT.

You go to a game once a week, at least. You have game balls that you've caught. You have autographed balls, bats, and gloves. You coach your kid's litle league teams. You eat, sleep, and breathe baseball.

You display your prized baseball "stuff" in a giant glass case in your living room. Your difficult child has never broken the case. Your difficult child uses his own baseball things to play baseball and admires your baseball stuff, but despite all his problems, he's never been inappropriate with the baseball stuff.

Then one day difficult child gets angry at you while you're driving in the car. He says he's gonna hit you with a baseball bat when you get home. He doesn't have a bat in the car. Home is a hald hour away. By the time you get home, of course, it never happens, but he still said it.

So you go home and hide all the baseball bats, because you're scared. difficult child feels terrible. He apologizes to everyone repeatedly.

Months pass. difficult child frequently looks at the empty display case and comments about the baseball stuff being gone, because he might use it to hurt someone. He says this frequently.

At this point, is keeping the baseball stuff gone still a good idea? Or is it reinforcing to him the exact idea you're trying to keep out of his head? (because when it was there, he was NEVER inappropriate with it; but now that its gone, he frequently is reminded that he can hurt you with it...?)

 

[MyHrt31]

I'm no expert in this situation but I would say its better to be safe than sorry. I'd probably just casually ask him if he really wants to hurt someone and if so, who. My difficult child is still little enough to where he is honest and he will talk about some of his issues with me. Most of the time, he'll say things to scare people (the kids at school) but he says he doesn't want to actually hurt them. Either way, I don't give him access to any weapons just in case he does truly "mean what he says". I forgot to mention that although he is a baseball fan and he constantly notices the missing bat, the fact that he has planned out his "attack" using the bat is reason enough to keep it hidden.

 

[gcvmom]

It sounds to me like it was an impulsive statement made in the heat of an argument. Not something he planned out specifically to execute. If he'd been obsessing about doing it and you KNEW he'd been stuck on this idea of attacking someone with the bat, then yes, I'd hide it. But even non-difficult child kids say stuff when they're angry and they're never going to follow through on it.

I think I'd go ahead and put the stuff back, and then talk about how it's not okay to threaten people, even when you're angry, and even if you don't mean to actually do it, because in this day and age, people take everything seriously.

 

[C.J.]

Is this an older difficult child who said this or a very young difficult child who said this?

Older difficult child, everything stays locked up. Younger difficult child, maybe a few less valuable items (sentimental or otherwise) could be displayed there, and gradually add to the collection as you see younger difficult child respecting the space as special.

I am a baseball fan - and have a few sentimental items from my younger days when my favorite team was a decent team year in and year out. I display a few items, but most of them are out of sight.

 

[Shari]

This would be younger difficult child.

The baseball memorabelia is gone, however, it being gone draws more attention from difficult child, and more focus on what he could do with it, then EVER when it was there.

So are you doing more harm by not having it there and increasing his focus on what he could potentially do with it?

 

[susiestar]

We went through some of this. sometimes removing Wiz' obsessions left him seeing wehre the objects were kept and he continued to feel sad, or to dwell on the item or the violence he attached to it (we ONLY removed his obsessions because violence was inevitably attached to it and the focus of it).

We would try to reintroduce the items to help him learn to regulate the obsessions and trend to violence. It took a LOT of times of removing and reintroducing a few months later. And often the spot not only kept him dwelling on how he could have killed us but also that he was so horrible a kid that we had to remove things. Neither one was a positive message.

A lot of times we tried to rearrange things so that the absence of the item was not so glaring.

With any of the obsessions we would bring back the nonviolent things a little at a time and we often never brought back items he could hurt us with that were related to the obsession.

So if it is the hunting stuff, I would keep it locked away and only bring it out when I could supervise him 100% and he was not using it. For baseball stuff the bats would stay locked up but the other stuff would come back. If it is the hunting stuff, maybe trophies could come back, or some other part of the hobby.

he is still very young and unstable to bring back things like the bats, but it would be worth a try (in my opinion) to bring back the other things to see if that took the emphasis off.

do I make ANY sense?

 

[ML]

I think I would try re-introducing some things. If he were older I would probably say different. This is not an ez choice. I support you either way. Hugs, ML