Hello all--
So we had a session with Ms Ally yesterday - this is the first one the difficult child attended.
I think it's becoming clear to Ms Ally that we are not the family she typically sees.
She had a TON of questions for difficult child...tried to get difficult child's point of view on this and that...and quickly discovered that difficult child has no empathy for anyone. Tried to see if difficult child would take responsibility for anything - but no - lots of denial.
Got some input from DS (and for the SECOND time, MS Ally was told that it only takes ONE person to argue in this house - LOL!)
difficult child has been told she needs to work on developing empathy. How do you do that?
And I've been assigned to figure out consequences for every time difficult child acts in anger or acts in an aggressive manner.
UGH! That's difficult child's whole life!
And Ms Ally doesn't want me to just punish angry behaviors - I am supposed to find a way to change the root causes of the anger.
Well, how the heck am I supposed to do that???
Believe it or not, I think I have a plan:
I'm thinking rather than try to "punish" angry feelings - I'm going to try and get difficult child to make amends.
We are going to make a "hurts" jar. Each and every time a member of the family does something hurtful to another - the injured party is going to write it on a card. At the end of each day....we are going to read the cards and anyone who caused a "hurt" will have to formally make amends for that hurt.
For example: if a card says "So-and-So called me a ********", we will discuss why this is hurtful, and then So-and-So has to make up for that hurt by apologizing and giving a compliment instead.
I'm not sure if this will actually teach empathy - but I'm hoping it will at least get difficult child into the habit of connecting a negative action with a hurt feeling.
What do you think?
So we had a session with Ms Ally yesterday - this is the first one the difficult child attended.
I think it's becoming clear to Ms Ally that we are not the family she typically sees.
She had a TON of questions for difficult child...tried to get difficult child's point of view on this and that...and quickly discovered that difficult child has no empathy for anyone. Tried to see if difficult child would take responsibility for anything - but no - lots of denial.
Got some input from DS (and for the SECOND time, MS Ally was told that it only takes ONE person to argue in this house - LOL!)
difficult child has been told she needs to work on developing empathy. How do you do that?
And I've been assigned to figure out consequences for every time difficult child acts in anger or acts in an aggressive manner.
UGH! That's difficult child's whole life!
And Ms Ally doesn't want me to just punish angry behaviors - I am supposed to find a way to change the root causes of the anger.
Well, how the heck am I supposed to do that???
Believe it or not, I think I have a plan:
I'm thinking rather than try to "punish" angry feelings - I'm going to try and get difficult child to make amends.
We are going to make a "hurts" jar. Each and every time a member of the family does something hurtful to another - the injured party is going to write it on a card. At the end of each day....we are going to read the cards and anyone who caused a "hurt" will have to formally make amends for that hurt.
For example: if a card says "So-and-So called me a ********", we will discuss why this is hurtful, and then So-and-So has to make up for that hurt by apologizing and giving a compliment instead.
I'm not sure if this will actually teach empathy - but I'm hoping it will at least get difficult child into the habit of connecting a negative action with a hurt feeling.
What do you think?