And WHO needs to apologize?

[Andy]

Do any of your difficult child's harrass you for hours on end demanding an apology for something that wouldn't have happened IF they would have obeyed you in the first place?

I am soooooo sick of this kid tonight! "difficult child, GET AWAY FROM ME!!! GO TO YOUR ROOM AND GO TO BED!!!"

 

[klmno]

Of course, they cannot see that. I try to turn it into a situation where I apologize for (whatever I think I did or didn't do that was not perfect) but expect him (and discuss with him) what he did or didn't do. Now, I can assure you- this area is not my strong point. But, I try to handle it in a way that I am not "giving in" to his way of thinking, still, I try to make sure that I make every effort for it not to turn into a battle of wits. My difficult child is a hunter lying in wait for a battle of wits. And I always lose!

 

[Andy]

At this point I don't know how to do this without "giving in". I think we are done with the first issue, now it appears that he is going to starve tonight because he refuses to eat what I gave him for supper. And of course, it will be my fault when he dies for not giving him "real food" as oppose to meat, cheese, loaf bread, and cheetos (he ate the loaf bread). He says "real food" is Applebees, Burger King, Dairyland, ect. He wants to go to Dairyland or a gas station deli. He put something near the microwave for me to make but will not tell me what it is. Now is yelling at the puppy for not letting him check her for ticks.

Be Right Back! (I hope!)

 

[Wiped Out]

All the time. It's so frustrating! With my difficult child, explaining it, for the most part, doesn't help. He refuses to see the connection!

I hope he is sleeping by now.

 

[Andy]

Guess toaster strudels are better than meat and cheese. I made him two and gave him peaches that he has to eat. He said "Thank you" when I gave him the plate and "I know" when I told him to eat ALL the peaches.

Maybe another night done?

easy child just got home. I am using her easy child since mine is not working. I need to return it to her so don't know when I can get on again.

GOOD NIGHT ALL!!!

 

[klmno]

If this is an 11 yo refusing to eat what you cook for dinner- then, too bad. Unless he has something pertaining to serious sensory issues- he eats what is cooked. I would ignore the rest.

 

[Christy]

Something is always done TO a difficult child. It is never caused BY a difficult child. That would require cause and effect thinking and most difficult children are too egocentric to see how their actions affect others.

In other words, difficult child is always right and Mom is always wrong.

Try an apology like, "I am sorry that I fail to live up to your unrealistic expectations and that I can not provide for your ever changing needs."

Glad to hear that you found a food that meets with his approval. Can't go wrong with toaster strudals.

Have a good night. Get some rest,
Christy

 

[amazeofgrace]

well they harrass me for hours on end but not for an apology, just to harrass me generally or they want something. difficult child II harrasses me to accept his apology. Which sometimes I use the "do you keep petting a dog when you get bite by it every time" explanation with him, which only makes him worse.

 

[witzend]

Apparently, I am always the one that needs to apologize.

 

[tiredmommy]

Apparently, I am always the one that needs to apologize.

Witz- Don't you know it's always our fault?

Adrianne, I usually say something like "I'll be more than happy to say I'm sorry when you say sorry for ....". Then I start listing.

 

[Marguerite]

Adrianne, how carefully have they assessed him for Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD)? Because what you describe sounds classic, to me. They have an insistence on rules being followed, only these are the rules which they have managed to work out in their own heads, from what they observe. These kids tend to experiment with human behaviour (because otherwise they can't understand it) and will treat us like laboratory rats. "If I push Button A, consequence C will happen every time," is the way their minds work.
You can make this work to your advantage - difficult child 1 is now extremely law-abiding and scrupulously honest. It wasn't always this way.

Part of this desperate need for everybody to respond each according to our own programming, is a desperate need to be able to predict what will happen and how people will react. Also part of it - everybody must react the way he would. Even the dog.

I've told the story before about difficult child 3 reading a book to a six month old baby - he asked the baby to choose which book he would read and held up two books so the baby could point to one. He took a flailing arm as indication of choice and began to read. He would stop every so often to try to engage the baby in the story, to get "audience response".
"Now, baby - what do you think will happen next?"

He was assuming that the baby's thought processes and level of understanding were a match to his own.

Another example - a young friend of ours, daughter of a therapist we see often, is ten years old and very bright. When difficult child 3 first met her he was ten years old and she was six. He said to her mother, "Is she autistic?"
The mother, rather taken aback that her beloved, treasured only child could be considered anything other than perfect, asked him why he thought she was autistic.
"She's very bright," difficult child 3 said. In his world, a lot of very smart people are also autistic.

Conversely, this young girl said to her mother, "Why is difficult child 3 your client? He seems perfectly OK to me. He's very smart though, isn't he?"

Marg

 

[timer lady]

Adrianne,

wm demands apologies where none are necessary & in most cases an apology is due from him.

For him, it's a defense mechanism. Turn the tables on the adults kind of thing. He's good, it's immediate & sometimes it works to take your mind off of the "offense". Classic Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD).

This really turns into a power struggle; one that shouldn't be fed into. There's no reason for difficult child to demand an apology from you. When wm would start this nonsense my only response to him would be "excuse me?" or "I don't think so" & I'd leave it at that.

You're a better mum than me ~ I wouldn't have fed the child.

Hope you have a better day today with difficult child.

 

[susiestar]

My child would/will eat what I cook. If they have a problem, THEY can make something IF there is a sensory issue (and we do have these). BUT unless I preplan something different, the child makes whatever himself/herself. In our house, the child would starve to death with those insistences. been there done that, Wizard tried to "starve" himself, ended up hiding several pounds of cooked ground beef in his room so he could pretend to go on a "hunger strike". He gave himself a rather nasty bout of food poisoning and a dressing down by the docs for being a brat. It was purely controlling mom behavior in our case - and this mom had had enough!

I am sorry your son harasses you for hours. You may want to put some limits in place, like after X minutes on this topic he has to go rake the yard until he has a new non-pestering topic. I found that combining the limit with WORK was surprisingly effective if I was as low emotion as possible. Works with Jess and thank you too.

 

[DazedandConfused]

Sometimes, when I am in a particularly caustic mood, I will sympathically look Son, or Daughter, when they get like this (Son is very food picky), and say with a sweetly sarcastic voice, "I'm so very sorry, I simply don't know HOW you put up living with conditions like this. The tremendous suffering you endure on a daily basis can only be compared to the plight of the children of Aftganistan"!

Then, I quietly walk away. Now, sometimes, I will get an eye roll from daughter as she is older now and gets it. Son, oh my, sometimes will go off, or will say, "Yeah, it's awful"! LOL

Once away, I go chuckle out of sight.

 

[Star*]

You can win the battle but loose the war in the long run. And I'm not talking about you Adrianne - I'm referring to toaster strudel boy.

IF it is possible in your home, since you are the proud owner of a difficult child and after being told a gazillion times by professionals my best tip for you is to HAVE MEALS EVERY DAY, at the SAME TIME, as much as possible within 30 minutes. It is incredible - and I mean INCREDIBLE to us that once we established breakfast, (school did lunch) and dinner at 6:30-7:00 pm every night - how much improvement there was with certain "battles" with Dude.

And other rules where food are STUCK TO LIKE glue - ?

If you do NOT eat DINNER you don't get to "graze" or "roam" in the kitchen - PERIOD, NO EXCUSES, momma is NOT going to sneak you a honey bun or a cracker - PERIOD! FINI! NO DISUSSION.

If you do NOT eat Lunch 12:00-13:30 on the weekends? Then you get NOTHING no snack, nothing nothing nothing until Dinner - whichi is at 6:30 - 7:00

We had the "I'm going to starve", "I'm never eating again." and on and on. Now if we made something that he decided he absolutely would not even try- THEN I had Dude back up food and he could have that instead, but he ate with us, at the same time we ate and at the table together. Some nights we ate dinner in the den, with the tv going - but it was amazing to see that we had gotten into the habit of talking to each other at the table and talked right through the tv show that was on.

It's very, very hard to establish and stick to eating times, but time and again - with any behavior specialist or psychiatrist that we talked to they consistantly asked if we eat at a specific time. It takes time - but it's worth it. And FYI - they do NOT die from not eating dinner and going to bed hungry or just missing a meal is a FANTASTIC motivator. Giving in later with the toaster strudel understandle - but not worth it - he's actually training you that if he doesn't like what is being served or had "BETTER" things to do during dinner - YOU will feed him something, sometime and thus he's training you to bend YOUR schedule to fit his needs and at his age - his needs should be learning to eat when you the parent says "Dinner time."

In our home - there was a snack basket and a fruit basket. Crackers, and packs of peanuts - that he COULD have if he asked between meals and IF he ATE his meals. As a single Mom before DF came into our lives - it was hard to have worked all day, then clean, laundry etc....and then COOK on top of it all. I swear I think my son grew up on KidCuisine. I was working 3 jobs and probably could have cooked a weeks worth of food on Saturday - but who does that anymore?

It's a small battle to win as a parent - but in the long run - many small battles won helps towards the ultimate goal.

Hugs
Star

 

[meowbunny]

My daughter is a professional badgerer and one who insists on apologies. It became a power play for both of us. I finally grew up. If I said or did something that would get an immediate apology had I said or done that to another person, my daughter deserves the same apology whether she started the incident or not. The nice thing was it took the wings out of her sails quickly. Once we had both cooled down, then we would discuss the entire incident and what we both could have done to stop things from going too far. Didn't work all the time but it did most.

As to the food issues, I'm afraid your son would get little sympathy from me. If you truly don't like what I'm fixing, then feel free to fix you something but you will eat at the table with me (or not eat again until the next meal) -- you know the menu (I used to write it on a white board in the kitchen). Demands for "real food" from restaurants were not only ignored but would guaranty that our Friday night out to dinner was gone for that week. Sorry, I would find those demands absolutely intolerable and the you fix me a substitute would probably result in regales of laughter on my part.

 

[Andy]

Thank you! I am not too worried about the food situation - my choice of picking my battles last night - I figured it would get him to eat some fruit.

The harrassing for an apology is what is getting my anger up. I refuse to apologize for disciplining and telling him to stay away from me. You have heard of kids that walk around the classroom touching/tapping other kids to get attention or just because they are unable to keep their hands to themselves? That is basically what he was doing, "poking/tapping" me to get attention while I was busy with something. So I yelled at him and told him to go away. I am suppose to apologize for telling him not to "poke" me. difficult child is getting more and more "hands on everything" and it drives me up the wall.

We are still trying to figure out what is going on with him as far as a diagnosis. Right now what is known is severe anxiety. This was diagnosised at his complete breakdown last fall but things are settling down and we can now start to determine what else is going on as behaviors are emerging and becoming his norms.