Lying & Constantly making wrong choices

[needprayers]

The past 2.5 weeks have been pretty good for difficult child. His zoloft was upped from 25mg to 50 mg last week.

Then Friday things started downhill again. I got an email from one of his teachers, saying the past week difficult child was a handfull. She said he was very obstinate, defiant, and disobediant.

Saturday, we let him have a friend over. We do not know this child, so I was keeping a pretty good eye on them, or so I thought. At one time I saw them walk down to the road and pick up stuff. My first thought was he was picking up cigarette butts, so I told him to stop. He immediately lied telling me they were just picking up cool rocks. That was pretty much it for Saturday.

Then Sunday our neighbor comes over and tells us some troubling news. It seems sometime Sat, our difficult child and his friend had gotten some matches, went behind my neighbors shed, took a fire extinquisher out of his shed, and burned some paper then sprayed the fire extinquisher on it.

I confronted difficult child and he admitted it, and said it was his idea. I asked him if they were trying to smoke and he said no, they were just lighting paper. So we told him is grounded for a while. No fourwheeler, phone, games, upstairs television, and he will go to be early for a while.

Then this morning, neighbor comes back over and tells, yesterday afternoon he found rolled up grass, not marijuana, just grass, that he must have overlooked yesterday. Rolled up in a post-it note no less.. I had found something like this before in his clubhouse, and he admitted it and promised he wouldn't do it again.

How can these kids just blatantly look you in the eye and LIE like that... I'm so po'ed at him right now I cant think straight. I don't know if he's just trying "smoking" or he is trying to smoke "dope". If we can't get through to this kid he is going to end up in big trouble..

 

[klmno]

This kind of stuff is more common than one might think. My son also started with things like this and he got worse. Of course, I wzas upset when it started too but then I found out that almost all the boys in his age group and in this neighborhood were "experiementing" with both matches and smoking. While that still isn't acceptable or a good thing, looking back on it I think the bigger concern is when a kid doesn't stop at a small experiment and keeps getting involved by doing more and bigger things. I grounded my son, he got into trouble legally and at school, etc, but now I'm not so sure how much control we really have over it. I battle that- sometimes I blame myself because I didn't know or do something more to stop him from getting worse. Other times I feel like it ddidn't matter what I did or didn't do- he was bound and determined.

So I am not sure what to suggest to you. It's good that you see the warning signs and maybe if you can keep a close eye and determine if this was just one small experiment intended to "impress" a new friend or if your son is trying to do more and continuing along this path, it would help you decide how to handle it. I was aware that my son would do insane and self-destructive things to try to get or keep friends and tried hard to find a therapist that would work with him on those bad choices. But all the therapists I ever found just wanted to do the rewards/consequences approach, thinking we could punissh it out of him I guess. It didn't work. Still, you might have better luck- it might not hurt to start trying to find a therapist now who will work on a tween's bad choices in a way other than behavior mod.

Oh- we also tried medications and after 20-some different medication combos that never really made a substantial difference for any length of time, I gave up on them. Although due to the legal problems, it was a psychiatrist (psychiatrist) in Department of Juvenile Justice that actually took my son off medications. That's not to suggest that your son doesn't need them, just that many times I think they are given for the wrong diagnosis and not as helpful as we'd like them to be no matter how many times the medication or dosage is changed.

 

[aeroeng]

There are two possible things going on and you don't which one? 1) experimenting with fire and 2) experimenting with smoking and drugs.

For #1. When I was younger (middle school) I had a fascination with fire and loved to play with it. Learning how different things burned, and experimenting with tricks you could do. It is a wonder that I never set my parents house on fire (at least your son got a fire extinguisher). So when my son also developed an interested in fire we let him experiment in a controlled fashion. On a cement pad with limited burning supplies and with adults around. I felt that if I had been able to do the experiments in the open I never would have hidden it. After a while my son lost interested and we both have developed a stronger respect for fire and how quickly it can spread.

For #2 Eventually it will be up to him weather he smokes or not. You can't control him forever. I think the best you can do is to give him all the information available so that he can make an informed decision. In a very mature conversation (being respectful of his right to make his own choices), you can make sure he understand your preferences and that you hope he chooses not to smoke (anything). Information on health effects might also help, and possibly a conversation with individuals who did chose to smoke.

 

[DammitJanet]

Ahhhh, this reminds me of days gone by!

I remember as a younger tween the whole smoking thing. Somewhere in the very early years a few friends and I were home alone. Someone suggested we sneak a cigarette and smoke it. We thought we would be so grown up! Well we snuck up into my attic and all shared that one cig. Then we all got scared and thought that my parents would be able to smell it in the house, on our clothes and on our breath. So for some reason only known to 12 year old minds, we came up with these weird concoctions. We sprayed perfume and vinager all around the attic, rubbed ourselves down in baby powder and deoderant and then ate mustard and onions. God we must have smelled a fright!

Then a year or two later we somehow got it into our heads that we could smoke banana peels and aspirin, to what end, I have no idea. Again, probably someone said it would get you high. Can we spell dumb dumb dumb.

Well, I lived through it obviously.

 

[needprayers]

It's not so much he was smoking.. I smoked everything from cornsilks to cigarettes I snuck from my dad when I was young. My concern is the fact that he can look me in the eye like that and flat out lie to me. As much trouble as he has been in recently, you would think he would "try" to behave some, but I swear, that kid acts like he could care less what his mom and I think of him.

Also, I am worried it will lead to worse things down the road. He is simply doing it to try and impress others.

I've got a good mind to go buy a pack of cigs, and make him smoke them till he gets sick literally and physically
thx

 

[PatriotsGirl]

There was a book I read long ago and a part stuck with me.

Never ask a child if they did something that you know they did. In other words, do not set them up for lying. If you ask, they will lie. And that is almost all kids, not just difficult child's. If I know my difficult child did something, I confront her with it saying I know you did x, y, z. Why did you do that? Etc.

 

[needprayers]

Good point PatriotsGirl.

I honestly don't think he is one bit remorseful that he lies, I think he's just sorry he gets caught.

He still doesn't know that we know about the smoking part yet. He thinks we just know about him burning the paper and using the fire extinguisher.