SRL
Active Member
Hi All,
I want to pick your brains on this, especially those of you who've been there, done that.
The Explosive Child was recommended to me in those early desperate years, and combined with other interventions, etc. has worked very well. I arrived here with a difficult child whose school anxiety was very debilitating and together with a reaction to an SSRI he'd reached the point where every issue he had (including ODD) had skyrocketed. Fast forward to today and he's functioning incredibly well--medication free, straight A student, several really good friendships, no discernable differences between him and other students according to his teachers, he follows rules at school, and he's developed acceptable coping skills or alternatives for issues like anxiety and sensory. He starts junior high in fall and we had to manufacture a few goals on his IEP because we all agreed he needed to be covered during his transition, otherwise he's reached the "no educational impact" point. At home he's still a difficult kid, but a lot more manageable than those difficult early years. Occasionally he'll go into rage mode--picked up a little last summer as he was approaching 12 so I think it is to some degree hormone driven. We still make some accomodations for anxiety but they're for the most part managable--such as tag teaming going to the other kids' events.
I want to qualify all of the above by stating that while I celebrate the progress, I never, never take the stability for granted! We've been fortunate because he's been able to make progress without the medication merry go round and given time and space and peer modeling he usually gets to where he needs to be. I dropped him off at summer music day camp this past week for the first time--new school building, mostly new kids, teachers he'd never met--and he coped really well. Parents from the other side of the fence could never understand just how momentous these experiences are.
I have felt this past school year that it's time to move beyond TEC and into more traditional responsibilities and consequences and I've really not got off the ground with this. We've just completed our first week of summer vacation and it's really become clear to me that he knows he's getting away with stuff. (There's sort of a "go ahead and punish me and see where it gets you" kind of an attitude when he acts up these days.) I did what I had to do to get through but now I need to tackle things like chores and consquences for treatment of siblings. I keep thinking this should be simple but it's as if I'm stuck here, afraid to rock the boat because he's made such incredible progress. We're getting good results with what we're doing, but could it be I'm holding him back by not expecting more?
Not long ago a friend asked me how I expected him to learn skills that we'd let go here and my reply was that I didn't expect him to gain everything from home. He's doing better at school in areas such as organization and following through on instructions and accepting authority and I'm okay with that--better this way than the other way around. I don't regret doing what I did, because giving up what we did allowed him the space to deal with the pressures elsewhere, but it's time to move forward.
Ideas, suggestions, experiences?
I want to pick your brains on this, especially those of you who've been there, done that.
The Explosive Child was recommended to me in those early desperate years, and combined with other interventions, etc. has worked very well. I arrived here with a difficult child whose school anxiety was very debilitating and together with a reaction to an SSRI he'd reached the point where every issue he had (including ODD) had skyrocketed. Fast forward to today and he's functioning incredibly well--medication free, straight A student, several really good friendships, no discernable differences between him and other students according to his teachers, he follows rules at school, and he's developed acceptable coping skills or alternatives for issues like anxiety and sensory. He starts junior high in fall and we had to manufacture a few goals on his IEP because we all agreed he needed to be covered during his transition, otherwise he's reached the "no educational impact" point. At home he's still a difficult kid, but a lot more manageable than those difficult early years. Occasionally he'll go into rage mode--picked up a little last summer as he was approaching 12 so I think it is to some degree hormone driven. We still make some accomodations for anxiety but they're for the most part managable--such as tag teaming going to the other kids' events.
I want to qualify all of the above by stating that while I celebrate the progress, I never, never take the stability for granted! We've been fortunate because he's been able to make progress without the medication merry go round and given time and space and peer modeling he usually gets to where he needs to be. I dropped him off at summer music day camp this past week for the first time--new school building, mostly new kids, teachers he'd never met--and he coped really well. Parents from the other side of the fence could never understand just how momentous these experiences are.
I have felt this past school year that it's time to move beyond TEC and into more traditional responsibilities and consequences and I've really not got off the ground with this. We've just completed our first week of summer vacation and it's really become clear to me that he knows he's getting away with stuff. (There's sort of a "go ahead and punish me and see where it gets you" kind of an attitude when he acts up these days.) I did what I had to do to get through but now I need to tackle things like chores and consquences for treatment of siblings. I keep thinking this should be simple but it's as if I'm stuck here, afraid to rock the boat because he's made such incredible progress. We're getting good results with what we're doing, but could it be I'm holding him back by not expecting more?
Not long ago a friend asked me how I expected him to learn skills that we'd let go here and my reply was that I didn't expect him to gain everything from home. He's doing better at school in areas such as organization and following through on instructions and accepting authority and I'm okay with that--better this way than the other way around. I don't regret doing what I did, because giving up what we did allowed him the space to deal with the pressures elsewhere, but it's time to move forward.
Ideas, suggestions, experiences?