bigboneded38
New Member
Hello everybody. I wanted to introduce myself and tell my story. I need help, and don't usually approach others until I'm at the end. I have been a part of one other forum, dealing with infidelity, but not until I had exhausted every other option, and it saved my life...I am so glad I did it. Hopefully I can find a similar result here.
Also, I apologize if there is a more appropriate place or time for this post, but the website is big and I didn't spend enough time looking to see if this was an OK thing to do here.
Anywaaaays...I am a 37 year old single Dad. I have a BA in Psychology and have slowly been working on my MA and PhD for a while. I am raising a 9 year-old boy (LT), with the help of my beautiful girlfriend. We have been together for about 13 months, but have been best friends for a long time and were good friends in H.S. before our paths veered. I recently moved myself and Liam to Alaska from Northern California for greener (and far snowier) pastures. I was previously married (14 years), and raised my older son (Woody, 17) from the time he was about 2.5. He was diagnosed with ADHD and medicated at age 3. So I have some experience raising a child with some issues. Through the breakup of my marriage (ex-wife was a cheating opiate addict) my older boy wound up with his bio-Dad, and I got custody of my younger boy.
So there's a thumbnail sketch. The reason I am here is to garner help in dealing with Liam.
LT is a beautiful, loving, extremely smart, 9 year old in 4th grade. His main problems are with impulse control, aggressive Bx/bullying, lying, and verbal disruption. He has had difficulty with these since approx. age 4. As I said, Woody was diagnosis with ADHD at a young age, LT's problems were manifested at a slightly older age, but the severity and frequency have escalated beyond anything I saw with my older boy. LT has always been a problem at school, and he is an after-school program in which he gets in trouble on a regular basis as well.
THIS WEEK, LThas left the after-school campus without permission twice, passed a cruel note, hit a kid with a shoe and been suspended for two days. At school, he has had two days of in-school suspension, one for kicking a kid who wouldn't stop singing, and today for holding a younger kid against the wall and threatening the kid if he didn't vote for him in the upcoming school election, from which he has subsequently been banned.
I have done everything I know to do, from behavior mod, to positive consequences, ignoring bad behavior, etc. I have had help from teachers, school admin, friends, and family. The only thing I haven't done is get physical. Nothing has changed a thing. This leads me to believe that his problem is not in being a bad kid, he's not, but in his ability to control himself...he acts without forethought, and I can't prevent it. I am leaning toward CD, as he is cognitively aware of right/wrong, love, empathy/compassion, but he is too impulsive to refer to his cognitive abilities and feelings. Example: he LOVES dogs and babies and stuffed animals, and doesn't harm these things, but when it comes to dealing with other kids in large-group situations, he becomes a whole different kid. It is SO frustrating, because EVERY day, I smile and start the day with hope and think "today's gonna be a good day", and more days than not, I am wrong.
I, myself, had behavioral issues growing up. At the time they didn't diagnose kids with ADD, ODD, or CD, and I was never treated, so I started with being verbally disruptive in class, and escalated to full criminal behavior and substance abuse by age 14. It took me until I was about 22 to stop with the chemicals, and til about 30 to recover completely and get my life together (right about then, my teetotalling wife went off the deep-end and almost undid everything I had worked so hard to fix).
All of this, while slowly ballooning into more than I intended, is to say, 'HELP'.
Do any of you relate? Are there mirror images here for any of you? What has worked? What can I do? I don't want my son's adolescence to be like mine. I want him to be normal. I love him more than can be expressed and I am so scared.
(Probably should add that I don't have any health insurance for another 5 weeks, so I can't afford Dr's until then.)
Thanks, you guys. While I don't feel any better after typing this...I do have more hope.
Also, I apologize if there is a more appropriate place or time for this post, but the website is big and I didn't spend enough time looking to see if this was an OK thing to do here.
Anywaaaays...I am a 37 year old single Dad. I have a BA in Psychology and have slowly been working on my MA and PhD for a while. I am raising a 9 year-old boy (LT), with the help of my beautiful girlfriend. We have been together for about 13 months, but have been best friends for a long time and were good friends in H.S. before our paths veered. I recently moved myself and Liam to Alaska from Northern California for greener (and far snowier) pastures. I was previously married (14 years), and raised my older son (Woody, 17) from the time he was about 2.5. He was diagnosed with ADHD and medicated at age 3. So I have some experience raising a child with some issues. Through the breakup of my marriage (ex-wife was a cheating opiate addict) my older boy wound up with his bio-Dad, and I got custody of my younger boy.
So there's a thumbnail sketch. The reason I am here is to garner help in dealing with Liam.
LT is a beautiful, loving, extremely smart, 9 year old in 4th grade. His main problems are with impulse control, aggressive Bx/bullying, lying, and verbal disruption. He has had difficulty with these since approx. age 4. As I said, Woody was diagnosis with ADHD at a young age, LT's problems were manifested at a slightly older age, but the severity and frequency have escalated beyond anything I saw with my older boy. LT has always been a problem at school, and he is an after-school program in which he gets in trouble on a regular basis as well.
THIS WEEK, LThas left the after-school campus without permission twice, passed a cruel note, hit a kid with a shoe and been suspended for two days. At school, he has had two days of in-school suspension, one for kicking a kid who wouldn't stop singing, and today for holding a younger kid against the wall and threatening the kid if he didn't vote for him in the upcoming school election, from which he has subsequently been banned.
I have done everything I know to do, from behavior mod, to positive consequences, ignoring bad behavior, etc. I have had help from teachers, school admin, friends, and family. The only thing I haven't done is get physical. Nothing has changed a thing. This leads me to believe that his problem is not in being a bad kid, he's not, but in his ability to control himself...he acts without forethought, and I can't prevent it. I am leaning toward CD, as he is cognitively aware of right/wrong, love, empathy/compassion, but he is too impulsive to refer to his cognitive abilities and feelings. Example: he LOVES dogs and babies and stuffed animals, and doesn't harm these things, but when it comes to dealing with other kids in large-group situations, he becomes a whole different kid. It is SO frustrating, because EVERY day, I smile and start the day with hope and think "today's gonna be a good day", and more days than not, I am wrong.
I, myself, had behavioral issues growing up. At the time they didn't diagnose kids with ADD, ODD, or CD, and I was never treated, so I started with being verbally disruptive in class, and escalated to full criminal behavior and substance abuse by age 14. It took me until I was about 22 to stop with the chemicals, and til about 30 to recover completely and get my life together (right about then, my teetotalling wife went off the deep-end and almost undid everything I had worked so hard to fix).
All of this, while slowly ballooning into more than I intended, is to say, 'HELP'.
Do any of you relate? Are there mirror images here for any of you? What has worked? What can I do? I don't want my son's adolescence to be like mine. I want him to be normal. I love him more than can be expressed and I am so scared.
(Probably should add that I don't have any health insurance for another 5 weeks, so I can't afford Dr's until then.)
Thanks, you guys. While I don't feel any better after typing this...I do have more hope.
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