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<blockquote data-quote="Marguerite" data-source="post: 274053" data-attributes="member: 1991"><p>Welcome.</p><p></p><p>While it is a good idea to get as comprehensive a test done as soon as you can, sometimes I do accept it's just out of reach. However, you do what you can when you can, make the best of what you can and in the meantime keep an open mind. Read up on everything, find out what resources you can plug into to make your life easier and give you answers.</p><p></p><p>I have a few thoughts and some questions for you.</p><p></p><p>First, you mention that in your job you have to keep society safe. This tells me that you are used to working in a controlling, authoritarian role (more so than most of us). I'm thinking that this could be a big part of the problem. </p><p></p><p>Not the cause, note. Certainly not that. There are undoubtedly many people with your job who have perfect children. But if you have a difficult child, especially one who has her own strong need to assert some control over her own environment, then what you get will be very much like what you describe. There can be many reasons why a child tries to control their environment. Often as parents, we react to this in achild by doing our utmost to prevent the child from having control - as if the child wanting control has to automatically be bad for them, as if it's the same as the child wanting free reign over the cookie jar. </p><p>But it's not the same thing. It's important to work out why this is happening, so your response can be more suited to the situation.</p><p></p><p>I'll give you some examples.</p><p>A child with poor impulse control is a kid who will chase a ball out into the street without even looking to see if there's a truck coming. Add to the mix a child who only sees the world from their point of view, who simply cannot recognise that other people may think differently, have different opinions or perhaps not be able to automatically know what the child wants, then add in a high level of frustration with everything that simply doesn't 'behave' as the child expects - you have a child who will feel much more comfortable if they can make teir world more predictable.</p><p></p><p>Next scenario - anxiety. When the child's mind is a constant stream of mental "what if's" of unpredictability, when meeting new people is a challenge because those people may do something or say something that could be upsetting or frightening, or make the child angry; when there are so many rules to follow that seem impossible, when keeping those rules is so difficult to keep track of and to remember, when they seem to get punished and can't remember why that the very fear of punishment makes them stumble even more over the right thing to do - then you have a child with a need to assert some control, in order to reduce the need for anxiety. Certainty becomes reliability, which becomes a reduction in anxiety.</p><p></p><p>There can be many reasons. But if we, as parents, approach this by clamping down on the child's freedom of choice where it probably really wouldn't matter to us, then we are going to have bigger fights in areas where it DOES matter to us.</p><p></p><p>That doesn't mean that the asnwer has to be anarchy - far from it. But there are ways of allowing the child to have control, while still holding the leash yourself. </p><p></p><p>Something I've found with difficult child 3 (and to acertain extent, his older sister) is a lack of 'relativity'. In his mind, everybody is equal. We might see this as a good thing in a world where discrimination is considered bad, but the down side of this is, he treats everybody the same - teachers, parents, babies, classmates, strangers, family. It's not a policy of his, it's simply how he thinks and how he beleives other people think. He sees other people thinking with the same thoughts and capabilities as he does. If he merely THINKS "I am thirsty," then in his mind, everyone around him should know this because HE knows it. Our failure to respond to tis is therefore, in his mind, our deliberate neglect of this need of his which MUST be met.</p><p></p><p>He treats other people as they treat him. This has meant that when an adult is kind and polite to him, he will be kind and polite back. If an adult is condescending to him, he will be condescending in return. And if (as happened frequently) a teacher shouts at him and is sarcastic, he will be sarcastic and shout at the teacher.</p><p>I remember when easy child 2/difficult child 2 was 3 years old, she was already badgering me to meet her every whim and I was exhausted. We also had a rule - drink a glass of water in between every glass of juice. She asked me for a second cup of juice, I poured her water (as per our house rule). She stood there, hands on hips, then shouted at me, "I said I wanted JUICE! Why don't you ever listen?" She didn't quite slam her fist onto the table. What she was doing was dishing back to me, what I had said/done to her in my method of discipline. Trying to explain that "Do as I say, not as I do," was how to behave just wasn't going to go down well, I felt. From then on I chose to moderate how I handled her.</p><p></p><p>Trying to change these patterns was not easy and we still struggle at times. husband can be (has been) a strict authoritarian, having been brought up with "Do not answer back to your parents," and suddenly finding he has fathered a Changeling who breaks all these rules. Because our intial approach was to try to control tightly, we had more problems. Because husband was the parent more absent (due to long working hours) his interactions with difficult child 3 have historically been more during difficult times of day, and at times when husband himself has been less tolerant of difficult child 3 because he himself was so tired. And now we've made changes, the wheels still fall off occasionally with difficult child 3 getting angry at his dad for "being unreasonable" when frankly, difficult child 3 has been really annoying.</p><p></p><p>But kids like this are not being annoying on purpose. We have to hold on to this. It does depend on what the problem is, sometimes a kid CAN choose to be a pain, but generally there are good reasons (food reasons to the kid) which, if we can work them out, give us a chink in the armour through which to aim our parental arrows.</p><p></p><p>A book which helps a lot of us, and certainly helped us find a better way to manage difficult child 3 with far fewer battles, is "The Explosive Child" by Ross Greene. There is some discussion of this in the Early Childhood forum, because the book seems to work better for older kids but some of us discussed how to modify it to the younger child. It can be done. It made our family's life MUCH easier!</p><p></p><p>Now some questions - you say your child lies a lot. How do you know your child is lying? What kind of lies does she tell? The answer can be very revealing.</p><p></p><p>One final point - ALL kids lie. All people lie. The main reason for lying, is to get out of trouble (if the person perceives that telling the truth will cause them trouble). There may not be a real need to lie, but it comes down to perception. These sort of lies, although still unacceptable, are understandable. Fairly normal. "The dog ate my homework."</p><p></p><p>The worrying lies are the ones where the person is trying to make themselves seem better, more important, more capable, to give them some advantage. "Yes, Mummy, I did my homework. I handed it in and the teacher gave me an A. Now can I have my treat that you promised?"</p><p></p><p>Another thing to describe about a lie - how complex is it? Is the child telling a whopper, an intricate alternative to the truth ("I didn't trip Johnny up, he was walking along all by himself and he fell over a tree root which happened to be in the path. My foot was nowhere nearly in his way, Jack said he saw me trip Johnny but Jack must be lying because he was still talking to Mr Brown in the school hall when Johnny fell"), or is the child simply saying, "I didn't do it?"</p><p></p><p>Something else to consider - if you know the child is lying, is there still a faint possibility than an intricate lie might just happen to be the truth?</p><p></p><p>An example back from my kids again - difficult child 3 was diangosed as autistic from the age of 3 (a bit younger). As we learned we were told that autistic kids can't tell lies. Then in 3rd grade difficult child 3's teacher said to me firmly, "He lied to me."</p><p>I was horrified, then disbelieving. But the story panned out. The teacher was determined to make me accept that autistic kids CAN lie and that we couldn't rely on this as a safeguard.</p><p></p><p>The story turned out to be more complex, however. difficult child 3, when questioned by the teacher, "Did you hit Justin?" had replied almost automatically, "No, I didn't."</p><p>Then the teacher said to difficult child 3, "But I saw you, I saw you hit Justin."</p><p>difficult child 3 persisted trying to deny it until he finally accepted the teacher wasn't bluffing, then finally said, "OK, I hit Justin."</p><p></p><p>The interesting thing, however - difficult child 3 was denying (which was alie) but was still not capable of inventing a complex alternative to the truth. He also wasn't very capable of even telling much detail of what WAS true. Complicating the picture at this time was the teacher himself, who would have his own preconceived idea of the event and who would then prejudice the question. "I saw you hit Justin, you had no reason to hit him, did you?" when in fact Justin had shoved difficult child 3 first and had been calling him names (as reported to us by another kid at a later time).</p><p>Some months later difficult child 3 came home with bloodied knees. "I got tripped up by Justin and his friends," difficult child 3 told me as I cleaned him up. difficult child 3's friend spoke to me quietly afterwards (when difficult child 3 was absent) and said, "Justin and his friends were calling difficult child 3 names again and chasing him, then Justin pushed him over on the big rock then they all ran away. The teachers didn't see andwouldn't believe us."</p><p>I wrote a note to the teacher.</p><p>Next day difficult child 3 came home with a sealed note form the teacher which said, "I've explained the situation to difficult child 3, that he was mistaken about other boys pushing him over; he just tripped over his own feet, a whole group of boys saw it and they all testified to the same thing."</p><p>difficult child 3 was puzzled. "I really thought Justin had tripped me, but Mr K explained that because of my autism, I sometimes misunderstand and my senses play tricks on me."</p><p>difficult child 3's friend just stood there and looked at me. When difficult child 3 was out of the room I said, "What happened?"</p><p>Friend said, "I don't want to talk about it. Every time I talk about it, I get into trouble and I'm told I must stop lying. I don't want trouble from Mr K or from Justin and his friends."</p><p></p><p>Lying is a complex business. Not everyone can do it well. </p><p></p><p>Similarly, truth is a tricky business and even when a person tells the truth, they can get disbelieved, or it may be an incomplete truth (for many reasons). And a child who wants to please a teacher can be confused and convinced to disbelieve the evidence of his own senses.</p><p></p><p>Heartsick, you sound like you're stressed incredibly. Is there any way you can get a break for a day or two? Someone you can go stay with? Even for an afternoon?</p><p></p><p>We do have techniques that many of us have developed to help us cope. Not just the ones I mentioned in the book, but other things like being super-organised in the evenings so you have a routine that is fairly easy for everyone to follow; being flexible with the child and allowing the child some time to transition from whatever they're doing to whatever you want them to do; having everything prepared ahead of time as much as possible (ie feeding tired kids early, get them to bed early). I used to find that tired, hungry kids were much more difficult to manage. And a tantrumming kid can often be soothed by putting them in a hot lavender-scented bubble bath. Even if you think "they don't deserve it," this isn't about what the kid deserves, it's about what will get the kid one step closer to bed PLUS calmed down.</p><p></p><p>Anyway, it's just a start. We pool ideas here, they can help. Somewhere on this site will be a parent of a child like yours. maybe many parents.</p><p></p><p>Marg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marguerite, post: 274053, member: 1991"] Welcome. While it is a good idea to get as comprehensive a test done as soon as you can, sometimes I do accept it's just out of reach. However, you do what you can when you can, make the best of what you can and in the meantime keep an open mind. Read up on everything, find out what resources you can plug into to make your life easier and give you answers. I have a few thoughts and some questions for you. First, you mention that in your job you have to keep society safe. This tells me that you are used to working in a controlling, authoritarian role (more so than most of us). I'm thinking that this could be a big part of the problem. Not the cause, note. Certainly not that. There are undoubtedly many people with your job who have perfect children. But if you have a difficult child, especially one who has her own strong need to assert some control over her own environment, then what you get will be very much like what you describe. There can be many reasons why a child tries to control their environment. Often as parents, we react to this in achild by doing our utmost to prevent the child from having control - as if the child wanting control has to automatically be bad for them, as if it's the same as the child wanting free reign over the cookie jar. But it's not the same thing. It's important to work out why this is happening, so your response can be more suited to the situation. I'll give you some examples. A child with poor impulse control is a kid who will chase a ball out into the street without even looking to see if there's a truck coming. Add to the mix a child who only sees the world from their point of view, who simply cannot recognise that other people may think differently, have different opinions or perhaps not be able to automatically know what the child wants, then add in a high level of frustration with everything that simply doesn't 'behave' as the child expects - you have a child who will feel much more comfortable if they can make teir world more predictable. Next scenario - anxiety. When the child's mind is a constant stream of mental "what if's" of unpredictability, when meeting new people is a challenge because those people may do something or say something that could be upsetting or frightening, or make the child angry; when there are so many rules to follow that seem impossible, when keeping those rules is so difficult to keep track of and to remember, when they seem to get punished and can't remember why that the very fear of punishment makes them stumble even more over the right thing to do - then you have a child with a need to assert some control, in order to reduce the need for anxiety. Certainty becomes reliability, which becomes a reduction in anxiety. There can be many reasons. But if we, as parents, approach this by clamping down on the child's freedom of choice where it probably really wouldn't matter to us, then we are going to have bigger fights in areas where it DOES matter to us. That doesn't mean that the asnwer has to be anarchy - far from it. But there are ways of allowing the child to have control, while still holding the leash yourself. Something I've found with difficult child 3 (and to acertain extent, his older sister) is a lack of 'relativity'. In his mind, everybody is equal. We might see this as a good thing in a world where discrimination is considered bad, but the down side of this is, he treats everybody the same - teachers, parents, babies, classmates, strangers, family. It's not a policy of his, it's simply how he thinks and how he beleives other people think. He sees other people thinking with the same thoughts and capabilities as he does. If he merely THINKS "I am thirsty," then in his mind, everyone around him should know this because HE knows it. Our failure to respond to tis is therefore, in his mind, our deliberate neglect of this need of his which MUST be met. He treats other people as they treat him. This has meant that when an adult is kind and polite to him, he will be kind and polite back. If an adult is condescending to him, he will be condescending in return. And if (as happened frequently) a teacher shouts at him and is sarcastic, he will be sarcastic and shout at the teacher. I remember when easy child 2/difficult child 2 was 3 years old, she was already badgering me to meet her every whim and I was exhausted. We also had a rule - drink a glass of water in between every glass of juice. She asked me for a second cup of juice, I poured her water (as per our house rule). She stood there, hands on hips, then shouted at me, "I said I wanted JUICE! Why don't you ever listen?" She didn't quite slam her fist onto the table. What she was doing was dishing back to me, what I had said/done to her in my method of discipline. Trying to explain that "Do as I say, not as I do," was how to behave just wasn't going to go down well, I felt. From then on I chose to moderate how I handled her. Trying to change these patterns was not easy and we still struggle at times. husband can be (has been) a strict authoritarian, having been brought up with "Do not answer back to your parents," and suddenly finding he has fathered a Changeling who breaks all these rules. Because our intial approach was to try to control tightly, we had more problems. Because husband was the parent more absent (due to long working hours) his interactions with difficult child 3 have historically been more during difficult times of day, and at times when husband himself has been less tolerant of difficult child 3 because he himself was so tired. And now we've made changes, the wheels still fall off occasionally with difficult child 3 getting angry at his dad for "being unreasonable" when frankly, difficult child 3 has been really annoying. But kids like this are not being annoying on purpose. We have to hold on to this. It does depend on what the problem is, sometimes a kid CAN choose to be a pain, but generally there are good reasons (food reasons to the kid) which, if we can work them out, give us a chink in the armour through which to aim our parental arrows. A book which helps a lot of us, and certainly helped us find a better way to manage difficult child 3 with far fewer battles, is "The Explosive Child" by Ross Greene. There is some discussion of this in the Early Childhood forum, because the book seems to work better for older kids but some of us discussed how to modify it to the younger child. It can be done. It made our family's life MUCH easier! Now some questions - you say your child lies a lot. How do you know your child is lying? What kind of lies does she tell? The answer can be very revealing. One final point - ALL kids lie. All people lie. The main reason for lying, is to get out of trouble (if the person perceives that telling the truth will cause them trouble). There may not be a real need to lie, but it comes down to perception. These sort of lies, although still unacceptable, are understandable. Fairly normal. "The dog ate my homework." The worrying lies are the ones where the person is trying to make themselves seem better, more important, more capable, to give them some advantage. "Yes, Mummy, I did my homework. I handed it in and the teacher gave me an A. Now can I have my treat that you promised?" Another thing to describe about a lie - how complex is it? Is the child telling a whopper, an intricate alternative to the truth ("I didn't trip Johnny up, he was walking along all by himself and he fell over a tree root which happened to be in the path. My foot was nowhere nearly in his way, Jack said he saw me trip Johnny but Jack must be lying because he was still talking to Mr Brown in the school hall when Johnny fell"), or is the child simply saying, "I didn't do it?" Something else to consider - if you know the child is lying, is there still a faint possibility than an intricate lie might just happen to be the truth? An example back from my kids again - difficult child 3 was diangosed as autistic from the age of 3 (a bit younger). As we learned we were told that autistic kids can't tell lies. Then in 3rd grade difficult child 3's teacher said to me firmly, "He lied to me." I was horrified, then disbelieving. But the story panned out. The teacher was determined to make me accept that autistic kids CAN lie and that we couldn't rely on this as a safeguard. The story turned out to be more complex, however. difficult child 3, when questioned by the teacher, "Did you hit Justin?" had replied almost automatically, "No, I didn't." Then the teacher said to difficult child 3, "But I saw you, I saw you hit Justin." difficult child 3 persisted trying to deny it until he finally accepted the teacher wasn't bluffing, then finally said, "OK, I hit Justin." The interesting thing, however - difficult child 3 was denying (which was alie) but was still not capable of inventing a complex alternative to the truth. He also wasn't very capable of even telling much detail of what WAS true. Complicating the picture at this time was the teacher himself, who would have his own preconceived idea of the event and who would then prejudice the question. "I saw you hit Justin, you had no reason to hit him, did you?" when in fact Justin had shoved difficult child 3 first and had been calling him names (as reported to us by another kid at a later time). Some months later difficult child 3 came home with bloodied knees. "I got tripped up by Justin and his friends," difficult child 3 told me as I cleaned him up. difficult child 3's friend spoke to me quietly afterwards (when difficult child 3 was absent) and said, "Justin and his friends were calling difficult child 3 names again and chasing him, then Justin pushed him over on the big rock then they all ran away. The teachers didn't see andwouldn't believe us." I wrote a note to the teacher. Next day difficult child 3 came home with a sealed note form the teacher which said, "I've explained the situation to difficult child 3, that he was mistaken about other boys pushing him over; he just tripped over his own feet, a whole group of boys saw it and they all testified to the same thing." difficult child 3 was puzzled. "I really thought Justin had tripped me, but Mr K explained that because of my autism, I sometimes misunderstand and my senses play tricks on me." difficult child 3's friend just stood there and looked at me. When difficult child 3 was out of the room I said, "What happened?" Friend said, "I don't want to talk about it. Every time I talk about it, I get into trouble and I'm told I must stop lying. I don't want trouble from Mr K or from Justin and his friends." Lying is a complex business. Not everyone can do it well. Similarly, truth is a tricky business and even when a person tells the truth, they can get disbelieved, or it may be an incomplete truth (for many reasons). And a child who wants to please a teacher can be confused and convinced to disbelieve the evidence of his own senses. Heartsick, you sound like you're stressed incredibly. Is there any way you can get a break for a day or two? Someone you can go stay with? Even for an afternoon? We do have techniques that many of us have developed to help us cope. Not just the ones I mentioned in the book, but other things like being super-organised in the evenings so you have a routine that is fairly easy for everyone to follow; being flexible with the child and allowing the child some time to transition from whatever they're doing to whatever you want them to do; having everything prepared ahead of time as much as possible (ie feeding tired kids early, get them to bed early). I used to find that tired, hungry kids were much more difficult to manage. And a tantrumming kid can often be soothed by putting them in a hot lavender-scented bubble bath. Even if you think "they don't deserve it," this isn't about what the kid deserves, it's about what will get the kid one step closer to bed PLUS calmed down. Anyway, it's just a start. We pool ideas here, they can help. Somewhere on this site will be a parent of a child like yours. maybe many parents. Marg [/QUOTE]
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