Oh Really?

[Bunny]

I can remember telling him that I guess if I was MEAN then I didn't buy him this and didn't take him there and he wasn't eating a chocolate chip cookie that I baked because mean mommies don't do that stuff.

We've done that with difficult child, but when I tell him that a mean mommy wouldn't do X, which I did, he tells me that I did it beause it was something that I had to do. For example, he lost his jacket at the beginning of the school year. It was starting to get cold out so I had to take him to buy a new one. He picked one out that was a little more money than I had planned in spending, but I could tell that I was going to get a couple of years out of it, so I bought it for him. He was thrilled because it was what he really wanted. Sometime later he was going on about how I was a mean mother and I brought up the coat that I just bought him and his response was that I HAD to buy him a coat or else he would be cold. Even the therapist tried to get him to understand that while I had to buy him a coat, I did not have to buy him the really nice one that I bought. I could have bought him a cruddy one and been done with it. Either he doens't get the point, or it just telling me that he doens't get it because all I hear is how I have to do things.

 

[susiestar]

Have you ever challenged that? Wiz did a lot of the "you have to do x" until he learned that I really DID NOT. I CHOSE to do X but I could have done Y or nothing. Heck, I rarely replace coats. I also do NOT fight with the kids over them. If they walk out with-o a coat, they can be cold. If we are driving to the city (90 min each way) then I make sure we each have a coat in the car in case of emergency. Short of that? NMP. Not. My. Problem. If they are cold, they will remember it tomorrow. I also do NOT listen to whining over it. That makes me sing Barney songs. Or for Jessie, Wiggles songs (she doesn't hate Barney but the Wiggles creep her out, always did).

You have to make sure he is clothed, not that he has clothes he likes. You have to make sure he is fed, NOT that he has food he likes. You do NOT have to provide toys, books, games, electronics, or ANYTHING other than 6-7 outfits, 1 pr shoes, a mattress on the floor, a blanket, sheet, pillow, and food to sustain life. Oh, and shelter. That means a heated building. Air conditioning is OPTIONAL.

This "HAVE TO" thread is in a LOT of your posts. I wonder what would happen if you refused when he insists you have to do something. I know my son did NOT believe me until both a CPS worker who was a friend of mine and a cop BOTH read him the riot act about his behavior and what he would NOT have if he was their child.

I will say that our family policy about CPS calls cut down on a LOT of the power that Wiz' friends thought they had over their parents. He was told from early days that he was welcome to call and report abuse but if it was not abuse then he had best have his bags packed when htey arrived because he was CHOOSING to go find a new family. That meant no mommy, no daddy, no sibling, no grandparents. Period. No takebacks. So he NEVER tried that and a LOT of his friends in grade school did. Until he was in 5th grade we lived in a different city that had HUGE billboards urging kids to call and report that their parents were abusing them and CPS there did some strange things like take kids away because parents didn''t serve food they liked that night, but refused to investigate reports of kids kept in cages. It was bizarre and was completely torn apart after we moved, but there was NO WAY that my kid would have that kind of power.

Your son seems to have a lot of entitlement issues, and they can take all the fun out of giving them something nice, can't they? I do NOT know if refusing to provide something he thinks you HAVE to is the way to go. Just that it might be a way to get him to THINK.

He seems to have a lot of black and white thinking regarding parenting roles. I wonder what he would do if he were the parent and you were the child behaving the way he is. What would he feel was the way to handle it? Is he capable of thinking about that? I guess I am wondering if an autism diagnosis, either Aspergers or High-Functioning Autism (HFA) or something else, might be appropriate for him? That might open doors to some new ways to help him learn about this type of thing. But I don't know about his other social behavior. Just a thought.