Has anyone else ever cancelled Christmas for a difficult child? Mine (7) spent the entire weekend yelling, screaming, and trashing his room (dumping toy bins and book shelves, pulling over the furniture including his big, heavy dresser, ripping decorations off his walls and ceiling), cleaning up the mess, and doing it all over again. difficult child shares a big bedroom with his little easy child brother. During one of his tantrums, one of little brother's toys got broken.
difficult child was also threatening to break his windows if he didn't get his way. (He openly admitted later, unprompted, that he wasn't really planning to break his windows, he was just saying that to try to get us to do what he wanted--DUH! I knew that. The difference between on medication and not on medication is that on medications his tantrums are SSSSSSOOOOOOO "spoiled brat" ("you have to do what I say!"--that's him speaking, not me) rather than evil, scary, feral monster that he used to be. In a way, though, these are more annoying--I felt bad for him when he lost it pre-medication, because I knew it was something that he couldn't control and it scared him, too. Now he's just bratty, snotty, ruler of the universe and I want to strangle him.
So, what did I spend today doing? I spent today moving myself and my husband out of our teeny, tiny bedroom (it's a two bedroom house) and into the big room, so that we could move difficult child's mattress (just the mattress and blankets, NOTHING else) and difficult child into the tiny room. Oh, yeah, and first I went to Lowe's and bought plywood with which to cover all the windows and the closet (I still need that closet for storage, but I don't want him getting into it) in that little room, thanks to the "break the windows" threat. So it's really a tomb in there. And, no, he doesn't have a light, 'cause there's no overhead in there. I let him have a lamp for about 5 minutes until he started another tantrum and I took it away (he's hard on lamps). There's a nice lock on the door, too.
And now my husband and I are sharing a room with our four year old. easy child doesn't mind--in fact, he likes it a lot. But there's going to be a definite lack of privacy issue.
Anyway, through all this, we decided that Santa is NOT coming this year for difficult child. You have to understand--this is a kid who thinks (and, in fact has said) that he can do anything he wants and not suffer the really big consequences (getting locked in his room isn't that big a deal to hjim--although hopefully it will be a bigger deal now that he doesn't have all his toys and books in there with him!). So we've decided that this one time at least, he's going to suffer a big consequence. We've told him, but he still, absolutely doesn't believe that he will spend all day tomorrow locked in his room while the rest of us have as nice a Christmas as we can (as husband says, fake it!)
This was not the way I planned to spend Christmas eve. I was going to bake cookies, read stories to and play board games with my two darling children. Instead, easy child spent the day playing computer games and I spent the day boarding up windows and moving furniture. Merry Christmas, indeed.
C
difficult child was also threatening to break his windows if he didn't get his way. (He openly admitted later, unprompted, that he wasn't really planning to break his windows, he was just saying that to try to get us to do what he wanted--DUH! I knew that. The difference between on medication and not on medication is that on medications his tantrums are SSSSSSOOOOOOO "spoiled brat" ("you have to do what I say!"--that's him speaking, not me) rather than evil, scary, feral monster that he used to be. In a way, though, these are more annoying--I felt bad for him when he lost it pre-medication, because I knew it was something that he couldn't control and it scared him, too. Now he's just bratty, snotty, ruler of the universe and I want to strangle him.
So, what did I spend today doing? I spent today moving myself and my husband out of our teeny, tiny bedroom (it's a two bedroom house) and into the big room, so that we could move difficult child's mattress (just the mattress and blankets, NOTHING else) and difficult child into the tiny room. Oh, yeah, and first I went to Lowe's and bought plywood with which to cover all the windows and the closet (I still need that closet for storage, but I don't want him getting into it) in that little room, thanks to the "break the windows" threat. So it's really a tomb in there. And, no, he doesn't have a light, 'cause there's no overhead in there. I let him have a lamp for about 5 minutes until he started another tantrum and I took it away (he's hard on lamps). There's a nice lock on the door, too.
And now my husband and I are sharing a room with our four year old. easy child doesn't mind--in fact, he likes it a lot. But there's going to be a definite lack of privacy issue.
Anyway, through all this, we decided that Santa is NOT coming this year for difficult child. You have to understand--this is a kid who thinks (and, in fact has said) that he can do anything he wants and not suffer the really big consequences (getting locked in his room isn't that big a deal to hjim--although hopefully it will be a bigger deal now that he doesn't have all his toys and books in there with him!). So we've decided that this one time at least, he's going to suffer a big consequence. We've told him, but he still, absolutely doesn't believe that he will spend all day tomorrow locked in his room while the rest of us have as nice a Christmas as we can (as husband says, fake it!)
This was not the way I planned to spend Christmas eve. I was going to bake cookies, read stories to and play board games with my two darling children. Instead, easy child spent the day playing computer games and I spent the day boarding up windows and moving furniture. Merry Christmas, indeed.
C
