When will they learn that they are supposed to be where they say?

[mstang67chic]

difficult child had a friend over today who stayed for supper. Afterwards, they headed back over to the friend's house where difficult child was going to spend the night. They left and about 15 minutes after they left, husband noticed that difficult child forgot his medications. I called the friends house and told his mom. They weren't there yet (it is a few blocks away and they were walking) but she said she would send them back when they got there. About an hour later difficult child shows up for his medications. He had been across the street (with his friend) at our neigbor guy's place waiting on the guy to burn them a movie. This would normally not be an issue as we know the guy and it's not a problem. However, since difficult child was supposed to go straight to his friend's and we had no idea the whole time that he wasn't there, it became a problem. We told him he had to stay home because he wasn't where he said he would be, it was dark (after 9 by this time), not to mention the fact that he's on probation. difficult child argued and argued, "But I was only across the street........I do it all the time.......blah blah, This is BULLCRAP blah blah STUPID blah blah. Um......helloooooooo.......it's dark, getting late and we had no idea where you were, across the street or not. We sent him to his room and he layed in there like a toddler having a hissy fit. Hollered that it was bs, hollered that he wanted to talk to husband but that it wasn't about this, etc. He was told to go to bed and husband would talk to him tomorrow but he still kept it up.

He just cracks me up (not) sometimes. We give him a little rope and he manages to snag it all up every single time. We've told him over and over that if he goes somewhere we HAVE to know where he is. Period. "Sure Dad/Mom, I understand. Not a problem." But when he gets caught.....the whole world is ending and it's all our fault. I am soooooo sick of it. The arguing, the excuses, the attitude. All of it. I hope like h*** I can find some sort of group home or assisted living for him once he turns 18 because I don't know how much longer I can keep living like this. I'm sick of the locks on our bedroom door, of him destroying things for his little "projects", of not daring to bring anything nice or new into the house because he'll do something with it. I can't even keep my own toiletries in the bathroo because he ruins/does stuff to them. I want my house back! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/919Mad.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/919Mad.gif

Sorry for the length....guess I needed to vent a little. Tomorrow should be fun.

 

[DammitJanet]

Vent away. I understand completely. If I ask my kid to go do X for me invariably he will go to Y and Z before he does X. I will never forget one time we decided to extend a bit of trust to him and allow him to use our car because he needed to go get diapers or formula or something. My express instructions were "go directly to walmart, get the items, come right back." This trip should have taken him no more than 30 mins tops. Maybe 45 if they were extremely busy. The store is about 7 miles from my house. Well...45 mins go by, an hour goes by, an hour and a half goes by, 2 hours goes by...by now I am livid! Mind you by now it is about 11:30 at nite. I start walking up my driveway to see if I can find him anywhere. Oh yeah...he is over at one of his buddies houses across the street!

He thinks this is perfectly ok because "I was across the street!" Excuse me but my instructions were go and come HOME!

UGH!

 

[timer lady]

Vent away....

Does difficult child have the common sense/skills to call home when he's delayed, detoured, or to check in? Would that be a life skill that would help him "stay the course", if you will?

difficult child was wrong - he didn't follow instructions. I know that many times kt & wm get very "distracted" on instructions & need to be walked through step by step. I wonder if difficult child didn't miss out on certain life skills while in foster care that he needs to catch up on.

When tweedles dee & dum were placed here, we (stupidly) assumed that 6 year old skills & expectations were a no brainer. We found out that they had so much to learn that they had missed in bio home & then in foster care. It's taken years & we are still playing catch up.

Just the fact that your difficult child, walked back to get his medications, indicates at least to me, that he was being responsible about medications, but hadn't a clue as to the time he was "missing".

I often wonder how many of the life skills our difficult children, who were older when adopted, missed out on?

Okay I rambled off .... way off. Glad difficult child is back & safe. Hope things settle down quickly

 

[Hound dog]

I'd be ranting too.

T used to do this and it drove me crazy. Used to? Did I say that? He still does. :hammer:

 

[mstang67chic]

Not sure that this incident falls under that but I know what you're saying. Our then 9 year old difficult child had difficulty telling time (still gets confused once in awhile so I'm not sure if that was lack of teaching or diagnosis related somehow), he would complain of his stomach hurting and I would have to ask him when the last time he pooped was. Turns out about 8 times out of 10 (if not 9), that was the problem. He did, however, have very excellent table manners. (Yeah, let's teach the kid how to eat proper but neglect to tell him that his stomach ache means he needs to go to the toilet) :hammer: :smile:

 

[TerryJ2]

My son is 10 and is just now "getting it."
Since your son is older it will take awhile.
Get used to the tantrums--at least he's home in his room!!! He'll learn. Be consistent.
It is very depressing. I want to go through just one day with-o a fight. But I know it will pay off in the end.
And you know it too or you wouldn't be here.
For awhile, I walked to every single neighbor's house to find my son. It wasn't just him... it was the neighbors. They didn't "get it." (It's bad enough dealing with-a kid like that but when the neighbors don't cooperate... sheesh!). There are some houses where he's not allowed to go inside at all because they play video games all day when it's sunny and he's supposed to be outside (he's mildly ADHD and the speed and light on videos makes him crazy... he's GOT to exercise).

Staying calm is the hard part. When he yells and swears, he's angry, but he's also trying to get your goat. You're the bad guy. Since he's going to yell anyway, you may as well have him yelling because you lowered the boom. When you think about it, that gives you control. You KNOW he's going to blow up so just take a deep breath and say a mantra or something.

What sort of projects does he do with-toiletries or "nice things" as you say? Can you be more specific? Can you direct that behavior in any way?

Just wondering.

 

[mstang67chic]

His toiletry projects? Wellllllll, lets see. He played in a $15 container of product similar to pomade that I had. Yes, played. Dug a lot of it out made designs in it and finally just filled the container with water. Used a full bottle of my conditioner to Wash. His. Feet. He's cut the cords off of 2 or 3 of my curling irons. He dug out all of the powder in my compact, slid a pair of my clip on sunglasses that came with my glasses and made something. Not sure what it was but he made it. (And left the pile of scrapped out powder on the floor) Other things have been using my stuff (facial scrub, shampoo, whatever) constantly without asking and using waaaaay too much than he needs, to the point that it's wasteful. If he would just ask, a lot of the times I would let him use some of my stuff but he won't ask. If he sees it, wants it, it's gone. We've tried making a stuff box for him. Anything from around the house that could be used by him for his projects would go into the box and I even brought funky stuff from work. (I work in a Body Shop). It kind of worked but eventually he would "shop" around the house to add to the box. He's also got into the habit of using whatever cleaning product he can get his hands on to clean whatever. He recently used full strength CLR to Clean. His. Shoes. On my bathmat. The stuff ate a hole right through the bath mat.....I'm surprised he didn't fry his hands and his shoes in the process. (Don't tell him though but I've been taking advantage of that hole! There is part of it where the fuzz is gone but there is still some hardened backing showing through. I have a spot on my foot that always itches and it's hard to find something to scratch it "just right" and that spot on the bath mat works great! lol )

We've tried so many things to harness his creativeness but he either loses interest in our solutions (many of which he's either come up with himself or contributed to the idea) or went so far outside of the boundaries that we set that it became ineffective. I've pretty much just resigned myself to the fact that I only replace things on an as needed basis, lock up what I can and not bring anything "nice" into the house until he is no longer living here.