Teenagers

So I gave my seventeen-year-old son the driver's wheel on his high school education. Not because I wanted to, but because what I was doing wasn't working. Supervising him closely and catching all his missing assignments for him to complete just caused him to lie to me and let me be his safety net. With the counselor's agreement, I took my hands off the wheel, and he is succeeding or failing on his own. Initially he became uber-responsible, skipping lunch at Arby's with his friends so that he could go to the library and catch up on work. He came home a week ago saying he no longer had an F in History. I asked him how he managed that. He said he… [more]

RAD comes in many shapes and sizes, and is different in every child.  For example, our 12 year old, Elle, has never been good at identifying her emotions, how to describe them, nor how to communicate them.  On the other hand, our 6 year old, Bunny, has had no trouble identifying her emotions, she just has a problem controlling them. Every therapist we’ve had has always had a chart of emotions on their walls.  You know, the chart of cartoon characters making faces like angry, happiness, and horror.  These charts are used to help children identify their emotions visually.  Our current therapist has gone through a list of the most common emotions and had both girls explain the definition of each one. Through our… [more]

When I became a parent, I never knew a useful skill would be managing a rollercoaster ride.  One day Elle is having a bad day and she is at the bottom, but Bunny is riding at the top.  Twenty-four hours later, Bunny is scraping the bottom and Elle is flying high. But, it’s not only the ups and downs of one child versus the other; it’s the pendulum swing back and forth in a single child.  For seven years, we’ve dealt with RAD’s effect on Elle.  There were times that we were so far down on the bottom of the rollercoaster; I thought we had permanently derailed.  There was a time I was convinced we would only see her during weekly visits to… [more]

My daughter, Elle, has reactive attachment disorder (RAD).  She has been in therapy since she was seven and has been seeing an attachment therapist for the last two years.  Her therapy is helping and the more time we spend on addressing her RAD behaviors and her relationships, she is getting better. One thing we noticed from the beginning was her irrational relationship with sugar.  Like most kids, Elle loves cookies, cakes, and candy.  However, the difference between Elle and normal kids is her RAD.  Her relationship with sugar is much like an alcoholic’s relationship with whiskey. In a way, they are the same thing.  It is all about sugar…glucose, sucrose, fructose, and lactose.  Sugar is sugar.  Unlike an alcoholic, it is harder to… [more]

This is the first chance I have had in three days to sit down and write a blog. Although the washer repairman was supposed to come last Thursday, I received a call an hour before the scheduled appointment, informing me they didn’t have the part and wouldn’t be coming. I haven’t yet received a new appointment time … so of course, I still have no washer. Thursday night, I schlepped 6 loads next door to my neighbor's house and brought them home to dry in my still-functioning dryer. A highly inefficient way to do laundry ... not to mention that we live on five acres and my neighbor is not very close. Friday morning brought a fridge repairman (the freezer frosts up periodically) and a couple… [more]

One of my regular readers has been trying to incorporate an older teen boy into her home, with varying degrees of success. Recently, this courageous and giving mom posted that her “son” states, “he's having an identity crisis. Who or what does he really want to be?” This comment falls right on the heels of a conversation I had in the car with Beth just a few days ago. I believe it was actually on her birthday, as she was turning 11 years old. She was sitting in the back seat and she started rattling off all the things she wants to do with her life when she becomes an adult. This lengthy list included: an Olympic swimmer, a veterinarian, a mom, a swim coach, a… [more]

In my recent blogs about Dora and her manure moving, a reader inquired how to get a teenager to work when they refused to do anything. You can’t make someone work. I wanted Amy to get a job on her own as soon as she turned 16, but of course she had no intentions of doing so. My husband and I arranged her first couple of jobs, at age 14 and 15. When she did nothing to make it happen, I told her in the real world, when you don’t work you don’t eat in the style to which she was accustomed. I said she could have all the peanut butter and jelly, fresh fruit and veggies, and milk she wanted … but nothing… [more]

I sat Dora in my lap this morning before she headed to the bus and read her Bipette’s comments and questions about how to handle her “unofficial” teen-aged foster son. Together I talked through my thoughts with Dora … and now I’ll share them with you … Here are the significant quotes from Bipette’s comment, addressing her foster son’s complaints that Bipette’s husband was OK but Bipette was a problem: She was in his business too much and helping too much. I believe he thinks that Coach would not care what he does if I wasn't there. And that's somewhat true, but not entirely. Coach is a guy, and does not worry like I do. And does not have a Mother's love. But he still believes in… [more]

Continuing with my discussion of adding troubled older children to your family, I am responding to Bipette’s comment as posted here. In my last post, I described the experience my family had when we added a 17-year-old girl we knew for many years. However, I think in some ways Bipette’s situation is a little different. This young man asked three times to join Bipette’s family. He could leave at this point, but chooses not to do so. I think Kathy contacted us more because we were a place to stay than because she wanted another family. We beat the Girl’s School hands down. I think Bipette’s young man has enough healthy stuff inside of him that he wants what Bipette offers. But he has… [more]

I’m going to interrupt my homeschooling series to address the poignant comment and many questions posted by Bipette regarding the teen boy living in her home right now. Please read the comment in its entirety here. I’m going to start by describing a situation I experienced and how it played out in my family. I have briefly blogged about this family here. When my family lived in Indiana, we sold our house and built our first home; during the building time we lived in an apartment complex. At the complex we met this alcoholic mom and her kids. Over time, I learned the dad had died, and the mom had five kids she was “parenting” (and I use that term very, very loosely.) The oldest… [more]