Yesterday the kids had their school concert, which was in the morning at their school.  The night before Corey was getting really worried about it and told me that he really didn’t want to do it.  He didn’t have any ’solo’ part in the concert, just his whole class going up on stage to sing.  He didn’t want to go on stage in front of all the school and all the parents that would be there.

I remember that feeling, he is so much like me when I was a child.  The difference though is that I just accepted my fate and did it, I didn’t feel like I had any other choice than to do it even though I was terrified.

There was no force on earth that was going to get Corey up on that stage though and in the morning he just flat out refused to go to school.  I did manage to get him to the school office (not in his school uniform though) and got in to see the Principal.  Both myself and the principal told Corey that he didn’t have to do the concert and perhaps he could sit with me during the concert and then go back to his normal classroom routine when the concert was finished.  He wouldn’t do it though, I think he was a bit scared to go back to his classroom because of how his teacher might act toward him for not doing the concert (his teacher isn’t very helpful with his issues).

So it was a no go for school yesterday for Corey.  I stayed for the concert and Corey stayed with me and then came home with me after it.

During the concert I watched my other two boys up there and they just didn’t even hesitate to go up and do their bit and they both looked so happy doing it.  Ben is always mucking around and having fun with his friends and Lachlan is just such a happy little boy, he always has a smile on his face.

Then after school all the trouble started again, the fighting started as soon as the boys got out of school. Lachlan had my car keys and Corey wanted them and that was all it took for Corey to absolutely lose control.  He locked us out the car and he tried to bash Lachlan, in fact Lachlan was so scared of him that even this morning Lachlan has been following me around and not going anywhere near Corey because he’s scared Corey is going to bash him.

Just observing the boys yesterday at school and at home I just kept thinking how happy Ben and Lachlan are and how sad Corey always is.  He is always angry about everything.  Something as simple as asking him to do homework, asking him to brush his teeth or telling him it’s bed time.  Just these little things, even though they are a part of everyday routine, will set him off in a fit of rage.

I think about what it must be like for him (I know what it’s like for the rest of us to live with that) but for him, he must be really miserable.  Surely he can’t like living like this.  I think he wants to be happy, I just don’t think he knows how to be happy.

How can I help my little boy to be happy?

Last night for example, I asked the boys to do their homework, it’s almost the end of the year so I’ve been a bit lenient with their homework and last night I told them all they have to do is read for a while.  So Ben and Lachlan go off and do their homework and Corey has to have a bit of a yell and punch things first, then he finally settles down to read.

After about 10 minutes of reading he asks if he can stop now.  I tell him 5 more minutes, at which he yells and screams and carrys on for a while.  So then his Dad told him he now has another 10 minutes because of the way he acted.

Anyway, he completely ignores Dads statement but settles back down to read some more and after the 5 minutes is up he asks if he can stop again.  Dad says “no, you had 10 minutes because of your behavior”.

Now the real yelling and screaming starts and the extent that Corey screams is unbelievable, I’m surprised he doesn’t burst a blood vessel somewhere he screams so hard.  A bit of punching the walls and slamming doors is next followed by some more screaming and swearing.

At this point Dad has had enough and sends Corey to bed.  There is a lot more screaming, punching etc, but when he finally settles down he calls out for me.

When I went through to his room he asks why he is the one that is always sent to bed early.  I tell him it is because of the way he acted and that he had 10 minutes to read and he should have just done it.

Now Corey did not believe that he had that extra 10 minutes.  In fact, Corey completely denies that he carried on and yelled right back when I first told him to read for 5 minutes.

Is this because they genuinely can’t see that they have done anything wrong, or has he just completely forgotten his reaction and all his yelling and screaming.  Surely he can’t honestly think that he didn’t do it.  But it doesn’t matter how much I try to tell him that he did behave that way and that is why he is now being punished, he just doesn’t believe he did it or doesn’t believe that he did anything wrong.

I know this is a trait that can’t be helped but oh my goodness it is so frustrating.

Thanks for reading
Sheryl
www.my-beautiful-boy.com

A couple of nights ago though I actually stuck to it and gave Corey a punishment that I felt guilty about.  My oldest son Ben wanted to go and see the movie New Moon.  At first I was going to take all the kids to see it but as we are watching the budget at the moment I was a little hesitant to take the younger too since they aren’t really as interested in the Twilight movies as Ben is.

I was tossing up all afternoon whether to take the younger 2 with us or not and Corey wanted to go (more for the sake of going out and to the movies rather than to see that actual movie).

The decision came when Corey had an argument with his Dad, I actually don’t even know what the argument was about, but when I heard Corey stomp in the door and swearing like a trooper then I made up my mind.  I told him he wasn’t going to the movies because with his behaviour he just didn’t deserve to be taken to the movies.

He wasn’t very happy and just kept insisting that he is going and that’s that.  But my decision was made, there was no considering changing it once I heard his foul language.  Although his language is always bad, I just thought that perhaps leaving him home might get him thinking – when he realises that I will follow through with it.

So Ben and I went and saw New Moon (that’s the second time I’ve seen it) and had a great time and loved the movie.  Corey was still upset when we got home because he had wanted to come.

It isn’t easy but often we take him out and as soon as he gets home he is really bad and nasty again, so it makes me feel like he really doesn’t deserve to be taken out.  So this time he got left behind.  I don’t know if it will do any good, his behavior certainly hasn’t improved since then, but perhaps if I keep up with doing things like that then maybe it might have a positive effect in the long term.

If anyone has used this approach and had success I would love to hear from you.

Thanks for reading
Take care
Sheryl
My-Beautiful-Boy.com

A couple of months ago I was speaking with the counselor at Coreys school and she said that she could arrange a meeting with someone from the Education Department and evaluate our situation and see if they can get us the help we need through the school system – which would be free.  She said they can even get a full assessment and diagnosis for him through the system.

Finally – getting some help.

Well a meeting was arranged with the lady from the education department in September – it was the second to last week of school before the holidays.  10 minutes before the meeting, the school rang me to say that the meeting had been cancelled and would be rescheduled for the following week.

The following week I never heard anything from the school and my kids were all sick so I really didn’t even think about it anyway.  Then it was school holidays for 2 weeks.

So, now that we’re back at school this week, I just found out that the school counselor has taken long service leave this term and so she wont be back at school until next year.

Hey hang on a minute – what about our meeting????

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying she can’t take long service leave, everyone is entitled to their leave when it is due – but couldn’t something have been said to me, couldn’t arrangements have been made for the meeting with someone else, couldn’t something have been done?  Does this now mean that I have to wait until next year before we can finally start getting things moving to try and get some help???

Needless to say, I’m not very happy.  The anger issues and the swearing seems to get worse and worse all the time.  Just when you think it couldn’t get any worse it does.

Corey has missed so much school lately it’s not funny, yet he can’t get a diagnosis because “it’s not affecting his schooling” they said, so they don’t need to do an official diagnosis.  He might not be naughty or disruptive at school, but HE DOESN’T GO TO SCHOOL, personally I thought that would be ‘affecting his schooling’ but apparently not!

Maybe I shouldn’t worry about a diagnosis, it’s not like a diagnosis is going to change anything anyway.  I guess for me a diagnosis might help me feel better if other people know there is a reason for his behavior, instead of me thinking that everyone just thinks I’m a bad parent that has no control over my child.

Anyway, I’ll stop raving now.  As you can probably tell, I’m just quite angry and frustrated at the moment and had to come on here and vent my anger.

Thanks for reading
Sheryl
My Beautiful Boy

Yesterday I had both Ben and Corey home from school – Ben has had a sore throat for a couple of days and Corey had a ‘headache’.  Although he really didn’t seem that bad, I think it was ‘headache Wednesday’.  Yesterday was my grocery shopping day so I had to take them with me.

We started off alright and then when we were about three quarters through it started.  They started fighting, Ben said something that made Corey mad and then all hell broke loose.  Corey used that lovely ‘F’ word by telling Ben to ‘F’ off, nice and loud, right when an elderly lady walked past us.

So I guess I have 2 choices here:

1. Ignore it – which then makes me look like a stupid Mother who let’s her children swear like that without any discipline.

2. Discipline him – tell him off.  Which I know will make him worse.

So, I decided that I can’t just ignore it and let him get away with it – I don’t know why I decide that, telling him off really doesn’t do anything.  But I told him off, which of course set him off even more, then he yelled very loudly “leave me alone you bitch’.

Well, there’s nothing that makes you feel better than being called a bitch by your child in the middle of the supermarket.

At this point, I decided just to walk on and continue with my shopping and ignore him.

When we got home, he had just about forgotten anything that happened, but I hadn’t.  I know I probably should let things go, but I just can’t stand to let him do these things and not suffer any consequence for them.

So I told him he had to sit and write lines – one page saying ‘I will not use the F word’ and another saying ‘I will not call Mum a bitch’.  Then he just lost it again, told me to ‘F’ off and ran outside slamming the door behind him.

So he actually spent the rest of the day outside as I told him he couldn’t come in until he was willing to write his lines.  When it started getting dark, he decided to come in and write his lines.

It is just so draining sometimes and so silly.  Surely he knows by now that if he just writes his lines straight away it will be over and done with.  Instead he puts it off and puts it off, but he doesn’t get away with it, he still has to do them, so why put it off and make things worse.

Yes, he did also get an extra page of lines for telling me to ‘F’ off.

I don’t think making him write lines actually works – if it did he’d be good by now.  But what does work???  We’ve tried putting him in time out.  We’ve tried banning him from his favourite things.  Nothing seems to work.

People say to ignore most of his behavior – 90/10 – ignore 90% of it and discipline the 10% of it that is really bad – but all of his behavior is really bad.

Does ignoring it really work?  To me, ignoring it is just letting him do it, letting him get away with it.  How does that help?  All it is doing is letting him think that it is ok for him to do it.

Any suggestions anyone?????

By using restorative practices with your child, you will find yourself MANAGING the behavior, rather than DEALING with it.

Most children do not respond well to yelling or shouting. In fact, it can often escalate the situation, making the child (and yourself!) even more angry and frustrated. Restorative practices is a method used around the world with children of all ages and all different levels of behavior problems.

It is not difficult. It is as easy as sitting down with your child…… and talking!
Talking about what happened, finding out what the child was feeling/thinking at the time, and coming to a solution on how to fix the problem.

When you see your child display a behavior that you feel is inappropriate, don’t yell, don’t threaten a punishment, don’t let yourself get frustrated! Take a deep breath, calmly sit your child down, and go through the following questions:

• Can you tell me what happened?
• What were you thinking about at the time?
• What have you thought about since then?
• Who do you think has been affected by your behavior?
• How do you think they have been affected?
• What would have been a better thing to do?
• What could you have said to yourself to stop the behavior?

Let your child know that their behavior will always have a consequence. Steer clear of the word punishment as children associate this with having something bad happen to them. Consequence is more about taking responsibility for their own choices, behavior and actions.

At the end of the discussion, ask your child what they think a fair consequence should be. 9 times out of 10, the child suggests a harder consequence than you would have. In some cases you may have to compromise to get the child to come to the consequence you think is appropriate.
This makes things a lot easier for you because they have chosen their own consequence and you won’t look like the bad guy!

REMEMBER: staying calm is always the key. YOU set the tone for the discussion. If you go into it angry, so does the child.

Colleen Henderson is the owner of http://Answers-You-Seek.com/ a website devoted to answering your questions on Child Behaviour issues. Colleen is a School Teacher with many years of experience dealing with difficult, stressful situations and years of experience assisting the children grow into mature responsible adults. Colleen also has a degree in Behaviour disturbances & emotional disorders. Colleen highly reccomends reading The Good Child Guide which can be found here ==> http://Answers-You-Seek.com/GoodChild.html

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Colleen_Henderson

We have a new symptom or habit now that Corey has just started over the last week.  Now he wont go to sleep at night and cries because he is scared.  He has never been scared in his room at night before.  He use to share a room with Lachlan and then we moved them all into their own rooms which he was really happy with and liked having his own room.  However, Lachlan wasn’t very happy and was scared in his own room and wanted to go back to sharing with Corey.  That is the weird bit, when Corey was with Lachlan before he was fine, when he was on his own he was fine, now he’s sharing again he’s scared.  The last few nights I’ve had to lie down next to him until he has fallen asleep. 

Tonight I put a radio on in his room as he says he hears noises – they have pet rats in another room which I’m sure are the noises he hears.  So I’m hoping the radio will keep him from hearing the noises that the rats make.  It seems to have worked tonight so fingers crossed it will keep working.

Last night lying in bed I thought that maybe I should try a naturopath so today I rang a couple but couldn’t get in for a while.  I really am not thinking straight lately, someone then recommended to me the one on the corner of a particular street and as soon as they said it I couldn’t believe I didn’t think of it, it is right across the road from our house just about.  So I went over there and made an appointment for Wednesday.  They do allergy testing too which should be good, it will make it easier attempting an elimination diet if they can actually find if he is allergic to anything.

So anyway I will keep the blog updated with how the naturopath goes, I really am hoping they can help us since nothing else seems to have helped.  I really want to avoid medication if at all possible so this naturopath really is my last hope.

Thanks for reading and take care
Sheryl
http://www.ourexceptionalkids.com

Corey has been not too bad this weekend although he had a few moments yesterday where he threw tantrums and told me that I’m a jerk and a loser.  I just tried to stay calm and ignored it and stuck to my discipline and didn’t give in to him.  I must admit his tantrums weren’t quite as bad as usual. 

He has been sick this weekend too which has probably kept him a bit quieter than normal.  He had a fever for a couple of afternoons and has had a sore throat and been a bit flat.  We were planning on taking them to the Museum on Sunday as they have Palaeantology Week but we didn’t end up going since Corey was sick.  It is still on next weekend so hopefully we might go then.  I think the boys would love it, they are into their dinosaurs and things – just like boys.

Ben is very much into animals lately and sits and draws animal pictures or goes on the computer and makes powerpoint presentations of animals.  He watches animal TV shows and reads animal books and is always coming and telling me all these interesting facts about animals.  So I think Ben would just love going to the museum.

Anyway, I hope that corey behaves today while I am home on my own with him.  I know yesterday Derek went out for about 20 minutes and of course as soon as he left Corey started his behavior.  The swearing is becoming a real problem and he had his mouth washed out with soap yesterday, it really doesn’t do any good though.  He spent quite some time in his room yesterday because of his language too.  I might have to start a swear jar, although I think he’ll just run out of money to put in it.

Thanks for reading once again
Sheryl

I guess most of them were together at my Uncle’s funeral but I unfortunately missed the funeral as we were travelling at the time and I was up the other end of Australia.

Anyway, back to today…..

Corey has been pretty good today actually, we have a few moments but overall he was pretty good.  I was watching him interacting with the other kids and he tries hard he really does.  I guess he did ok today but he just doesn’t seem to quite fit in as well as the rest of them do.  At least he did try today and there was no fighting between then all.  My Gran was there and she is 87 next month and she has 13 Great Grandchildren all of whom were there today.  The older five are getting to an age where they go off and chat but the youngest 8 had a ball.  Poor little Madison though, out of the younger 8 she is the only girl but I don’t think she cared too much she got in there and had fun anyway.

The funniest thing of today, was with my little one Lachlan.  Lachlan was born on my niece Alisha’s 16th birthday and they really do share a close bond.  However, Alisha is 21 now and she has a boyfriend who came to the picnic today.  Lachlan was not impressed, you should have seen him give poor Jason the evil eye – how dare Alisha have a boyfriend she is only supposed to love him.  It was so funny, he was hiding behind the tree staring at Jason and he was just not impressed one little bit.

Yesterday I had a really bad headache and I was really, really tired.  All day I just wanted to lie down and go to sleep but I couldn’t because I was at the Athletics Day.  This morning I woke up and my headache was worse for a couple of hours.  Once the panadol kicked in it was ok and is fine now.  Corey this afternoon toward the end of the picnic looked just not 100% and I asked him what was wrong and he just said he was tired.  When he got home he had a bit of a fever and a sore throat and headache, so I’m thinking that perhaps yesterday I may have had a bit of a virus and now he has it.  Poor boy, hopefully he will get over it pretty quickly.  He could really do with a big sleep in too.

Well that’s all for today.  Thanks for visiting our blog again.
Take care
Sheryl

This morning I tried to keep things happy and got us running on schedule so that we weren’t rushing and running late, which I think made a difference to.  It’s weird though like none of those things bother the other two boys just Corey.

Yesterday afternoon I bought Aspergers Parenting which is an ebook so I had instant delivery. I downloaded it and printed it out – all 213 pages.  Now even though I don’t know if Corey has Aspergers or not when it talked about how to handle the behavior problems and anger I thought that it may be able to help me with him anyway.  I sat down last night and read it all and although there are many symptoms of Aspergers that Corey just doesn’t have, there were some that when I was reading them it was just like I was reading about Corey.

It was really good to read it and read about other kids that act the way Corey does.  Maybe it is just bad behavior but I was talking about it last night with Derek (my husband) and he also agrees that Coreys behavior is beyond normal bad behavior.  Especially when we look at the other two boys and they have all been brought up the same way and disciplined in the same way and the other two aren’t like him.

I did feel a bit better after reading Aspergers Parenting it was quite a good ebook and I think I’ll sit down and read it all again one day soon just to take it in more.  Last night when I was reading it I underlined everything in green texta that I thought reminded me of Corey.

Anyway, I’m off to cook dinner and then get the boys ready for bed.

Bye
Sheryl