Thursday, November 18, 2010

I'm at a loss

I came downstairs this morning and walked through something gritty. In the approximately 20 minutes Noah was alone down here to eat breakfast he took a packet of powdered lemonade and spread it all over the dining room floor.

Apparently he felt like it.

Despite a rough day at school he did great this afternoon. He was focused doing homework and his vision exercises and didn't give me any grief when I told him he needed to shower before we went to karate. 

At karate he attended a special hour seminar with Ed Parker Jr, where he was focused and in control. They paired up and learned some new passive self-defense techniques. He was awesome working with the other kid and the joy on his face was radiating. He even had his belt signed by Ed Parker Jr.

He was excited to get home and see Kiel because he said he hadn't seen him all day! 

And then it was time to take Kiel up to bed and Noah became upset and started to get wild and tried to encourage Kiel to go to the basement with him. When Noah wouldn't listen or change his attitude, Rich told him to go upstairs and get his pajamas on.
As I was changing Kiel, Rich came up and saw a large wet spot on the hall carpet between the kids bathroom and the laundry room. Noah said "Stell did it." I sighed and said if he did that then he must be unhappy about the state of the litter box.

But then we got a bit suspicious when Noah didn't have to pee and I knew he hadn't gone since right after school. Rich smelled it and it was definitely not cat pee. I smelled it and it definitely was human pee. Noah pee. And he continued to try and deny it was him. And then he became hysterical when we told him he had to clean it up. Sobbing and keening. And then later screaming that he hates mommy and daddy. The icing on the cake was his rendition of "Mommy and Daddy are lame" sung over and over again.

This kind of behavior just confirms for me we are on the right track considering reactive attachment disorder. What I don't understand yet is what an effective consequence is for these types of behaviors.


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2 comments:

  1. Seems like the cleaning it up was a good start on the consequence. My secretary's 7 year old daughter once peed all over her older brother's pile of clothes in his bedroom, because the older brother had done something to piss her off (apparently literally!). Maybe some vacuuming or other related chores - or cleaning the litter box. As my kids have gotten older, I almost love it when they misbehave because it almost always results in some part of my house getting cleaned... Good luck! Laurie

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  2. If you're dealing with RAD, there really aren't any consequences that will be effective. :-( Attempting to find them, though, will escalate things really quickly especially if you try to deliver a consequence in the heat of the moment.

    Best course of action I've found is to first figure out what's driving the behavior. What were they mad/sad/angry about. Then let it sit. Once the kid is regulated and you've discussed the mad/sad/angry then you can have him help clean it up and give him a heavy dose of reassureance that no matter what he does, Mommy still loves him and isn't leaving.

    RAD sucks! :-(

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