So Angry at All the Lying, Stealing and Sneaking

[WSM]

I think you are right Marguerite. It's about control, and attention, and trying to make others feel as deprived as the difficult child feels.

But difficult child isn't deprived of food or things or attention or even of an appropriate amount of control over his own life. Probably in my difficult child's situation he was deprived of early appropriate care from his mother as an infant. He was deprived as a small child of safety, security, and bonding.

He IS now a bottomless pit of neediness for control and attention. His needs as an infant were not met, and now cannot be met.

Or can they?

Every therapist we see insists that husband must spend more time with difficult child. husband spends almost all Sunday, between 10 am and a dinner time with him. They garden and do chores together. husband likes this time, difficult child seems to like this time. And every weekend, difficult child takes the opportunity during this time to zing husband in some way.

difficult child goes to his counselors and whines he wants more time alone with dad, he wants dad to take him alone to movies, restaurants, circuses, shopping. (as in shopping for things for difficult child, they do a lot of the family shopping together).

No. There are 4 other kids and a wife and if one kid goes to the circus, everyone can go. We are not going to exclude 4 kids from the circus to make one kid feel good. (difficult child and husband do get a meal together on therapist days because therapy is always around dinnertime).

difficult child also wants to decide what we eat for dinner, what gets watched on tv, what everyone's bedtimes should be. He wants to be in charge of the family. One therapist told him to stop trying to be the adult in the family, to be a kid. difficult child feels very deprived if he can't run the show.

Entitlement. That's the word for it.

But entitlement runs deep in difficult child. when he was 6 until he was about 10 he'd tell people straight out that he was special and didn't have to do what everyone else did and didn't have to follow the rules. It once came out that he thought he was so special a swing wouldn't hit him if walked infront of it (he was 8 and had been warned and warned to stop walking in front of the swings at the park. I'm special, they won't hit me. And when eventually he got hit, he was OUTRAGED. It wasn't supposed to happen to him, he's special).

So maybe we know what the problem is...but what do you do about it? If giving them all the attention and control they want is impossible, what do you do? Doesn't the problem seem unfixable?

 

[Marguerite]

The problem is, the therapist sees that the child wants "me" time with dad and thinks this will fix it all. it won't. Because although the child does want the bonding time, and the bonding time is a good thing, it's not fixing the underlying problem. it's just putting a patch over a huge gaping wound that requires surgery.

When you have achild who is haemorrhaging emotionally, they need a massive transfusion and not simply a band-aid. Needness that is a bottomless pit, is neediness whose underlying cause is not being addressed. Which means the underlying cause is NOT "insufficient time with dad".

My sister went through this with her adopted daughter. The girl had been removed from her bio-parents due to neglect. My sister got her at 7 months old, after the baby's third hospitalisation for malnutrition. We all beleived that lots of love and feeding up would fix any problems after that, but we now know that some wounds run too deep. She was an emotional black hole and would sabotage (and steal from) her younger sister (my sister's natural child). It was constant. There was alot of jealousy for mum's attention, especially if she felt her sister was getting more of ANYTHING. Younger sis would buy trinkets with her own money earned from part-time job, and the needy one would take it. If it was make-up, she would use it up. If it was sheet music, needy sis would steal it and not let younger sis have it back until needy sis was proficient in playing it first. She had to be first, she had to be better, she had to have more.

The problem needs to be identified back to its roots, and the child needs active therapy to help them identify WHAT their behaviour is, and what has caused it. They then need help to identify any thoughts and behaviours that arise from the cause, and to help thme rehears and practice strategies to help them find alternative behaviours. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy.

And while an expert therapist who knows how to help you with this is best, if you feel you can help your child in this yourself, then do it. If whatever you are doing is not working, then this is a sign that the problem itself is not being addressed.

Sometimes what you are doing may not seem to be working, but could in fact be preventing a problem getting worse.

I would suggest - as a first step, talk to the therapist about the bottomless pit, point out that spending time with dad is all very well but it's the band-aid to a gaping belly wound and you respectfully require more drastic and immediate triage. See how tihs goes. Because as things are going currently, you just can't keep it up. A child (or any individual) who has an overwhelming need that simply cannot be met, is going to grow up to be an adult who drains the life out of every relationship tey're in, unless the problem is identified, made known to them and some practical behaviour alternatives presented to them and regularly practised.

We all know such emotional cripples. Some of them get healed in adulthood (like my sister's daughter - she's doing great now). But to give them the best chance, we need to get to the problems as early as we can, and get right to the heart of the problems as soon as we can (and as soon as they are sufficiently capable of understanding it). If we don't, then the childrisks growing up into the sort of person we cross the street to avoid.

Marg

 

[WSM]

7 months old and already severely damaged by neglect that might have affected her whole life. It makes you want to just weep.

difficult child had 3 and a half years of inconsistent care. Gross neglect and abandonment, followed by smothering care, lots of changes of caregivers.

He's been diagnosed as needing cognitive therapy, and supposedly the current therapist is a cognitive therapist. He gave difficult child the assignment of writing down every time he lies and what caused him to lie and every time he told the truth and what caused him to tell the truth. He hasn't done it, he says he lies because he doesn't want anyone to know or he wants to get out of trouble (the implication being he's not going to admit to any lying people don't know about--and if he's caught he was only lying to avoid being caught, like duh), and he tells the truth all the time so it's too much writing. We'll see what the therapist has to say about that.

I once read of a contraversial therapy where kids were pushed through a 'birth canal' and 'reborn'. They were then diapered, fed from a bottle, carried around, and rocked for as long as they wanted, then they were led through all the developmental and emotional phases of childhood until they got what they'd missed. They usually didn't want to wear the diapers for long, but would maybe hang onto the bottle for a long time and want to be rocked for weeks, before they were ready to give that up.

It was said this therapy had some remarkable successes. But critics said there were some horrible results too. We would never attempt such a contraversial and risky and bizarre treatment, but I can understand why it was designed.

husband and I KNOW that all the advice to give difficult child is just a band aid on a gaping hemoraging wound. How come you and we know it, and we aren't professionals, but the professionals don't know it? With all their experience.

 

[Marguerite]

Frustrating, isn't it? That's why I really push people to recognise their own 'expertness' in their child's health care team, and to keep working on therapists to either convince us that what they're doing is valid and the way to go, or to take on board what we're trying to tell them aboiut our children and in so doing, come up with strategies that are going to deal with the basic problems and not just the superficial secondary issues.

As for the re-birthing techniques - controversial and not necessarily endorsed by the mainstream. Often with good reason. If you go for something like this in the wrong case you can make them worse. Also, the person may have suffered some neglect or problems surrounding their birth or early care, but we are each the sum of our complex background and experiences, it is nnot just the early experiences that can be "fixed" be going through it all again (and in so doing, 'wiping it all out') because it is what we layer over the early problems afterwards that also add to the problems. That doesn't get dealt with. And sometimes what even an expert claims to be the problem, is still wrong and can lead to some big mistakes.

Example - after difficult child 3 was born, only a couple of weeks after we had been through some horrendous lethal bushfires, I went into Post-Traumatic Stress. At first it was assumed to be Post-Natal Depression, I had to fight to get the right sort of help. Doctors wanted to put me on antidepressants which would have been a huge mistake. I wasn't depressed, I was ANGRY. I wanted to find the people responsible for ALL my pain, and tear them to pieces. Meanwhile I was getting flashbacks of both the fires, and the delivery (which had been bad).
However - I had a baby I adored and who was so very easy. He was a darling, I was coping well with him. I was losing the post-baby weight by eating muesli, a recipe I had brought home from the hospital courtesy of the hospital dietician. I ate muesli any time of the day after I'd breastfed the baby.
Then I got what seemed to be a gastric bug. Diarrhoea and nausea. Abdominal pain and bloating. Really bad. husband had it too, then he got better. But I didn't. Of course I stopped all dairy while I had the gastric bug, and it got better. Then I went back to eating muesli, and I got sick again. I finally figured out tat I had been so sick, I had lost my ability to digest lactose in the milk. But the psychiatrist I was seeing for the PTSD said that the problem was not milk, but the muesli recipe I'd brought form the hospital, because it was associated with the baby's birth and that my body was reacting to it and giving me the gastric symptoms psychosomatically. Again, antidepressants would fix me. I said no. Eventually I stopped seeing the shrink (I felt he wasn't helping me enough, I needed someone more willing to help me dig deep and not simply sit there and doodle).
I tried the museli again, but reacted. I tried leaving out this ingredient or that, but I was just getting too sick so I stopped the muesli permanently plus all dairy for months and took calcium tablets instead.

Years later, I found that the problem ingredient was rolled oats. I now eat my own muesli recipe still based on that original one from the hospital dietician, but substituting puffed brown rice for the rolled oats. And I'm OK!

Sometimes even the obvious diagnosis from the top shrinks, can still be wrong. Sometimes the answer can be unexpected. Always keep an open mind and never stop asking questions.

Also where possible, be up front with the experts and tell them what you think. Discuss. Ask for their opinion but also ask them to explain things to you so you understand. If they disagree with you, ask them to refute your arguments so you can accept the new arguments. If you can't agree but they think there could be merit in what you say, ask if together you can develop a strategy worth trying out.
The down side to this, is you are setting yourself up as an equal expert, which measn that you have to step up to the plate as fellow researcher 9your child being the research project) and you have to take comprehensive and unbiased notes on the outcomes of any mini-experiments you carry out. You must report faithfully, fully and openly to your fellow-researchers (ie the therapists) in order to continue to maintain a functional stragety or conversely, to move in a different and hopefully more productive direction.

You need to understand scientific hypotheisis and scientific method.

Current therapist's hypothesis - that your stepson merely needs more personal time with his father and tat this will fix the problems.

Your observation appears to refute this - the amount of time that stepson seems to need is disproportional and frankly cannot be met; it is impractical, which implies tat the original hypothesis needs to be re-examined and possibly refined. It was a good initial working hypothesis, but has now been found wanting. YOU need to put forward some possibilities for a new hypotheis, as well as a possible experimental procedure.

Example - new hypothesis could be that difficult child is blaming his neediness on a belief that he just needs more time with his dad. However, there is something else, either the current instability of custody etc or earlier confusion/neglect which is making difficult child feel that husband time will fix it. And the solution - ask the therapist how such a problem could be addressed, how would you try to help someone who has a deeper problem like this. But if possible, the first stage in trying to deal with such a problem, any problem, is information and communication. Talk to difficult child, ask about his feelings, teach him to get in touch with his feelnigs and to find ways to express them which are acceptable and manageable. This is therapist territory, but it requires some work from the therapist which he may not be comfortable with. Whata the therapist is currently doing, is much more "by the numbers" andas long as parents don't challenge it, the therapist will continue to follow as 'we think this is working" because he's not getting any information to the contrary.

How do experts learn? How do ideas change? Because sometimes people insist on there being another look at the problem.

Marg

 

[DaisyFace]

Marg, WSM--

I have also been wondering lately about "Theory of Mind"....

When my difficult child was diagnosed with ADHD--she had been tested by a psychologist--but I don't think she received all of the testing that she could have (and might have yielded a more accurate diagnosis)--at any rate, she was never given a test that Temple Grandin describes in her books as the "Theory of Mind" test.

"Theory of Mind" is the capability of understanding that different people are not you, and they have views and needs and wants and opinions and feelings of their own.

When I asked my difficult child the questions that Temple had written in her book--not only were difficult child's answers COMPLETELY wrong...she had no idea WHY her answers were wrong, even after numerous people explained it to her.

I am beginning to think that poor "Theory of Mind" is the explanation for some of these behaviors--stealing in particular. difficult child thinks that everyone has what she has--and conversely, she thinks she is entitled to what everyone else has. Anything less is completely upsetting to her...

So it might not be so much a sense of entitlement--as it is a lack of a sense of separation, of differences--between "you and me" and "my role and your role" and "my stuff vs your stuff".

What do you think....?

--DaisyF

 

[Marguerite]

If your 12 yo does not currently have theory of mind, then this (to my mind) increases the chances of her having a diagnosis on the autism spectrum somewhere, and makes it all the mmore important for her to have a thorough neuropsychologist assessment.

This is not to say that theory of mind will never come - difficult child 3 now has theory of mind. I can apply the test and he does get it, but he has to think about it and when challenged to think fast, he can get it wrong.

Something else to test (out of pure curiosity) is the Piaget conservation tests. At 12 she should conserve. There are other tests also; they are fairly rough by modern test standards but can give hints of where to look.

But before you go doing too much of your own testing, try to organise a thorough professional assessment. If achild is tested too often, all that happens is tey get so good atr doing tests, they remember the quesitons and have tie to think about them and therefore the results are likely to give a false high.

For example - we bought a software package that screamed on the label, "BOOST YOUR IQ!!!!!!!"
I played with it and by the third time trough, I was getting a perfect score - 200.
Now I KNOW my iQ is not 200. OK, it's high, but not THAT high. I had just remembered the correct answers. And the total number of possible questions in this package was very limited, so it really is a very poor test, but great for your self-esteem.

Marg

 

[gemstone]

Marg, WSM--

I have also been wondering lately about "Theory of Mind"....

When my difficult child was diagnosed with ADHD--she had been tested by a psychologist--but I don't think she received all of the testing that she could have (and might have yielded a more accurate diagnosis)--at any rate, she was never given a test that Temple Grandin describes in her books as the "Theory of Mind" test.

"Theory of Mind" is the capability of understanding that different people are not you, and they have views and needs and wants and opinions and feelings of their own.

When I asked my difficult child the questions that Temple had written in her book--not only were difficult child's answers COMPLETELY wrong...she had no idea WHY her answers were wrong, even after numerous people explained it to her.

I am beginning to think that poor "Theory of Mind" is the explanation for some of these behaviors--stealing in particular. difficult child thinks that everyone has what she has--and conversely, she thinks she is entitled to what everyone else has. Anything less is completely upsetting to her...

So it might not be so much a sense of entitlement--as it is a lack of a sense of separation, of differences--between "you and me" and "my role and your role" and "my stuff vs your stuff".

What do you think....?

--DaisyF

Daisy according to Dr. Chris Green (an Auussie) who co-wrote a book called Understanding ADHD (and other disorders such as autism) these kids are at least 3 years behind in maturity. It is only now that my nearly 13 year old grandson is starting to realise that other people have feelings too. He is getting more sense. He still pinches things at times. I have 3 sons including his dad and they all pinched things at that age but eventually stopped. I really think some kids are slower than others to develop a conscience unless they have ODD. Chris Green's book shows how to deal with these problems. Google him as Amazon may sell it if you are interested. I am a bit sceptical of some of the tests done on kids as they can cause a lot of stress for parents. Try not to worry too much as time may take care of a lot of problems for you and me.

 

[Marguerite]

I like Chris Green. He also wrote "Toddler Taming" which unfortunately I didn't get until I didn't need it. I'm keeping a copy for when I get grandkids.

Gemstone, also look for another Aussie and an even better authority on autism and Asperger's (more a specialist than Green) - Tony Attwood.

And welcome!

Marg