Case in point. I went to dinner with two girlfriends Saturday night, and we had a wonderful time, talked for hours on the outdoor patio while listening to live music. Maybe because Mother’s Day is usually tough for my family, we’d had a really rough week, and I shared some of the incidents, essays, conversations, consequences, etc. with my friends. They were obviously trying to be helpful, but one has two extremely poised, popular, dare I say gifted teenage girls, and the other has no children yet. So I had some technical overlap with the one friend in that we are both parenting teenage girls. But her situation is full of school volunteering, competitive soccer, academic awards, and fun banter with her daughters and their friends. Her house is the house all the kids want to hang out at. My situation, on the other hand, is full of counseling, horse therapy, failing grades,  emotional walls, and loneliness for my kids who do not possess the social skills to make and keep friends. Can we really parent the same way?

My friend without kids? Forget about it. She shared her growing up with me, and I told her she sounded pretty RAD herself. She was always mad at her parents, even before they divorced, she never went to school, lied all the time, and didn’t care about any of the consequences they gave her. She said there was nothing they could have done to make her care. Absolutely no overlap between our frames of reference, technical or otherwise. When she talks about parenting, she’s talking about how her parents parented her, and how she wishes they had parented her differently. That’s simply not the same thing as being a parent yourself, as any of us know who used to have lots of great ideas about how other people should parent their kids. Then we had our own and nobody better say nuthin’ to us because it’s an impossible job.

My parenting is so structured, in part because that’s who I am and in larger part because I believe that’s what my kids need to function. Their brains are so chaotic and their emotions are so disregulated that order, consistency, and routine are critical. They need to reject me emotionally (and have done so for nine years now) because it feels life-or-death to them not to get close to anyone (especially a mother) who can hurt them again. That is simply not covered under “teenage girls are just selfish, she’s just going through a stage.”

My friends are too kind to say it to me, but I know they think I’m a Hitler, or as my mom used to say, Captain von Trapp without the whistle. The comment that got to me the most was when my younger, probably-RAD friend told me, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but if I were your daughter, I wouldn’t be happy. Why don’t you ease up on her?”

At the time, I answered, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but if you were my daughter, I wouldn’t care if you were happy, I would care if you were good. I would want you to be happy as a result of being a good person, not because you’re getting what you want.” I explained my thinking that if my daughter can’t control her impulses, can’t discipline herself to work, can’t be trustworthy and honest enough to form healthy relationships, she’s not going to be happy anyway. Even so, I thought about her comment all day today. Of course it hurts. I don’t want my daughter to be unhappy because I’m her mother. If there’s something I need to change, I’ll change it.

So I thought long and hard about Kaylyn and what happiness I’ve seen her express over the years. For nine years, I’ve watched Kaylyn’s happiness come from mastering daily showers, setting boundaries with mean girls at school, getting out her hate feelings toward me on paper so that she could feel more positively, learning to control her temper tantrums, becoming more reliable at doing her chores well, and finally, becoming more attached to me. The last part is only possible when she submits herself to our rules and lets us be the parents, lets us take care of her, lets us make her feel safe.

I can’t explain any of this to my friends. Even if I said it to them exactly like this, they would hear it through their frames of reference, which are loving, bonded, healthy relationships that call forth a modicum of structure in the family, or the fantasy of having such some day. We parents of RAD kids live an alternate reality where the bond comes after and because of the structured relationships. No can really understand until they’ve walked a mile in our shoes, or lived a week in our home as it were.

We live on a parenting island where the truth is understood only by others on similar islands. Thank goodness for good friends who care and want to help, but we have to be very clear about what we’re doing and why. We have to know our kids and know what works for our kids. Or if nothing works, which is often the case, we have to know that we’ve tried everything and are still willing to try more if we come across new ideas. I heard it said the other day that if we pass on to our children only half the dysfunction that our parents gave to us, we’re good parents. That comforts me. I know I can at least do that. And who knows? Maybe when the acute phase of parenting is over and they are developmentally mature, some of this tenaciousness and grit to help them at any cost will pay off. My daughter’s Mother’s Day card to me today thanked me for never giving up on her no matter what. And I never will.

Photo credit: http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02049/friends_2049532b.jpg

I only left him in the room for twenty minutes, and I paid $52 to teach him that twenty-minute lesson. I only wanted to get him to care enough about his education that he would start doing the dang work. While he was sitting there for the twenty minutes, I called our therapist, and we devised a plan. She put it bluntly: If he needs to fail, he needs to fail, and we can’t prevent it.

We saw her together the next day. She said, “The first thing your mother said to me when she called was, ‘I have no intention of leaving Gavin here.’ Your mom is very sad that you don’t care enough about your grades to do the work. She is trying to get your attention so that you understand how important it is to graduate high school.” She then told my son that he was on his own for school, that I wouldn’t be checking his grades anymore, and we wouldn’t be talking about missing assignments in therapy anymore.

I had already come up with that idea as well. I was starting to think that one reason my son was so irresponsible with school is that I was his safety net, and he knew that sooner or later I would catch his missing assignments and require him to do them. I did tell him that I was here if he had questions or needed help with an assignment, but that he would need to ask. The counselor told him, “If you need to fail, you go ahead and fail. We can’t stop you. No one can make you care.”

I talked with Gavin a couple of days later and asked him what he had learned from the experience. He said, “I think it’s time I grew up.” He volunteered that he had taken the initiative to check his grades online at the library during lunch, and had talked to one teacher already about making up a missing assignment.

I asked him if he thought he had been less responsible because he knew I would catch him sooner or later, and he would have to do the work. He said yes. I asked him if he thought he would have been more responsible sooner if I had quit pushing him sooner and he said yes. That made me feel foolish, but at least I’ve stopped pushing him now.

It’s one of the hardest things I’ve done to let him take responsibility for success or failure in school. I know how important a high school diploma is, especially today when even college graduates have difficulty finding jobs. But the bottom line is that I can’t force him to care, and my pushing seems to have backfired. I have to sit on my hands not to check the school’s website for his grades, and bite my tongue not to ask him if he has homework. School is over in about a month, and I’ll know then whether he passed his classes. In the meantime, I repeat the mantra, “I can’t make him care, I can’t make him care, I can’t make him care,” all the while hoping and praying that something will.

Photo credit: mrstreasures.wordpress.com/high-school-diploma.jpg

I’m not sure what special needs my ten-year-old has. He was two-plus when we adopted him, so by definition, he has “special needs.” Clearly he’s never met a rule he wanted to follow or a boundary he wanted to respect. But he’s so cute. At first the therapist thought he was just spoiled, as in, you’ve been distracted by the problems of his older siblings, and he’s so cute, he’s been allowed to get away with too much for too long. That was hard to believe. I’m a very strict mom. My own mother called me Captain von Trapp without the whistle. She meant it in the nicest possible way I’m sure.

So initially we worked on the temper tantrums and disobedience as mere symptoms of being spoiled. When that didn’t work, we took him back in to see the counselor. “Oh,” she said, “I think he’s sicker than I realized.” That was somehow both discouraging and encouraging at the same time. Discouraging because what parent wants to hear that about her child, encouraging because at least it made more sense. So we pulled out the big guns and started grading him on his obedience (A or F depending on his response to a direction). We set it up that he couldn’t play with his friends again until he had earned a roughly 80% average of As over the week. We were sure that would work since he lives to play with friends and has meltdowns when friends aren’t available. But no, he went a month, then two months without playing with friends. He said he wanted to play, but he didn’t change his behavior to be more obedient.

So we brought out the Howitzer: peanut butter. Rather than having him work toward a reward for obedient behavior, we imposed a negative consequence when he disobeyed. For each disobedient act, he was given a peanut butter sandwich on whole wheat bread for his next meal instead of yummy food. Well, you’ve never seen a kid snap to obedience so quickly. The first stunt he pulled after we initiated Program Peanut Butter was to set the timer for teeth-brushing at one minute when I told him to set it for two. Peanut butter sandwich for breakfast the next morning. The second stunt was to not take a shower before bed when I told him to. Peanut butter sandwich for breakfast the next morning. The third and I believe essentially final stunt was to wad his church pants up in a bag behind his closet door instead of putting them in the wash or hanging them up. Peanut butter sandwich for dinner.

Now, I’m making this sound very clinical, but in reality, there were enormous meltdowns each time because he hates, hates, HATES peanut butter sandwiches. In other words, they work! He sets the timer for two minutes every time he brushes his teeth now, he takes his shower consistently every night now, and sure enough, he hung his church pants up this week. In a family with three special needs kids and minimal progress over nine years, it’s almost dizzying to watch my youngest son demonstrate obedience so consistently. I”m not thinking he’ll never be disobedient again. After all, he’s ten. But once the habit is established, we can remove the peanut butter sandwiches as leverage and he can simply be a ten-year-old boy with the “special” need to obey his parents. All hail the peanut butter.

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We’ve tried counseling, heavy structure, essays to help him connect with the feelings that drive this behavior, meetings with teachers, positive rewards when he stays caught up, and negative consequences when he lies and doesn’t do assignments. The last straw was to charge him money for each missing assignment. He has a part-time job at the mom and pop grocery store as a bagger, and is thrilled to have money to spend. That’s how he bought the Playstation. We met with the counselor and agreed on a plan where he would pay us $50 for every missing assignment. That got his attention, or so I thought.

Last Monday when we checked the school website, he had four missing assignments, so he had to fork over $200. Again that got his attention, or so I thought. He even cried. I figured we were home free. And I reminded him that if he could go a month without missing assignments, I would give him my old Iphone.

So last night when we checked the school website again and he had three more missing assignments, I was really at a loss. That’s another $150. If losing so much money out of his pocket doesn’t motivate him, will anything work? Gavin admits he is lazy and doesn’t want to do the work. We all know that. We’ve talked with him and the counselor has talked with him about just doing the work anyway to get it over with so that he doesn’t have to pay such a heavy price for catching up. He agrees. And then he touches the hot stove again. Why? That’s all I want to know.

Last night at 10:30 pm when he really wanted to go to bed, I told him to start on his missing assignments. He got upset, and I said (with therapeutic sarcasm), “Oh, I agree, it’s a much better choice not to have done your work during the week so that you could stay up late on a Sunday night to get it done.” I told him that if he really had no intention of doing school work, let’s drop out and get a manual labor job, but that upset him even more. He wants a high school diploma. But he doesn’t want to do the work to get one.

We all have things we don’t want to do. A large part of school is learning to do things that are hard, that we don’t want to do. How does one function in life without that skill? And the heavy negative consequences (like burning your hand when you touch a hot stove) are supposed to shape behavior away from the negative. Why don’t they work for Gavin? Why does he want to be in this deep dark hole every few weeks? If I could understand it, I could handle it better. I wasn’t mad at him last night. It happens so often that I now just dispassionately direct him to complete the assignments and show them to me. But I don’t know how to help him, don’t know if he can be helped. We see the counselor again on Wednesday, and even though we’ve covered this in therapy innumerable times, maybe she’ll have a fresh insight. I can only hope.

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We started fostering Justin and his two older siblings when he was sixteen months old and they were eight and five. Two years later, we adopted all three. Even though he is the only one that has no conscious memories of the birth parents, he has been the only one to obsess over being adopted.

He has worried that it makes him different. He has worried that he doesn’t look like us. That one is almost funny because he’s the spitting image of my husband, and most people think we adopted the older two but that Justin is our biological child.

Of course we’ve talked with him about how special being adopted makes him, how badly we wanted him, how hard we worked to get him. I don’t think adopted kids realize that we adoptive parents usually work a lot harder to have families than the biological parents do. I mean the old-fashioned way of having kids is pretty easy. Having to be certified fit as a parent and subjecting oneself to the approval of others before we can have a child can be brutally difficult.

We’ve also taken him to counseling to talk about his “mad” about being adopted. I had reached the point of thinking he just needed to be mad as long as he needed to be mad, and if he was going to have an issue with being adopted, then he would have to deal with that throughout his life.

He would say things like, “I wish I came from your tummy,” and I would tell him I wished the same thing, but we have a different kind of family. “You were in the tummy of a mom that couldn’t keep you safe, and I couldn’t have a baby in my tummy, so Heavenly Father gave you to me to keep you safe.” Justin seemed to be comforted by my explanation, but he kept making comments and asking questions that made me realize he was having a hard time with it.

So when he finally said, “It’s kind of like you’re my birth mom,” I was thrilled. I realized he had worked something out in his own mind that allowed him to see me positively. He said, “You love me and give me hugs, and she didn’t.” I know that’s ten-year-old logic, but it made sense to me. He has no memories of her, and I would bet a great deal of money that she hugged him and loved him, but in his mind, he’s making peace with getting hugs and love from me. It really is the nicest thing he’s ever said to me.

I recently threw myself under the bus for my daughter. I protected her like a mama bear from two girl bullies-posing-as-friends and one mom-of-a-bully who silently mouthed the word “liar” to my daughter as bully number one shrieked at me that my daughter was lying about the bullying. Okay, enough set-up. Let’s just say I, who am the first to call my daughter on even the hint of a lie, believed her and stood up for her, even though it caused an extremely ugly scene at my dining room table, and I lost someone I thought was a friend (the bully’s mother who called me names when I stood up for my daughter).

Fast-forward to last week when the bully suffered a personal hardship. My daughter’s counselor and I both talked to my daughter at length about how the bully was going to be having a hard time and may act out. She had already hurt Kaylyn and we wanted Kaylyn to be prepared in case she tried it again. We coached Kaylyn on how to be polite and kind to the girl in her difficult time (it never hurts to be gracious, does it?), but not to get sucked back in as the girl’s lapdog (my daughter has no boundaries).

It turns out my daughter interacted with the bully but she was afraid to tell me because she didn’t know if she had interacted with her appropriately and was scared she would get in trouble. I asked her, “And you were afraid I would beat you?” No. “Stick bamboo shoots under your fingernails?” No. “Imprison you in the dungeon?” No. “Then why were you afraid to tell me?” Drumroll please . . . “I don’t know.” That’s the part that kills me. I understand she was afraid, but it had nothing to do with me. Is it crazy to want a little bit of our relationship to actually reflect my trustworthiness and kindness?

Our counselor used the “under the bus” analogy today to help Kaylyn realize what I had done to protect her, and how she was showing more loyalty to the bully-friend than to me. To Kaylyn’s credit, she understood finally and apologized to me with a hug. The counselor, who remains brilliant, had Kaylyn write a one-page essay of all the ways she thought she could interact appropriately with the bully, then we reviewed it together. Now Kaylyn should have no doubt in her mind as to the kind, polite ways she can be around the girl while still having good boundaries. I guess you could say all’s well that ends well, but I would just like to whisper once more that it sure would be nice to reap the benefits of what I’ve sown.

Oh well, tribulation builds character. Mine is a skyscraper.

Photo: missysgreenapple.blogspot.com/mama-bear.jpg

I had the honor of sitting with the mother two days after her daughter’s death, the day she went into her daughter’s bedroom for the first time since the drowning. I say it was an honor because it felt like a sacred space to be there as she unleashed her agony and to be able to hold some of it for her. I have never heard such agony. I had never heard a mother mourn her child like that. I hope I never hear it again.

I often think of the bond I have, or wish I had, with my adopted children. Over the nine years we have been a family, we have overcome nearly insurmountable obstacles–with the help of  a reactive attachment therapist, a horse therapist, and various medications as needed. I have the strongest bond with my son who I received at sixteen months. I changed his diapers, watched him take his first step, taught him to read and make his bed. With no biological children of my own, I can only imagine that the bond I have with him is as close to biological as possible.

Then I think about his older brother and sister whom I received when they were eight and five. They came in hating me, fighting me, and wanting their “real” parents, which continued for many years. Just today, our therapist was trying to help my fourteen-year-old daughter see me as a real person, with real feelings that can be hurt by her behavior, especially her unwillingness to trust me with the truth.

The bond I have with the older two feels like it starts higher up in geographical space, is more delicate, less comfortable. The best way I can describe it is as though they are cherished friends who’ve come to visit, but with whom I still maintain a level of vigilance unnecessary with my youngest son. They feel like company, and it’s only after they leave for school, or go to bed that I feel like I really relax. You know, that feeling of when you’re finally home for the day and can put on your jammies.

I wish it were different, I wish I could love them enough to make the bond all by myself. They’re more willing to accept my love and to trust me a little, but there’s no denying that they simply aren’t healthy enough (yet) to permit a fully vulnerable bond between us. I envision Sunday dinners in a few years, where they are living independently and return home out of love and a desire to be together as a family. I know that the bond will continue to deepen as they mature and become better able to tolerate more emotional intimacy.

Meanwhile, I watched my friend mourn the loss of healthy, strong, even fierce emotional intimacy and physical contact with her daughter. I won’t lie. It was one of the hardest parts of the experience for me, to realize that my two oldest children and I simply don’t have that bond.

So I did some thinking about what we have that biological parents and children don’t have. One thing I know for sure is that no one works harder to have children than adoptive parents. Even biological parents who undergo fertility treatments have it easier than we adoptive parents. Biological parents of any variety are in control of process: they make all the decisions. We adoptive parents have to get someone to approve of us as parents to be able to make a family. Some of us are required to go to extreme steps, such as undergoing psychiatric evaluation. We may not have the bond with our children that we hoped for, but no one can take away from us the humility we offered up for our children. That says something.

And the children? What a wonderful, blissful, childhood a biological child born to healthy parents has. Most of us who adopt older children receive wounded souls that were removed from unhealthy parents and a decidedly non-blissful childhood. I’m not taking anything away from those lucky, healthy, biological children, but I think our older adopted children are very special spirits of our Father in Heaven. How many children are never rescued from situations that slowly harden and then kill their spirits? And if we’ve adopted an older child, they’ve been given a second chance. I like to think that Heavenly Father sees something very special in our children and has worked extra hard to bring them forward into a loving family.

When I think of the honor of being mother to such special spirits, I can make peace with not having such an intense bond. I know I am only the stewards of these children until they can return to Him. Faith makes me trust that I am supposed to be their mother, that they are supposed to be my children. Not for the beautiful experience that many biologically-connected parents and children have, but for our own divinely-inspired experiences that may only be beautiful in hindsight. Somehow, it will all make sense in the end, and perhaps when the scales have fallen from our eyes, and we see each other for who we really are, our bond will be the strongest of all.

Photo credit: theculturalhallpodcast.com/mother and daughter.jpg

My ten-year-old son has not played with friends in over two months. In order to play with friends, he must contain his temper tantrums so that he screams into his “angry pillow” only (not our ears) and stomps the floor or hits the pillow on the bed. If he contains his temper tantrum within those boundaries, he is not in trouble. Also, he must demonstrate obedience. Not perfect obedience obviously since he’s ten. But at least an 80% average. Every time we ask him to do something, his response receives a grade. I snap my fingers and say, “Obedience – A” or “Obedience – F.” (Obedience is like pregnancy. You can’t be a little pregnant. You can’t be a little obedient. You either are or you aren’t.)

Playtime–that’s his currency. We’ve known it, we use it to motivate him, and it hasn’t worked. It’s almost shocking how much it hasn’t worked. We’ve had calls to the police, four-hour-temper-tantrums, property damage, essays, bathroom time, upset phone calls from the teacher, and lots of peanut butter. Per the therapist, who says it’s more fun for him to be naughty than good right now, we surprise him with little chocolates when he does something especially obedient, or controls a temper tantrum especially quickly. We’re trying to train him that being good is more fun than being naughty.

For two months, he has progressed painfully slowly to the point last night of being poised on the brink of playtime with a friend today. He is at 80% or above (as measured by Mom) on his obedience, and he has as of this writing had no temper tantrums for 132 hours, 35 minutes and 03 seconds (as measured by Mom’s IPhone).

When I tucked him into bed last night, I used all the same techniques I’ve practiced for almost a year now, as in, “Hey, I think it would be awesome if you got out of bed after I leave so that you lose the privilege of playing tomorrow.” He called after me, “Not gonna happen, Mom, not gonna happen.”

So…I gave him fifteen minutes then went back and checked. Where was he? Lying under the Foosball table in the loft with his collection of rocks and without any pajamas. True to my training, I enthusiastically cried, “Awesome! You chose to lose the privilege of playing tomorrow.” Then he tried everything in his bag of tricks, as in, “I was scared”, “You didn’t say I couldn’t go in the loft”, “Can I earn it back?”

It took everything I had to say, “No, no and no, but nice try. You’ve lost the privilege of playing tomorrow so now you’ll have to earn it for the next day.” I thought he was going to blow a gasket that he had come so close to playing and then lost it. At the same time, I was thinking, “This has to be a test. No kid who really wants to play tomorrow is going to get out of bed for anything. So I concluded what he really wanted was to see if I was serious, if he really had to follow the rules. When he realized playtime was really gone, no givsies backsies, he started to snort like a bull. Smoke came out of his ears, and I braced for him to blow the house down.

Then I pulled out my IPhone. I showed him the hundred plus hours he had gone without a temper tantrum and asked him if he was ready for me to stop the timer. He buried his face in his “angry pillow” and finished his temper tantrum in less than five minutes. I have to say I was impressed. So impressed that I went back in after a while and told him how impressed I was that he had gotten control of himself so quickly. I said, “I bet that was really hard to do,” and he nodded. I said, “I’m really sad that you chose not to play tomorrow, but I’m really proud of you for your self-control so I’m putting a piece of candy in your lunch tomorrow.” I told him I loved him, and he told me he loved me.

I waited for another fit this morning when he remembered no playtime today, but no. I waited for him to be yucky when he got home from school or to simply defy us and stay after school to play with friends, but no. He came home, did his reading and keyboarding, and had a presence about him that was almost striking in its maturity and calm. I don’t think I’ve ever felt him so connected to me as when we talked about his day today. He never even brought up the subject of playing with friends.

I’ve been to the rodeo often enough that I have no illusions he is suddenly Prince Charming. But I also know my kids well enough, and can feel their spirits well enough, to know when they’ve gone up a level. And he has. All because I didn’t give up. It would have been so much easier to make an excuse for him being out of bed, or pretend to believe him that he was scared. After all, I want him to be rewarded for this good behavior so that he keeps it up. But I stayed the course and followed through on flagrant disobedience equals no playtime. I’m as shocked as anyone that he took it so well. I think this not giving up might actually be working.

Photo credit: ichasudirman.blogspot.com: The Pesketologist: Just Don’t Give Up

Our therapist said Kaylyn had forgotten what she was missing. She directed me and my husband to spend time with Kaylyn in the bathroom playing cards, telling her how much we missed her at dinner, and even giving her candy from time to time just because we love her. Then, after a sweet half an hour or so in the bathroom together, to tell her, “I love you, but the other kids need me so I have to leave now. I sure will be happy when you choose to be with us again. We miss you.”

I’m not saying it was easy to do when Kaylyn was being so yucky in her attitude, but we did it. It took only a day and a half before she was ready to shift. I checked in on her an hour or so after she got home from school, and the whole feel around her was different. When I opened the door, she immediately got to her feet, looked me straight in the eye, and said, “Mom, I”m really sorry I’ve been so yucky.”

You know how you can feel when your child is being sincere or not? This was completely sincere. I gave her a chance to write an essay about her feelings now that she had shifted, and it was real. She was connected to her feelings and able to express them appropriately. That gave her the chance to do a chore “fast, snappy and right the first time.”  She did a bang-up job vacuuming and earned a yummy dinner. That night we spent time together as a family, and she was able to play Playstation later with her brothers.

I’m so grateful for a therapist who knows what she’s doing. No matter how stuck Kaylyn gets, our therapist has always helped us get her un-stuck, and taught us creative parenting in the process. I think about the eight years we spent spinning our wheels with the wrong types of therapists who didn’t understand Reactive Attachment Disorder. I feel for others in our situation who don’t have access to such a tremendous therapist. The main reason I put so much detail in my posts about what our therapist guides us to do is to share the process with others who may be able to benefit from it. None of us can do this alone.

Photo credit: www.youmatter.suicidepreventionlifeline.org

Have you ever felt like you needed to lose a few pounds, and then you didn’t, and you were so mad you ate EXTRA ice cream? I think that’s where my daughter is, emotionally speaking.

She was doing so well, may I emphasize SO WELL. Then, like everybody else, she had a bad day which she used to open yet another fake Facebook account. Not in a sneaky way where she was sure not to get caught this third time. No, in the same exact way she was caught the first two times, by opening it on her school-issued laptop that I check weekly for Facebook activity. (So obviously there’s more going on here than a bad day, but I’ll stay focused on the issue at hand for now.)

That bad day turned into multiple essays assigned by the counselor: Why Facebook is so important to me; How I feel powerful when I’m sneaky; How I hurt Mom by lying to her; How to repair my relationship with Mom. Kaylyn wrote the essays in that fourteen-year-old girl way where she didn’t mean anything she said, but thought she was saying what we wanted to hear. Yucky. We took an informal family vote. Do you think Kaylyn feels yucky? Yes, me too. How about you? Yes, she’s really yucky to me in private, but when you and Dad come into the room, she turns nicey-nice.

Every day that Kaylyn could have shifted and acted respectful, responsible and fun to be with, she went the other direction. She stuffed more ice cream. She hid stinky cat poop in the laundry room instead of taking it out to the trash. She hid food in her room when her consequence was peanut butter sandwiches until she earned yummy food by being respectful, responsible and fun to be with. She drifted home from school a half hour late without calling (a huge no-no in our family) and full of lies about where she had been and why. I had her spend two days in her room to see what it felt like to miss out on family fun and she loved it, said she was glad she didn’t have to do any chores.

The counselor said she was too comfortable in her bedroom. Put her in the bathroom where it’s really boring and really uncomfortable, she told us. She told Kaylyn, “I can see you’re using all your energy to fight your mom, you’re not ready to shift, so I’m not going to ask you to. I want you to sit in the bathroom as long as you want. Just go ahead and feel sorry for yourself, hate your mom, blame her for you being in the bathroom and just be miserable until you’re good and ready to shift.” Obviously the idea here is we take the fun out of fighting us away and Kaylyn has no more investment in staying in the bathroom.

You would think.

She’s been in there for four days now. Yesterday she didn’t come home for lunch like she was supposed to and was TWO HOURS late getting home from school with no phone call. Does that sound like someone who’s ready to shift? It boggles the mind. I say it’s war now because I pulled out all my big guns when she was two hours late. Know what I did? Nothing. When she came home, sounding so contrite, I was languidly reading a book on the couch and just smiled and waved her into the bathroom. After all, she’s already in the bathroom, what bigger consequence can I give? But to deny her the satisfaction of getting mad, getting worried, grilling her about where she was? Priceless. It’s the first time in nine years I’ve let a big infraction go, but I’m convinced it was the right thing to do.

Nobody is mad at her, nobody is pushing her to shift. She sits in what is admittedly a pretty but very boring bathroom and whiles away the time stubbornly refusing to be respectful, responsible and fun to be with. It amazes me that she would really rather be in there–on a Friday night–than to be with the family having fun and eating yummy food. This has shades of the summer all over it when she spent two entire months in her bedroom refusing to come  out. I hope for her sake it doesn’t take two months this time.

Photo credit: heavensdesigns.com/bathroom.jpg