After restricting Paul’s video game time, he stopped being able to get out of bed in the morning.  He also became obsessed with my work schedule.  It took some time for us to put these two things together but after a while we began to speculate that Paul was sneaking into the basement at night and sneaking his video games up to his room.  We had moved the game and controllers out of his room shortly after he came to live with us because we caught him playing them late at night.  We ended up moving them into the basement with us because he would still sneak them when the were in the living room upstairs.

We knew that if we acted before Paul knew that he had been caught it would have been more of a fight than it was worth.  The reason he was obsessing over my work schedule is that he knows I am a light sleeper.  So if I am home at night he wouldn’t sneak into the basement.  We stopped telling him what shift I was working and I started making little trips to store around the time I would leave for work at night.  On night as I was drifting off to sleep, I heard the door to the basement open and close.  I lay in bed listening, and couldn’t be sure if he was making his move.  I got out of bed, crept into the rec-room and turned on the light.

Paul jumped up from where he thought his video games were, I had moved them before going to bed.  When I asked him what he was doing he told me he was checking on the cats because they were keeping him awake.  I told him that was a sad excuse because both cats were asleep and sent him back to bed.  I sat in bed listening to him playing in his room.  There was always noise coming from his room at night, but by the time I got there his light was always off and he would pretend that I woke him up.

The next day we confronted Paul.  His story changed as it usually does when he lies.  It wasn’t the cats anymore; he wanted to ask one of us if he could have a snack.  I pointed out that he already knew he could have a late night snack as long as it was something healthy and not a treat.  I also asked him how he planned on asking the question by creeping into the basement without turning on any lights and not waking us up.  He told us that he only wanted to wake one of us up.  When asked why he was looking for us by his video games instead of in our room he told us that he didn’t think we had gone to bed.  All in all it was a sad exchange, Paul refused to accept he had been caught.

After telling Paul that we were taking away his video games for a week, we knew we still needed to do something to resolve Paul’s issues.  We tried to look at it objectively and balance what we needed and what Paul needed.  This got us nowhere; Paul just didn’t seem to be able to follow our household rules anymore.  I kept comparing Paul to our baby Jack in my head, as I made connections to Jack’s development and Paul’s limitations I came up with a potential solution.  Jack doesn’t decide when it’s time for him to go to bed we do, we put him in his crib, and it’s bedtime.  Left to his own devices Jack would end up in the same boat as Paul, he would stay up until he couldn’t stay awake anymore and then try to sleep all day.  We don’t leave anything lying around that Jack could get into; we needed to do the same for Paul - remove the temptation.

We sent Paul to visit his old foster parents for the weekend while we worked out the details of what were going to do.  We decided to start by cleaning out his room.  We had bought him a mate’s bed, so he wouldn’t be able to shove things under it, but he would actually move the bed away from the wall to hide things.  While cleaning his room we found an impressive pile of garbage, and video game controllers hidden under his bed.  This is where I started; I bolted the bed to the walls and modified the drawers so they couldn’t be pulled all the way out.  After that we ended up back in the laundry situation.  His hamper was full of clean clothes and his dresser was full of dirty clothes.  We decided to take his dresser out of his room and replace it with a hanging organizer where he could pick out his clothes for the week and put each day in its own slot.  His video games were removed from his room.  Before we only made him keep the controllers and the handhelds out of his room.  This time I moved everything to the basement and locked them up.

Last but certainly not least we needed to make sure he actually went to bed.  Paul had been increasingly harder to get out of bed in the morning, nothing worked, I even set of the smoke detector outside his room to no avail.  I Googled light switch locks, and after trying in vain to find a local supplier, decided to make my own.  Ironically, while checking to see what I had to buy I came across the old light switch from the carport, which had a hole for a lock.

~Living with Paul

After telling Paul about FASD his behaviour became worse.  It started slowly; he would try less and less until the reason finally became clear to us.  He was using FASD as an excuse not to try things that he shouldn’t be good at.  Where he used to try to control his meltdowns he actually started having more.  There was a point in the “This is Me” video that he watched where the FASD character has a meltdown and turns into a kettle.  During his new meltdowns he started to make the same kettle noises.  For a while we struggled with the fact that Paul had checked out, if it was hard, he wasn’t going to try.  We were at a loss as to what to do, was telling Paul about FASD the wrong thing to do?

I didn’t think so then, and I still don’t.  People deal with adversity in different ways; some people try to rise above it while others give up.  Paul gave up; he didn’t want to try any more.  We were back at square one with him, only this time he knew exactly what made him different.  We looked back over what we had success with in the past, the charts worked, but they required effort on his part.  That effort had stressed him out when he had been willing to try, so we knew we couldn’t go back to that.  The only real motivator he had left was video games, so we used them.  He wanted to play; we wanted him to do his homework.  It seemed like a fair trade to us, only he wouldn’t bring his homework home so that it wouldn’t get in the way of his screen time.  We tried to get around this by designating time every night for homework, if he didn’t have homework we would have him to something to strengthen one of his weaker areas.  This seemed to work to some degree, in fact there were night he worked on the tasks we gave him longer than he had to.

~Living with Paul

It’s been a while since my last post, with Paul’s baseball season and my work I have been swamped.  Now that summer break is upon us Paul is at home with the daycare kids.   It is interesting to watch the way he interacts with them.  There is a 5 year old in care that has behavior similar to Paul’s.  I find it interesting because they annoy each other and fight constantly.  But they are both being annoyed by things that they do themselves.  Under normal circumstances I think that a fight between a 12 year old and a 5 year old would go much differently but they pout, give everyone the silent treatment and hide in corners.  Actually Paul hides in his room, but he is only in there when he is mad.  Most of the problems come because they are both still learning how to share attention and toys.  When someone else is not sharing they are quick to see it and comment on it.  This has been ongoing with Paul ever since he came to live with us.  The only real difference between them (besides the age) is that the 5 year old will outgrow this before Paul does.  That part of his brain is stuck at the age where they should be learning how to share and interact with others and he doesn’t seem to be able to retain that information day to day.  When we ask him how he thinks he should have acted after the fact he usually gives us the right answer.  He just can’t seem to apply it in the moment.  Just like the child much younger he knows the behavior is wrong, he just hasn’t grown the maturity to regulate himself.

~Living with Paul

This weekend was a wash for Paul.  He left a big Social Studies project to the last minute, despite us bugging him to bring it home and start working.  On Tuesday we finally resorted to the old “If you don’t bring it, we’ll go get it” which usually works.  The thought of one of us going to his school is almost always worse than what he doesn’t want to bring home.  Despite telling us that he was working on it for hours a day at school he had almost nothing done, and made very little progress of the week.  This led us to another homework weekend with Paul.

Homework weekends used to be pure hell, and then we learned about movement breaks.  Let Paul go and do his own thing for a little while has made things much better.  Naturally we need to structure the timing of his breaks, he wants to take a 15 minute break for every 5 minutes of work.  We use his screen time timer, and let take a 15 minute break every hour.  When Paul finally finished his project, he still had time to make it baseball practice.  When I told him to get ready, he told me that he wasn’t going to baseball, he was going to play video games.  I told him he needed some fresh air because he had used all of his movement breaks to play video games.

So we got to practice late, and by the time we got there Paul had forgotten that he didn’t want to go.

~Living with Paul

Sorry, it’s been awhile since my last post. In addition to the joys of shift work there, is allot on my plate right now and this kind of fell to the side.

This week Paul and his friends got caught throwing things in front of cars during lunch at school. Paul’s acceptance of guilt varied depending on who he talked to. When talking to the Vice-Principle he admitted responsibility and said that he understood that it was wrong. Satisfied the v-p sent the boys to clean the lunch room while they thought about they had done. Paul decided not to go and went back outside. After lunch he was asked why he didn’t go to the lunch room to help clean. He told his teacher that he didn’t do anything wrong so he wasn’t going to have a consequence. The school called and told Jen what had happened so when Paul got home she asked him about it and was told that he didn’t do anything wrong so he wasn’t going to have a consequence. He got a little cheekier and told her that if they needed people to clean the lunch room they should get teachers to do it.

When I woke up Jen filled me in on the happenings of the day and told Paul that he should tell me what he did at school. He refused. I didn’t want to press the issue then because he had baseball so I wanted until after. On the ride home I asked him what he did. To my surprise he told me. He told me that his friends had been throwing things in front of cars and he had been trying to stop them but they wouldn’t listen. I asked him why he didn’t leave and he said “Because I didn’t want them to get into trouble.” I tried to come up with a way to explain guilt by association to him. I told him that because he was there, even if he didn’t throw anything into the street, he was still going to be punished.

At that point his story changed as he blurted out “But the cars didn’t hit anything that I put in the road!” I changed my tactic and told him that it didn’t matter if a car hit it or not. The fact was that he had done it, gotten caught and now he had to face his consequence so he would be cleaning up the lunch room tomorrow. To my surprise he just sighed and said OK.

When we got home we talked about his Social Studies project. It’s due on Monday so we told him that it would be best if worked on it before going to a dance. He seemed fine with this until I left the room. He told Jen that he wasn’t going to skip the dance and that he would work on his project during lunch. She reminded him that he couldn’t because he had to clean the lunchroom. That’s when he lost it, he started ranting and raving, “I didn’t do anything wrong”, “It was my friends”, “I was just watching”, “I wasn’t even there”, and the list goes on.

When I returned I was a little disappointed, but not too surprised. We tried to make Paul understand that he didn’t have any options, and that we had already talked to the school. This really wasn’t going anywhere so I finally just told him that if he didn’t clean the lunchroom the school was going to call, and if I got that call he would miss the whole dance and get to work on his project with me.

The next day he went and cleaned the lunchroom.  It took him a couple of minutes, so he worked on his project and went to the whole dance.

Next week I plan to ask him what he learned.

~Living with Paul

Anyone dealing alcohol affected children knows that they have good days and bad days. Lately it seems that Paul has been having nothing but bad days. Monday night he had a meltdown because it was time for his shower and he wanted to watch TV. I was giving the baby his bedtime bottle when it started. Before going in for the feeding I warned Paul that it was shower night and that he only had 10 minutes before shower time. From my seat in the baby’s room I heard Jen tell him that it was time to jump in the shower. He dusted off the old “I don’t have to, I had a shower yesterday”. Although Yesterday was actually shower night, he missed because we took the kids to see some fireworks. This was pointed out to him but he didn’t care. In the minute it took Jack to finish his bottle Paul went from talking back to Jen to being down right rude. After telling her that he didn’t care what she said he wasn’t going to have a shower, he yelled “I just want to watch TV!” as he went into his room and slammed the door. Done with the baby I when to his room, opened the door, and calmly told him that the way he was acting made me want to take TV away from him forever.

I’m not sure if it was what I said or how calm I was when I said it, but he stopped arguing and jumped in the shower. Unfortunately this didn’t really curb his attitude. Because of my shift work I haven’t been around much lately but I have been regaled with tales of the things that have been coming out of his mouth. The bad stretch has been so long that we can’t remember his last good day.

Maybe tomorrow…

~Living With Paul

We attended a workshop for people dealing with adolescents with FASD last night. During the workshop the presenter kept mentioning how parts of these children are lagging behind. Paul’s ability to function when he is tired, hungry or stressed is functioning at about a 2-4 year olds level. He will become sullen and almost unbearable. He started a fight over ice cream the other night when he was tired. He was supposed to be making his lunch but he wanted ice cream. We knew that he didn’t have a very good sleep the night before and had been seeing the warning signs all evening. We told Paul that he couldn’t have ice cream because he had been playing video games instead of making his lunch and didn’t have time. He responded by stomping his feet, sticking out his lip and crying “I don’t wanna make my lunch! I want ICE CREAM!” I think that if anyone could here the exchange that followed with out seeing Paul would have thought we were dealing with a toddler. Allot of Paul’s words were muffled by sobbing. We finally ended up telling him that he was tired and needed to go to sleep. The next day probable would have been the same if Paul hadn’t been more rested. Again he waited until it was time to make his lunch and hop in the shower before he asked for ice cream. Because he was rested and better able to cope he accepted “If there is time when you have done everything you can have ice cream”.

It is amazing what a difference a little extra sleep makes with Paul.

~Living with Paul

Every year we put Paul in baseball.  He seemed to enjoy it, but two years ago we got a bad coach.  One of the super competitive ones, that didn’t seem to realize that most of the team had never played before.  At the end of the season when they lost the city finals he cancelled the windup.  So last year we had to drag Paul literally kicking and screaming to play, the year before had been such a bad experience that he didn’t want to do it ever again.

The season started out as expected, by evening his Concerta had worn off and he couldn’t focus.  He was the kid standing in the field throwing rocks at other players.  Not in a mean way, they were playing but he was distracting the rest of the team.  We talked to his doctor and decided to give him a supplemental Ritalin in the evening.  It was a night and day difference, half way through the season he was awarded the Zach Finch award.  This is the MVP on a team as voted by the coaches of the other teams.

Monday night Paul had his first game, and struggled to concentrate.  He knows that something was different last year but couldn’t remember what it was.  He seemed to be in the game, but after the game he told me that he couldn’t focus on the game because he was trying so hard to focus on the game.  Winning that award was a huge boost for him, and the first time we have ever seen him proud of himself.  Which for us is more important than if his team wins.  That’s what was missing the first year, a sense of pride.  Last year they made it all the way to the last game and lost.  They had fun and a windup, and laughed about how well they had played as a team.

Thank you to all the coaches out there that remember what the game is about.

~Living with Paul

Paul was watching TV today and saw the house hippo commercial. He ate it right up and before the commercial got to the part where it tells people that they need to think about what they see on TV, he said “I didn’t know there were house hippos”. This was a nice validation of how closely we watch what he watches and the games that he plays. In addition to limiting his time we have to keep an eye on the content and the message it contains. He is learning what we will say no to so there haven’t been any arguments yet, but we do try to steer him towards games and shows that are geared for younger children.

I think that its an interesting situation to be in, as I grew up listening to “objectionable” music, playing violent games, and watching TV and movies that were definitely not age appropriate. I always thought that as long as I took the time to teach my kids the difference between reality and fantasy or right and wrong I wouldn’t grow up to be one of those parents that checks everything their kids do. Paul’s ability to tell the difference between reality and fantasy or to choose between right and wrong is questionable. He has often admitting to doing wrong even though he knew it was wrong “just because he wanted to”. This evidenced itself last week when he went to his sister’s choir cabaret. He kept putting paper on top of the candle on the table even after he was told that it would catch on fire. Our friend, who had gone along to help Jen with the kids because I was working nights, had to blow the candle out. She even had to take the candle away because he started pouring the wax on the table. She compared the experience to dealing with a baby, because it didn’t matter how many times she told him no the word just didn’t mean anything.

~Living with Paul

Right now we are trying to come up with a system to help Paul with his clothes.  His laundry hamper is always full a couple of days after he does laundry.  We make sure that all his clothes are put away on laundry day but somehow they always end up back in his hamper.  By Wednesday of every week his hamper is surrounded by clothes that he has pulled out of the hamper to wear.  The only thing that I can think of the stop this is to keep his hamper in the laundry room and pick out his clothes for him.  I know that this will lead to a huge fight because it will make him seem different so we are reluctant to go there.  After all he is the one that has to wear his dirty clothes, so who is he really hurting?

I think we are having a hard time understanding why he does it.  It can’t be any easier to dig through the hamper when most of his clothes are hanging in his closet.  I actually wonder if in his mind the hamper is where clothes come from because when we make him change he goes straight for the hamper.

~Living With Paul