Crazy ideas

Older children that join a family through adoption have issues. Many issues are just habits that need to be untrained.Sometimes drastically. I know at times what I have implemented to "untrain" my kids have been pretty unusual.

Ve sleeping in the bath tub for several weeks so that she would learn to feel safe and awake to an alarm clock in the middle of the night and use the toilet rather than urinate in the bed. This was attempted after many months of other unsuccessful attempts at stopping this behavior. It worked, within two weeks I moved Ve back to her bed and she was getting up to the alarm clock and getting to the bathroom in time and no more problems. I still left a pull-up for a year longer just in case, but she never needed it..

Ve stole food at school almost daily from her classmates when she was in second grade. The habit was learned from starving and living on the streets of her home country. It was triggered by the sight of food and an unconscious need to have it. Her body was in a state of malnutrition when she had entered the orphanage.The second grade year food went missing daily during snack time. Ve was caught red handed near the end of the school year by the classroom teacher. Ve denied it, but I eventually got the truth out of her. I had her talk with the school liaison police officer and principal to scare her good. She didn't steal anymore at school.

BUT

Ve and Tuki have been sneaking food, specifically sweet foods, from home for over a year. I have yelled, dished out consequences, spanked, took privileges away, had them meet with the police officer at the jail. At one point Tuki and Ve took money to take to school for the book fair. They smuggled it out of the house, bought their item, brought them home, hid them in the house and lied about the whole thing. I was furious and scared to think how sneaky it all was. It was then that I took them to the jailhouse to speak with the police officer who was a friend of mine. That stopped them from stealing money again, but they were still sneaking food. Now mind you, I had no problem with them eating food when they were hungry, it was their need to sneak it that I had a problem with. Tuki would get up in the middle of the night and sneak it and Ve would wait until we all left for school each morning since she had about an hour of time before she went to school. If you have read this blog long enough you know that food availability in this house is NOT an issue. I don't know why Tuki did this, and I ceased to care, I just wanted it to stop and I didn't want to be raising juvenile delinquents.

After trying everything, I could think of and following what the experts said, I decided the heck with "teaching them" I was going to break this habit through "training".

So I told them, even Mim believes this, that unless I say they could eat the sweet food, I will be putting rat poison on any sweets sitting around the house that is to be eaten in moderation with the whole family. I explained in great detail about the effects of rat poison and how it would affect the body. I must note here that I have never nor will I ever own or buy any sort of poison. I am ethically against such a chemical simply because I do know the awful torture to the animal it is intended for. I told the girls I was doing this to help them break a bad habit. I wanted their fear of sneaking the sweets to be greater than the fear of missing out on the sweets. I feel the suggested poison is no different than parents claiming a bottle of water is Monster spray, only I am doing it in reverse. I mixed up a container of salt, sugar, and pepper and labeled it poison, sprinkled it on a few items and made a great show of washing the so called poison off whenever we ate it together. The behavior of sneaking the food ended within a week. It is not even an issue right now. I will be interested to see what happens at Christmas with so many sweets in the house. I allowed the girls to eat at wanton their sweets from their Easter baskets...all 3 had them gone in a week, that happens at Halloween as well..there is a self regulation problem for sweets for all three and I do no understand the root of this problem, hopefully the therapist they are seeing will help them with this.

As for the money problem, I realized they needed to feel some control over how and where to spend money. I struggled with paying them for chores, theoretically I don't like it because I believe that chores are what all family members do to help the family function. But, I wanted the girls to have some control so they didn't feel like they had to sneak it again.

I gave each girl a bank, a bank book and a weekly allowance for chores. The weekly allowance isn't much; Mim-$4.00, Ve-$3.00, Tuki-$2.00. Each Sunday, I add the allowance into their bank and into their books. If they want to go on a field trip or other items for purchase something they take it from their bank, subtract it themselves etc..basically they have to balance their books.They also talk it over with me before they go ahead with the purchase. They also need to think if what they want is worth the loss of money in their banks. The money is from egg sales, so I am paying for the field trips indirectly through each child.. I am essentially still paying for the items, but through them, and they think it is from themselves as well.The girls are learning so much in this whole process. They feel like they are in control of the money. It has also been interesting to see how each will and does spend once they are making big money. Mim is a saver, until it comes to sports, she will spend for that but will save a ahead of time. Ve is a spender, she is currently in debt to me. She says she will not ask to borrow from the corporate bank(me) again..we'll see, I say she won't until something neat comes along again. Tuki spends, but she refuses to over spend. She will stop once her bank gets to a certain point. There has been many neat things come from this whole venture...they talk about the cost of items with way more depth and understanding, they are now beginning to understand that everything has a cost and two are learning to live within what they are making, hopefully Ve will figure this out over time as well. The biggest thing is that the feeling that the money is theirs to make educated decisions about in how they want to spend it. All are I think lifelong skills...this is a solution that sprang from a problem we were having..I guess you could say thank goodness for problems because without them, there would be no solutions.

I have shared all this, meaning everything I have shared in this post, with the girl's therapist, she laughed quite heartily, and she even said she just might borrow the bath tub idea for a different chronic bed wetter patient. The therapist is for the root of all the surface issues that I am "untraining"...I call it hitting the issues from both ends..and so far it has worked.