Appropriate consequences

[Guest guest]

Hello to all of you, I haven't chimed in lately but I

have been reading the posts as often as I can. THere

was a situation at church today with our OCD,AD/HD son

that I need help in finding appropriate consequences

for. I was busy on the altar during the entire

service and my husband was in charge of the 2

children. He was called out of the service because

Tommy was not behaving appropriately and he refused to

control himself after Sunday School. My husband tells

me that he had trouble keeping Tommy under control and

at one point Tommy escaped him and went down to the

church hall along with the rest of the congregation.

At this time I was still finishing my duties as

Communion Assistant and was on the upper floor. While

he was out of sight of my husband, Tommy grabbed the

knife that was being used to cut a cake in the church

hall and waved it at the elderly man who was cutting

the cake. When he was reprimanded by the man Tommy

went off in the corner and make neck slitting motions

with his hand. I am not surprised by this behavior as

this has gone on occassionally at school, but never at

church. I kind of flew off the handle at the man when

he came to tell me what happened and I told him " Please

tell his father, he was in charge " . I then told my

husband to deal with the situation as I was not

supposed to be responsible for Tommy during that

period of time! I have been feeling really crummy the

last few weeks, largely due to my husband losing his

job(we are a 1 income family) and the death by suicide

of my first husband 3 weeks ago! Needless to say I

have not been my normal take charge kind of person,

but I am not anywhere close to retreating from my

responsibilities, I am just so weary and sick and

tired of having the entire responsibility for my son.

In all fairness, my husband is in treatment for his

own AD/HD and depression, I am in therapy and I try to

take care of myself. I know that I will not feel bad

forever and that I am feeling stressed for very good

reason, but the stressors we have now are leaving no

room for creativity as far as coming up with a

meaningful consequence for my son. The usual

rescinding of TV, Computer and grounding will just not

suffice. He knows that what he did was wrong, he

knows why it was wrong, he had to apologize to the man

he shook the knife at. I truly am not a control freak

and I would be more than happy to have my husband take

on a larger role with our son, but because of his

seeming inability to change some of his own

behaviours, the therapists have had to greatly limit

his role with this child. I am in the process of

trying to obtain wraparound services, but we are not

there yet and we do not know how long that process is

going to take. I know that this is a long post, but I

just wanted to save you folks from giving me

information that we have already tried. I cannot say

that OCD definitely involved in my sons behavior, it

is more likey a combination of the 2 NBD's working

together giving him " Bad Advice " but....he is 7 yrs.

old and the consequences for this type of behavior is

going to become increasingly more serious! Thanks in

advance for your help!

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