Grieving and distraught - Why won't he do what I ask?

[Guest guest]

I sit here this morning just bawling. And sobbing, and I can't stop. My son,

Hayden, is in the first grade. I just keep thinking back to those videos of him

at 2 and 3 and how cute he was. At the time, Hayden had a diagnosis of

Childhood Apraxia of Speech. He was such a good little boy. All his therapists

always put on his evals that he was a " good little worker " . Somewhere around 4

1/2 that all started to change. The summer he was 5, we got a PDD-NOS diagnosis

after a pretty extensive neuro-psych eval. He worked through most of

kindergarten un-medicated, but by the end of the year, we had him on Metadate.

Now in first grade, I can't hardly get him out the door to school without pretty

much doing everything for him because he just refuses to do what I ask of him.

I was just watching a video of him at three. Dad was getting his shoes on him

to get ready to go somewhere. He just sat there quietly, with his hands in his

lap, smiling as Dad was helping him get his shoes on. Today at 6, nearly 7, the

bus was here waiting on him and I had to practically throw him onto the floor to

put his shoes on him - all the while he's squirming and clapping and laughing.

Once on the bus (the short bus mind you), he'll be strapped in and by the time

he gets to school, his meds will have kicked in and he'll be the perfect little

zombie for school. He gets straight A's and barely ever gets anything wrong.

Thank God for that.

When he comes home, the meds will be just about worn off and it's back to

dancing around, not doing anything he's told, laughing anytime I ask him to do

something or am trying to make him do something, and just all over the place.

The only time he's quiet is when I let him zone out in front of a video or video

game.

I thought we were making progress and now this week he's just worse than ever.

We don't have fun as a family anymore. We don't go out, we don't have friends.

Well, we do have a few, but it's not like it used to be.

I don't know, I'm just whining and venting.

Okay, so here's the real question. I tend to do pretty well at getting Hayden to

stop doing something like, well, I guess I can't even really come up with an

example because those things are all nearly gone. He used to slide chairs all

around, or upset a basket of clean laundry, or throw a deck of cards all over

the floor. He doesn't really do those things anymore for the most part. What

worked was taking away screen time or being sent to his room. What I'm

struggling with is getting him to do the things I ask. Like, eating his

breakfast in a timely manner, brushing his teeth, throwing away wrappers to his

snack food, or putting his dirty clothes in the hamper. Taking away screen time

doesn't seem to work for this stuff. I've thought about taking it away all

together and instead making him earn it by doing what he's told. But I've also

heard that if you do that, then you shouldn't also take it away (don't take away

something they've earned) - and that's what I do to get him to " stop " doing a

bad behavior. Plus, when I'm tired from all the drama of trying to get him to

do something, it's nice for me to have the quiet time of when he's zoning out in

front of a screen. And lastly, he already kind of " earns " his screen time as he

doesn't get ANY for the day if he doesn't get a " happy note " at school. I guess

the problem is that I don't have any other currency for him. Screen time seems

to be the only currency I have.

I'll be honest with you all. We were/are a family that spanks. Please, let's not

get hung up on the spanking part of it. But here's how it would go. Say he's not

moving to get his shoes put on, he's doing something else and we've asked him to

go get his shoes on. We'd start counting, and on three he would get a spanking

if he's not starting to get his shoes on. Well, it has stretched out into,

" Okay, I'm going to count to three. One - you'd better get moving. Two - come

on now, I don't want to have to spank. And here comes three... " Start to get up

and head toward him, " Thrrr... " and he moves. Or, " Three! " and be moving

quickly toward him, when he finally quickly jumps up and he says, " Sorry, sorry,

I'm going " and he goes to get his shoes on.

So, it wasn't working and even if we did spank, it still didn't work as he would

just call us a meanie while he was doing what we asked - or, worse, he'd laugh

and say it didn't hurt and still not do what we asked. Since it wasn't working

anyway, I pretty much abandoned it and have been trying not to even threaten

(1-2-3) it anymore.

I just don't know how to get him to do what needs to be done when he's not

medicated. I guess that's the other part of this is that if he's medicated,

he's as compliant as can be - but we save that part of the day for when he's at

school.

Last night, I was like this too - just sad and upset and not knowing what to do

with him. My husband said that Hayden's gotten worse lately because we're not

spanking anymore. So, to test this, just to get him to bed last night (and

doing all the things that he needs to do to go to bed), he ended up with three

spankings in the course of an hour. I felt horrible, he cried, I cried, we

hugged it out and I told him that I didn't want to spank him anymore and that I

wasn't going to. He said that he'd be good and we loved on each other, cuddled,

and he went to bed.

So this morning was worse than ever. He was testing my limits. In fact, I said

to him, " You're doing this just because you know I'm not going to spank you. "

and he looked me square in the eyes and told me " Yes " and then laughed and ran

away.

UGH!!!! What can I do!?!?!??!

I mean, when you have all day that's one thing, but when there are a certain

number of things that have to get done within a certain time frame - even

getting up early to add an extra half hour isn't going to help. (and we've

already done that)

I just don't know what to do.