Jim and I are both divorced and met on an online dating website in 2010 and after a single sweet tea at McDonald's for our first date, we quickly fell in love. A few months later we combined our two households into one when Jim and Eriq moved into the house I shared with my children. We lived together for a year or so and purchased a much larger house to accommodate our growing family.
We live a normal life...we are both working parents, we do Boy Scouts/Girl Scouts, soccer, softball and all of those normal things.
We are different in the fact that we live daily with a teenager who is....well, I'm not sure how to nicely say it...but maybe "different" is the safest.
Eriq is Jim's son, my step son, and lives with us full time. He visits mom every other weekend, but is mainly with us. During this time, he causes a whole range of problems. During the recent span of time of maybe 6 months, the following are the highlights:
- Eriq stole his step-brother, Nicholas's, iPod while at school and broke it. We believe accidentally, but broke nonetheless. Eriq is now required to do extra chores around the house to pay for a replacement iPod to the cost of $200. This iPod cost more than $400, but we are allowing for some depreciation in value.
- While doing chores to repay for the iPod, he has done more destruction than work. For example, he was supposed to be washing the walls in the bathroom, and instead ripped paint and plaster off a section of the bathroom wall approximately 3x5 inches. He now has to repair the wall he damaged.
- While cleaning the kitchen cabinets he found an old, unactivated, cell phone. He kept the phone and used the phone over a period of two weeks to connect to the home wifi where he could use the internet on the phone to view pornographic pictures, videos and more. The camera also included pictures of women who were naked, bound, gagged and in various sexually explicit poses. He also took a few selfies where he flipped off the camera. When questioned, Eriq originally denied knowing anything about the phone. However, after a slap in his mouth for the ridiculous lies he was spewing about the phone, the truth came out. He admitted to finding the phone a couple of weeks ago and kept it hidden under the couch in the rec room to access as needed.
- Eriq has a major issue with stealing things and steals things frequently. He stole a year book from school a couple of weeks ago from a teachers classroom and took it home where he scribbled out the owners name with a Sharpie. When questioned about the year book we knew wasn't his and, he said someone gave it to him. When I questioned further, he said it was in the lost and found. The final answer was the correct one and that was that he stole it from the yearbook coordinators classroom. We made Eriq return the yearbook to the student, with both a verbal and written apology for his theft. He also wrote a note to the teacher apologizing for his theft from her classroom. Finally, he sat out of his brothers bowling party because the student whose yearbook he stole was in attendance.
- Eriq has a major issue of stealing junk food (or other forbidden items) from the house and will go to great lengths to "score". Eriq has been diagnosed with ADHD (although I believe it to be incorrect) we limit his sugar intake and do not often allow him to have soda, snack cakes, and other items with high sugar contents. Recently, we found a whole box of eaten rice krispy treats hidden in the rec room, he broke into the locked pantry twice (by ripping the folding door out of the frame) to steal baking chocolate, while doing chores or any other time unsupervised he will steal several cans of soda, chocolate cakes, etc. This morning Nicholas found that several packages of the pop tarts bought for him had disappeared since the previous morning when he opened the box.
- Eriq was enrolled in public school here locally and has completely screwed off during the whole school year. He has learned how to skip class without leaving the building, how to manipulate teachers to let him out of class, disrupt every classroom, and basically do nothing that is asked of him. His dad recently removed him from the school to be home-schooled because of his behaviors.
So here we are two frustrated parents trying to change his choices before his behavior becomes criminal...knowing that it might anyway. We have tried all that I know of including counseling, a psychiatrist, positive attention, positive rewards, discipline, punishment, and more, yet the bottom line is nothing changes his choices and the problems they create. Eriq has a formal diagnosis of ADHD and anyone that I've asked that really knows Eriq laughs at this...and I agree completely. I'm well read on ADHD and can not seem to understand what ADHD has to do with some of the things has does. I get that ADHD means he won't pay attention in class, or that he might not be able to sit still, and even impulsivity. What I don't comprehend is how the manipulation, thought out schemes, and more that Eriq does is ADHD.
All of those examples can't put together the day to day frustration of living with Eriq. He sees a psychiatrist monthly who prescribes various scripts to ease his ADHD symptoms, but none seem to help. He's currently on Vyvanze and Intuniv to address the behavior issues...yet nothing seems to work or change his ridiculous behavior. He also sees a counselor weekly to talk about choices and control, but that doesn't seem to help either.
I read the book "Parenting with Love and Logic" by Charles Fey many years ago and re-read it often to learn more from its message. The book (paraphrased) says that we should parent our kids with love and logic where the natural consequences of their decisions determine their future. I try to use this in the day to day care of ALL of the kids, and it works very well with my two children. However, Eriq is different in the way that he doesn't seem to care...about anything really. He broke his brothers ipod...oh well. He got caught skipping class. Oh well. Ripped paint off the wall...oh well. All of his behaviors come with the same careless attitude. How do you make someone care? I really have no idea.
I started this blog and hope to update daily with the daily struggles that Eriq presents as a record for the psychiatrist, the counselor, and maybe even other parents who can understand the battle.
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