Thursday, October 9, 2008

Back to Reality

While hubby and my weekend getaway was more than awesome, Adam's weekend was not.

My parents came down to see the new niece and had no problems watching Adam Saturday night. Adam seemed to be OK with it too - he would still be spending Saturday and Sunday at my sisters house and playing video games with my brother-in-law, so he was all set.

Then Sunday morning my Mom left a message on my cell phone. Adam was refusing to take his meds. He has not.once ever tried this. By the time I had called her back he had taken them, but I also learned that he was grounded from video games for the day from my Dad. Because he:
-wouldn't brush his teeth
-feed his lizard
-instead of going to bed went into my room and watched TV for an hour
-wouldn't wear sneakers with laces in them
-talking back
Basically treated them like crap.

My Mom who felt he was acting this way because we weren't there was trying to convince my Dad to let him have video games so they could enjoy the day with him and have him lose video games Monday (when I had him). I told my Mom no, he lost them for the day and to tell Adam to be lucky it's only for 1 day. We've been having 'attitude' problems with him brewing for a week or so, so I doubted it was ALL because we went away.

So, we all get reunited and he just has a smug look on his face while being talked to by me. And his attitude doesn't improve during the day. I told him we could keep going away and having my parents stay with him until he listens to them. That got the smug look wiped off his face.

But, the attitude remained high all day. It remained all of Monday at which point he lost all screen time. Then it remained all of Tuesday at which point he lost everything. No screen time. No playing with his toys. No playing with his friends. He also had to respond to any request by me with a "Thanks Mom, I'd love to do 'x'. You're the best!" (hey - you gotta put humor in at desperate times!)

One would think this would be motivation to improve one's attitude. To get stuff back.

Nope. The attitude continues. The arguing continues. The stalling continues. We're not going to even talk about the battles to get homework done.

I think 5th grade is going to be a very long year. I'm really, really, really not looking forward to the teen years.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

so sorry- ugh!
The only thing I can think of is to make it 'basically a game/challenge' that he can win:

His attitude changes: he helps you for ex. - unload the dishwaher- he gets video games for 10 minutes ...

maybe ask him to do something very specific-pick up your shoes- boys usually have an easier time obeying this way-

Good luck :)