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Erica's WLS Book He's History You're Not - Surviving Divorce After 40  |
For Darn Good Writing Ask Erica I TURNED MY CHILD AROUND (This article is available for purchase)
The kinds of trouble a child can get into are endless, and the methods parents use to turn a child around are equally varied. The one thing all parents who succeed in turning a child around have in common is commitment--the willingness to devote an enormous amount of time, energy, love and caring to that child. Once the commitment is there, successful parents are able to look objectively at the child and see what he or she needs, not only what they, as parents, want to give.
All these parents used different approaches to turn their children around, but the results were the same–children who are now happy at home, successful in school and whose futures look bright instead of bleak.
Eileen Smiley was a teenage bride and soon thereafter, a single mother. Married at 19, she gave birth to her daughter Amy at 22. Her husband left them a week before Amy’s first birthday, and from then on Eileen and Amy were on their own, without any financial or emotional support from Amy’s dad. Eileen, now 41, an office manager in Sherman Oaks, California, always thought of herself as her daughter’s best friend. They went everywhere and did everything together.
As a child Amy was her mother’s pride and joy. An all-around regular kid, she was a good student, participating enthusiastically in school activities, especially in drama classes. At 14, however, something changed. She started wearing baggy clothes and hanging around with unsupervised friends. Eileen, who wasn’t in the habit of setting limits or boundaries for Amy, didn’t know how to react. "I didn’t parent her, I palled her," Eileen says now about their relationship. " I was compensating for her lack of a dad. I tried to fulfill the mom, dad, best friend, and every other role in her life and didn’t do any of them right."
About a month before her fifteenth birthday Amy ran away from home and moved in with a friend’s family. "She told me she hated me," Eileen relates in a pained tone of voice. "She accused me of being overprotective, said she didn’t want to follow my rules, do her chores or homework. I found out she’d been cutting school. What I didn’t know at the time was she was using drugs."
At that point Eileen discovered Tough Love, a group of parents who get together to support each other and learn new ways to parent. When Amy got scared because she was almost fifteen and no longer welcome at her friend’s house, she told Eileen she wanted to come home. This time Eileen decided it would be on her terms. When they met to discuss the move, Eileen put out her hand and said, "I’d like to introduce myself, I’m your new mother."
She let Amy know that she was starting fresh with new rules and consequences, and this time it was on Eileen’s terms. Through Tough Love, she learned to set limits and boundaries, to set consequences and enforce them. "I discovered that my job as her mother and father was not to be her best friend, but to be her parent, although I personally believe parents can be both." Eileen learned how to pick her battles. If Amy wanted to dress a certain way, for instance, she’d allow it, if it wasn’t too extreme. But the hardest lesson she learned was that she couldn’t change or control Amy’s behavior. "When you realize how hard it is to change yourself, it sinks in that you can’t change anyone else," Eileen explained. "Once Amy is out in the world she suffers the world’s consequences for her behavior. In the final analysis Amy turned Amy around, I didn’t. It was her choice not mine."
Tough Love taught Eileen how to be consistent and figure out consequences that were what she describes as "follow-through-able," such as grounding for a week not for months. She learned to set reasonable rules that applied to both of them, such as calling when you’re going to be home late, and tried very hard to treat Amy respectfully, the way she would treat a friend. "I wouldn’t blow up at her just because I’d had a bad day. Plus I gave her a firm pat on the back for every little baby step. I let her know I appreciated it when she cleared the table without a battle, for example." As the leader of Tough Love in her area now, Eileen teaches parents to come up with consequences that make a child think. "A child doesn’t need a TV, VCR, computer and Nintendo in his bedroom. We have one family whose son slept in a sleeping bag for five months." Eileen also stresses the importance of getting the police involved when a teen is using drugs or is violent in the home. "If you can get a kid into the juvenile justice system you have a chance to turn him around before he’s an adult. If they think they can get away with criminal behavior as juveniles, they’ll become adult criminals."
Eileen was lucky enough to hook up with a juvenile detective who was willing to work with both Tough Love and Amy. When Amy ran away or was truant, the detective would pick her up in the police car, put cuffs on her and instill the fear of God into her. After many such incidents, the detective finally read her the riot act, threatening to send her to a placement facility. He told her he was tired of dealing with her–that other kids needed his help more because they didn’t have a caring mom like she had. That moment was the turning point for Amy. The seriousness of her behavior finally got through to her.
Since her return home that fateful day, Eileen proudly reports that Amy’s been clean and sober, recently celebrating her three-year sobriety birthday. Today, at 18 she is a high school graduate who has her own apartment and a full time job as an administrator at a property management company. She’s even dating a guy her mother approves of. "I think we’ve reached a new level in our mother-daughter relationship." Eileen says thoughtfully. "Now that we’re not living together I have to learn to parent differently. I’m still learning."
When she married Steve Green, 41, a design drafter, seven years ago, Lisa Green, 37, a supervisor at McDonald’s in Dover, Ohio, took on her divorced husband’s three rambunctious boys. At the time they got married Steve Jr. was ten, Tim was eight and Chris was six. Tim was the most difficult. He saw her as the "wicked stepmom" and was extremely jealous and resentful of the marriage, which he thought would cost him his dad’s love and attention. Tim, whose neglectful biological mother had never shown much interest in him, had been without a mom for so long he didn’t think he wanted or needed one.
However, when Steve Jr. went to live with his biological mother at 13, Tim, then 11, started visiting with her, which exposed him to one house without rules and one house with rules. At his mother’s house he could walk the streets at midnight, drive in cars with teenagers, and do whatever he felt like. By the time he was eleven he’d started selling cigarettes and phony marijuana at school, and had joined a gang which was involved in shoplifting and underage sex.. At school he had a severe attitude problem and did everything he could to get thrown out, managing to get suspended three times until he was on the verge of being expelled. His attitude towards life was, "You gotta use people to get what you want. Get them before they get you." "It was a rough time," Lisa says, "I never thought I’d see the seventh grade pass."
The last straw for Lisa and Steve was a wild party at Tim’s mother’s house where he collected money from the other kids to buy alcohol and drugs. A neighbor wound up pressing charges against Tim’s mother because her daughter was at the party. "It was hard for us," Lisa says. "It’s hard to think your child would do those things. It hurts to know that your child would lie, say he was going to one place and actually go somewhere else."
Finally, Tim’s dad stopped allowing Tim to visit his mother on weekends. For a while he was totally grounded, forbidden to use the phone, and required to display a different attitude. He had to be polite, say hello and goodbye and eat dinner with the family.
At the same time his mother got picked up for a parole violation and was put in jail. She never showed up in court to get Tim’s visits resumed. "Once Tim was cut off from her he realized what kind of person she really was," Lisa reports. "Frequent heart-to-heart talks with Randy, a youth minister from our church, really helped too." Randy regularly visited Tim at home and in school, and when Tim was suspended from school he’d pick him up to do homework. As a result, Tim got involved with the church and started going to weekend retreats, even getting baptized on his own. He hasn’t seen his mother for three years now, according to Lisa, which has allowed him to get closer to her and to his father.
While Tim was grounded, Lisa did most of the supervision because Steve was working full time and going to school at night. "It was tough but there was no other choice. Like it or not he had to listen to me," Lisa reminisced. "I got a lot of flack, but then we started doing things together. We went out to eat, we went to the mall, we did ceramics together one night a week. It was really nice."
Lisa enrolled Tim in Tae Kwan Do. "It was a healthy way for him to let go of aggression while learning to be respectful and proud," Lisa relates. "Everyone has anger. What matters is how you deal with it." Tim is now almost a black belt.
After six to eight months away from his mother, around the beginning of the eighth grade, Lisa started to see a change. " All of sudden Tim became affectionate with us. He and his dad started to talk and understand each other better."
After almost getting expelled from seventh grade, Tim, now 15, made the eighth grade honor roll and is now in a high school college prep program where he’s set up a rigorous set of standards and goals for himself. A talented artist and musician, he wants to be architect when he grows up. His friends are still "ornery," Lisa laughs, "but they’re good students and nice kids. He was always looking for a relationship with a girl, and now he has a steady girlfriend who’s also involved in the church."
"It takes a lot of work and commitment to turn a child around," Lisa concludes. "I married my husband and his children are mine too. I have a duty to raise them to be the best they can be."
It’s hard enough turn around your own kids, but when you adopt foster kids who’ve been neglected and abused it can be close to impossible. That didn’t stop Tallahassee, Florida foster parents, Sandra and Gary Singleton, both 37 and government employees, from adopting two of their foster children, Angie and Jay.
Angie, now 14 and Jay, now 12, were both 9 when they came to the Singleton home at separate times. As therapeutic foster parents for Boys Town, the Singletons were used to dealing with children with severe behavior problems, but Angie and Jay were challenges. They both had temper tantrums, clawed themselves, hit themselves in the head or hit their heads on the wall, fought constantly with other children and authority figures and were angry and aggressive. They were holy terrors at school too, starting fights with other students, refusing to obey teachers or do schoolwork. Both had been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
When foster children came to the Singleton home they were informed about the ground rules. They could destroy their own property but not the Singletons’. "If they tore up our stuff they’d have to replace it either by working it off or from their allowances. Angie and Jay respected that rule." Sandra and Gary were willing to be more patient with foster children because they understood where they came from. "These children who weren’t born with problems, problems were instilled in them. We let them know that they could learn to change," Sandra said. Even more important for kids who’d been bounced from home to home, the Singletons let them know they weren’t going to be sent away because they had difficulty learning how to be family members. Training as therapeutic foster parents may have given the Singletons effective tools for dealing with difficult children, but only experience taught them what worked. They use a lot of positive and negative reinforcers. If Angie or Jay achieve something they get a smiley face on their chart. A certain amount of smiley faces earn privileges. "This way they don’t look at what they’re losing but at what they’ve earned,." Sandra explains.
In the Singleton home just about everything but a roof over your head, a bed to sleep in, clothes to wear and food to eat counts as a privilege. Good behavior earns computer time, TV time, outside play time, bike riding, listening to the stereo and going out with friends. "We teach that everything that happens in your day is your choice," Sandra says. She describes how Angie’s who is now 14 can be snippy at times. "When she mouths off I give her the opportunity to backtrack and talk in a different way. If she feels she can’t, the consequence for disrespect is no phone time today. However, if she changes her behavior she can earn it back tomorrow."
The Singletons have regular family meetings where everyone gets to talk about what’s bothering them. At meetings the children get to ask for something special. One day Jay said he wanted to go camping. To earn a camping trip he had to be positive at school, complete his homework and turn it in, and handle his chores without having to be told ten times.
Sandra learned over time how crucial it is to stay calm with kids. "If you get angry, they’ve won and they’ll play on that, they’ll push your buttons. If a kid is in my face and I’m about lose it, that’s my opportunity to say ‘we need to think about this. I’m leaving for 15 minutes.’ Then I go and tell Gary I’m about to lose it and he’ll go in and talk. We tag team and pretty soon the kids get sick of us coming in, leaving, and saying we’ll be back." Sandra laughs. "Finally, they’ll agree to calm down and talk."
The Singletons teach desired actions in advance, repeating them over and over. If they have to give no for an answer, for instance, which might anger one of the children, they will first teach how to accept no for an answer, outlining the steps: "Look at the person; accept the answer by saying OK; then you can leave the room." Sandra makes it clear that a child can get as mad as he wants in his room but not in front of her, "We practice all the time. It may take endless patience and constant repetition but it’s worth it. " Angie and Jay also learn how to disagree appropriately , follow instructions and calmly perform other behaviors that might make them angry. Sandra always gives a rationale for desired behavior, rather than telling a child "because I’m the mom and I said so."
Self-esteem is a major problem with neglected and abused children who often assume it’s their own fault they’ve been treated so badly. The Singletons counteract that by teaching them to be positive. "Every day at dinner they have to say three positive things about themselves and about someone else. Now they come in the door after school and say ‘I had a great day,’ instead of complaining."
The result with Angie and Jay has been nothing short of miraculous. Sandra reports proudly that 90% of the time now they’re polite and not aggressive. "Just this morning Jay told me it’s five months since he had a fight. And Angie never gets mad any more. She just cries like a normal teenage girl. They still have I’m-a-teen-and I-should-rule-days, but that’s normal." Sandra is especially proud of their social skills, especially the way they go right up to her co-workers and introduce themselves. Not only are they doing better in school but their attitudes have changed. "They know how to be proud of themselves and disappointed in themselves, something they never learned before they came to us."
(This article is available for purchase)
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