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ninanevermore.
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My son's babysitter called me again yesterday, this time to tell me how good he had been. He was respectful, played well, and didn't cause any problems. In fact, he earned both a sticker to wear on his shirt that said "Great!" and a lollypop. He was laughing and cheerful all day, and very affectionate. When my son is an angel, he really is angelic. Unfortunately, his devil mode comes with not only horns, but a tail with a poisonous barbed spike on the end and very sharp cloven hooves.
In other words, whatever mode he is in, it is intense. If I had to pick a word to sum him up, it would be "more." More sensitive. More inquisitive. More extreme in how he reacts and interacts with his environment. More persistent. More opinionated. More picky. More everything.
Someone suggested to me that he might have what is called Oppositional Defiant Disorder, so I looked this up to see what it entailed. The articles I found on the web were pretty somber. They all included this list:
Except for the seeking revenge, I guess all of these traits are present in my son at times. One article said these kids show an unusually high amount of brain activity in the frontal lobes that may make them react more strongly than other children. The articles I read all offered the hope that in a very young child like mine, these characteristics might disappear as he gets older. They also gave the dire warning that if not treated it could, in the case of a small minority, develop into a conduct disorder and lead to violent destructive criminal behaviors.
Oh, joy.
I brooded over this information for awhile, and then went and picked up my copy of Raising Your Spirited Child by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka. I've read this book in bits and pieces, and made it to the halfway point. Parenting and self help books are, by their very nature, a long hard slog (they are not nearly as entertaining as Vampire Romanse novels, for example). This one has proved very helpful and given me a lot of useful advice, though, and I need to force myself to finish it. A web article on so-called spirited children sums them up with the following:
In her book, Kurcinka does not gloss over the fact that such children are a lot more work to raise. She also points out that intense, persistent, high energy adults are also often very successful and admired adults. These people are the movers and shakers, the artist, the politicians, the groundbreakers, and the innovators. Their intense traits have to be managed and worked around, but don't make them "bad" children. It just makes them a lot more trouble to rear.
I like these kids better than the ones on the first list. Then, when I looked closer, it occurred to me that both lists, except for the most extreme cases, are pretty much talking about the same kids.
My son will argue with almost every request you make of him. He wants to know why. When we explain to him why he needs to do something, sometimes he still balks.
"Don't climb on the furniture. Get down from there, now."
"Why?"
"Because I don't want you to get hurt, and I don't want you to tear up the couch."
"I won't get hurt, and I'm not tearing up the couch."
"You are tearing up the couch, and you might get hurt. Get down."
I always prevail in the end, even if it means physically picking him up and dancing around the room with him to make him laugh. An adult who expects no questions other than "How high?" when they give a kid the order to jump will not be able to work with my son. We learned the hard way at his last daycare that he will not fall into line, he will fall apart and cause a lot of damage in the process.
A strong will is a character trait, not a character flaw. My child cannot be controlled, but he can be managed. He can't be forced, but he can be convinced.
Jeff and I rarely have issues with our son because we know how to manage him. When he acts up, we learned early on to remove him from the situation and occupy him, rather than bark orders at him from across the room. For example, when I saw my son shove another little boy on a playground, instead of yelling at him not to do that I called him over to me and reminded him in a calm voice that he needed to share, then sent him back off to play. The situation that day didn't escalate, and it didn't happen again. Some people may consider this coddling. I'd like to invite them to live with my son for a week so they can see how well their more mainstreem methods work with him.
On Tuesday, when Jeff had to pick up our son from Coco's house because he was having a tantrum, he had apparently not slept well the night before. Jeff, who had been up at work all night when he had to retrieve our type, decided they both needed a nap. He expected our son to sleep for an hour or so. Instead, he slept for 4 hours and only roused when Jeff woke him up for dinner. Coco had corrected him without removing him from the situation he was focused on, and in his sleep deprived state this caused a short circuit of sorts. Putting him in a room by himself pushed him into over drive (I read in the chapter on tantrum in RYSC that very night that isolation was a bad idea for this reason). For a typical child, the situation may not have gotten so out of hand. My son is not typical.
"Next time, I'm going to ask him to help me with something and just put him to work," Coco told me. I agreed that sounded like a good plan. He likes to help.
One school of thought labels my child with a disorder and tells me he may grow up to be a criminal. The other tells me he has the strong temperament that may lead him to create wondrous things, cure cancer, or become President. It's not that both schools don't have merit: I've noticed that the great destroyers and the great creators in this world often seem to be cut from the same cloth – they just channel their energies toward different goals.
My little boy likes to build things with his toys: airplanes, rocket ships, cars, towers, and machines that manufacture honey (a process known only to bees and my 4 year old). When he was at his most destructive at his old daycare, he'd stopped building honey machines, but he's at it again. His natural tendency is to channel his energy toward creation. This gives me hope.
Of these two schools of thought before me, I've already decided which one I plant to attend.
Hi, I'm Nina. My little boy has a lot of spirit. He's not always an easy child to work with. He tests every boundary. Rules have to make sense to him or he will ignore them. He wants an explanation for everything he sees.
In other words, he's extraordinary and one of these days he's going to do great things. Just you watch.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
.
.
My son's babysitter called me again yesterday, this time to tell me how good he had been. He was respectful, played well, and didn't cause any problems. In fact, he earned both a sticker to wear on his shirt that said "Great!" and a lollypop. He was laughing and cheerful all day, and very affectionate. When my son is an angel, he really is angelic. Unfortunately, his devil mode comes with not only horns, but a tail with a poisonous barbed spike on the end and very sharp cloven hooves.
In other words, whatever mode he is in, it is intense. If I had to pick a word to sum him up, it would be "more." More sensitive. More inquisitive. More extreme in how he reacts and interacts with his environment. More persistent. More opinionated. More picky. More everything.
Someone suggested to me that he might have what is called Oppositional Defiant Disorder, so I looked this up to see what it entailed. The articles I found on the web were pretty somber. They all included this list:
Common behavior symptoms seen in Oppositional Defiant Disorder include:
• Losing one’s temper
• Arguing with adults
• Active defiance of reasonable requests
• Refusing to follow rules
• Deliberately annoying other people
• Testing limits
• Blaming others for one's own mistakes or misbehavior
• Being touchy, easily annoyed
• Being easily angered, resentful, spiteful, or vindictive.
• Speaking harshly, or unkind when upset
• Seeking revenge
• Having frequent temper tantrums
Parents often report that their children were rigid and demanding from an early age.
Except for the seeking revenge, I guess all of these traits are present in my son at times. One article said these kids show an unusually high amount of brain activity in the frontal lobes that may make them react more strongly than other children. The articles I read all offered the hope that in a very young child like mine, these characteristics might disappear as he gets older. They also gave the dire warning that if not treated it could, in the case of a small minority, develop into a conduct disorder and lead to violent destructive criminal behaviors.
Oh, joy.
I brooded over this information for awhile, and then went and picked up my copy of Raising Your Spirited Child by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka. I've read this book in bits and pieces, and made it to the halfway point. Parenting and self help books are, by their very nature, a long hard slog (they are not nearly as entertaining as Vampire Romanse novels, for example). This one has proved very helpful and given me a lot of useful advice, though, and I need to force myself to finish it. A web article on so-called spirited children sums them up with the following:
Some characteristics that identify the spirited child are the following:
• Intensity - meaning greater drama, easier cry response, making more demands on parents.
• Persistence - gets committed to and stays with ideas, may argue points with parents long after an issue is settled.
• High Energy Level - also sometimes labeled hyperactive, but many who write on this disorder do not want the term hyperactivity confused with the disorder.
• Sensitive - may be overly sensitive to sounds, slight discomfort, pictures, and stimuli of all sorts.
• Difficult Adaptability - may react with greater emotion to changes like attending school, or moving to a new house.
• Moody - may be more prone to get cranky, but may also be susceptible to and more perceptive of the moods of others.
In her book, Kurcinka does not gloss over the fact that such children are a lot more work to raise. She also points out that intense, persistent, high energy adults are also often very successful and admired adults. These people are the movers and shakers, the artist, the politicians, the groundbreakers, and the innovators. Their intense traits have to be managed and worked around, but don't make them "bad" children. It just makes them a lot more trouble to rear.
I like these kids better than the ones on the first list. Then, when I looked closer, it occurred to me that both lists, except for the most extreme cases, are pretty much talking about the same kids.
My son will argue with almost every request you make of him. He wants to know why. When we explain to him why he needs to do something, sometimes he still balks.
"Don't climb on the furniture. Get down from there, now."
"Why?"
"Because I don't want you to get hurt, and I don't want you to tear up the couch."
"I won't get hurt, and I'm not tearing up the couch."
"You are tearing up the couch, and you might get hurt. Get down."
I always prevail in the end, even if it means physically picking him up and dancing around the room with him to make him laugh. An adult who expects no questions other than "How high?" when they give a kid the order to jump will not be able to work with my son. We learned the hard way at his last daycare that he will not fall into line, he will fall apart and cause a lot of damage in the process.
A strong will is a character trait, not a character flaw. My child cannot be controlled, but he can be managed. He can't be forced, but he can be convinced.
Jeff and I rarely have issues with our son because we know how to manage him. When he acts up, we learned early on to remove him from the situation and occupy him, rather than bark orders at him from across the room. For example, when I saw my son shove another little boy on a playground, instead of yelling at him not to do that I called him over to me and reminded him in a calm voice that he needed to share, then sent him back off to play. The situation that day didn't escalate, and it didn't happen again. Some people may consider this coddling. I'd like to invite them to live with my son for a week so they can see how well their more mainstreem methods work with him.
On Tuesday, when Jeff had to pick up our son from Coco's house because he was having a tantrum, he had apparently not slept well the night before. Jeff, who had been up at work all night when he had to retrieve our type, decided they both needed a nap. He expected our son to sleep for an hour or so. Instead, he slept for 4 hours and only roused when Jeff woke him up for dinner. Coco had corrected him without removing him from the situation he was focused on, and in his sleep deprived state this caused a short circuit of sorts. Putting him in a room by himself pushed him into over drive (I read in the chapter on tantrum in RYSC that very night that isolation was a bad idea for this reason). For a typical child, the situation may not have gotten so out of hand. My son is not typical.
"Next time, I'm going to ask him to help me with something and just put him to work," Coco told me. I agreed that sounded like a good plan. He likes to help.
One school of thought labels my child with a disorder and tells me he may grow up to be a criminal. The other tells me he has the strong temperament that may lead him to create wondrous things, cure cancer, or become President. It's not that both schools don't have merit: I've noticed that the great destroyers and the great creators in this world often seem to be cut from the same cloth – they just channel their energies toward different goals.
My little boy likes to build things with his toys: airplanes, rocket ships, cars, towers, and machines that manufacture honey (a process known only to bees and my 4 year old). When he was at his most destructive at his old daycare, he'd stopped building honey machines, but he's at it again. His natural tendency is to channel his energy toward creation. This gives me hope.
Of these two schools of thought before me, I've already decided which one I plant to attend.
Hi, I'm Nina. My little boy has a lot of spirit. He's not always an easy child to work with. He tests every boundary. Rules have to make sense to him or he will ignore them. He wants an explanation for everything he sees.
In other words, he's extraordinary and one of these days he's going to do great things. Just you watch.
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no subject
Date: 2009-05-28 06:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-28 06:16 pm (UTC)Our trainer once pointed out to me that success is as much dependent on training the owner to respond in a way that the dog can work with as it is about being "in charge" of the dog. I guess the same kind of psychology applies here. I continue to say that even though I'm sure this is a taxing experience for both you and your husband, it's good that he got you two as parents. Lesser parents might have turned the whole thing into a battle of wills and focused on getting him to submit as opposed to figuring out what works best.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-28 06:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-28 06:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-28 06:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-28 07:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-28 07:13 pm (UTC)Uhm, no.
When I said he was more "everything," I was exaggerating a bit. I was not talking about evolved or supernatural. Hyperbole is the best thing ever, but you have to recognize it when you read it and not take it too literally. :)
My son is bright, intense, and strong willed. Spirited? Yes. Indigo? Only if I dipped him in a vat of purple dye.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-28 07:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-28 07:22 pm (UTC)The message board discussion on that subject was...um, interesting...to say the least. It basically boiled down to "my child is a specical snowflake with a Jesus-like mission! But s/he still smiles kindly upon the little people!" It totally made me LOL
In all seriousness, I can only imagine how hard all this is, on you and your family. I was just trying to make you smile :-)
no subject
Date: 2009-05-28 07:41 pm (UTC)There's nothing new under the sun, except for the labels we now give what has always been. ADD, ADHD, ODD, and whatever other clinical name you want to give kids who are slightly different from the norm, and just specific tags for types of people who have always existed since before recorded history.
I think "indigo" refers to the fact that people who see auras (or claim to, whatever your view may be) say that the auras of certain very old souls who are deeply spiritual are purple.
As for raising a whirlwind of a child, it's hard at times, but there is a lot of joy to the task at hand, too. :)
no subject
Date: 2009-05-28 07:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-28 08:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-28 10:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-28 11:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-28 11:11 pm (UTC)The characteristics you list from the book really describe my oldest and youngest.
And people don't often understand. Some people say things like, "They just need more discipline" etc. Maybe, somewhat but a lot of it is they DO act and react different from most kids. What works/ed for your kid (talking to others) just doesn't work out the same with my intense kids.
My son also creates all the time, only he writes stories and draws though he also likes to make things out of KNEX and legos.
My 2 1/2 year old creates out of playdough and by drawing.
My middle child is a little more "normal" but every bit as special. She actually seems..she's more compliant usually than the other 2 ever are. I don't know why she is that way and the other 2 aren't but I do think kids start out the way they are. Some is environment but some is just plain, they start with who they are and we can only shape them so far. Some things about them will always be more challanging but that doesn't mean I love them less.
::Many Hugs::
You've had a lot of challanges recently with him. But I think you are doing great!!!
no subject
Date: 2009-05-28 11:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-28 11:17 pm (UTC)Teaching him not to lose control when the environment(and the care giver) aren't optimal will be a challenge, but he's only 4 so his coping mechanisms aren't all that advanced. He's growing yet, though. And I'm still going to do the whole counselor / developmental assessment thing. I'm just not letting anyone peg him with a crappy label that will follow him for the rest of his life.
Some day when he's President of the United States, I'll look back on all this and laugh. Really!
no subject
Date: 2009-05-28 11:23 pm (UTC)People get the idea that these kids aren't lovable, but mine really really
is. He's amazingly lovable. You fall in love with him.
*hugs back*
no subject
Date: 2009-05-28 11:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-29 12:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-29 06:43 pm (UTC)I'd recommend you look into your local charter schools before he starts Kindergarten. I predict a typical public school environment will be as nurturing and positive an experience for him as it was for Ro (note the sarcasm). Charter schools are free (funded by public grants) and more based on a private school structure (fewer kids, broader vision). Do your homework, though... I've heard horror stories about some of them abusing their funding and neglecting the kids.
"E.B.E. For President, 2048!"
no subject
Date: 2009-06-01 05:09 pm (UTC)We're counting on your support for the '48 campaign. At the very least, put an EBE for President sticker on your car. :^)
no subject
Date: 2009-06-02 01:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-02 02:03 am (UTC)