Assuming everything has gone down exactly as you indicated your SO’s kid sounds like a borderline sociopath. His punishment - reward system is not wired like a normal persons, and it’s unlikely you’re going to talk, drug, bribe, cajole, educate or beat him out of these dysfunctional behaviors, it’s simply the way he’s built. It’s possible that at some point with maturity he’ll learn to control his impulses better to enable him to get what he wants, but he will never cease to be an extremely dangerous individual, unless something very fundamental changes for him he’s likely to be dead or in jail before he’s 30.
The progression you have described from cajoling ramping up to raw physical punishment over time is not all all unusual for parents in your circumstance when dealing with an utterly out of control child. It’s easy to judge other people trying to deal with a child who exhibits near feral levels of aggression and acting out, but it’s not so easy to handle it when you are the one in the midst of the vortex.
You need to step back and view the situation with an eye toward what can be done. If you are as committed to his mother as you indicate getting a child psychiatrist (not psychologist) involved as quickly as possible is a good idea. Re your being concerned drugs changing his brain chemistry I would assert that he may well need his brain chemistry changed.
Oh, come on. You have no basis for making this judgement. Not everyone with developmental or personality problems is a raging psycho. Of course, labeling one as such could always create a self-fulfilling prophecy, but a lot of kids like this do get help, do respond to it, and grow up to be fully-functioning, “normal” adults. Some just need extra help than others.
Oh, no, I’m not angry about the physical punishment at all. I’m very familiar with the frustration of parenting a kid like this, and I have nothing but the utmost empathy and understanding for these parents. Living together when one has children is just something that is very distasteful to me, and fraught with potential for real emotional damage to children. This boy, of course, knows that his “dad” not being married to his mom means that he could just walk out any minute. There’s no security, no feeling of permanence. The OP is not this boy’s father, he is just some guy his mom lives with. Don’t think that the kid doesn’t know that.
Come on Alice, get off it. The kid is six. I very much doubt he has a fundamental grasp of the legal intricacies and implications of marriage. Unless the parents are making a big fat deal about it, the man who comes home in the evening and plays with him is “dad”. Unless the OP or his mother has had a talk about the OP leaving to him, why would he think that his dad would up and disappear? For a child of that age there is no quantifiable difference unless there is other obvious drama going on.
I know how it feels to be at the breaking point with a child. I know how it feels to hope the plane goes down every time you board an aircraft. I know how it feels to act out in ways you swore you never would, ever, and certainly never with a child.
You all need professional help, now. That’s not a slam, that’s what needs to be done. You are not the world’s worst parents- most parents aren’t equipped to deal with serious behavioral problems. My husband and I certainly weren’t- we were college-educated, bright, empathetic people, but we were caught flat-footed by our youngest son’s issues.
Getting to a point where we could help him took hard work, lots of tears, and it damn near caused us to divorce (extremely common, actually, and I don’t blame the people who can’t cope because I know how hard it is). We had to be trained, educated and treated right alongside our son.
I will not say you are abusers, or that you are destroying this child. I see your post through my own experiences, and I understand. But you must get help for the whole family, now. Feel free to PM me if you want some resources, or advice, or ideas, or a shoulder.
I don’t have anything to say except that I can’t imagine how horrible your situation is. I urge you to seek help from qualified professionals. Your problems sound far too severe to be solved by advice on an anonymous messageboard. Good luck.
Like some others here have said, get counseling! Having SAID that, if counseling doesnt work, try something else. Or at the very least change counselors. Would you keep going to a doctor that never cured you?
It must have been very hard to write that post and I imagine it took quite awhile to compose and type it as well. I think you derserve an award just for posting it.
As for the BS about loving parents NOT wanting a year away from their child. How many children get sent away for schooling. Most of those parents probably love their children as well. I’ve been in a couple of high stress situtations in my life, and I can tell you it took something on the order of a year to recover from it. Not to say I couldnt function for a year, but it took that long to finally settle back down to “normal”. To equate being in close proximity to a child as love for one is extremely simplistic, to the point of being offensive IMO.
From your post, it sounds like you started at the most enlightented and cautious point you could and only sheer desperation caused you to “abandon” your principles and try “harsher” measures. While I have no doubt that hurt you greatly, IMO that is much better than someone who sticks to the “please little Johny, don’t do that” model up until the day he is
on death row. You selfless concern for your child has rightfully IMO overidden your desire to prove yourself right intellectually.
In my opinion, you are trying and realizing it isnt working. That more than most humans are willing to do by far. More than that, you are willing to bare all in public in an attempt to rectify the situation. You have both my admiration and best wishes!
Hopefully other here will be able to give more concrete useful advice.
Get off what? Am I not allowed to have an opinion? Why is it that here on the Dope, way too often the poster with the unpopular opinion must have it figuratively beaten out of them by the “righteous”? There’s a lot of people today that think that they can do anything they want when they have children, as long as it’s convenient and feels good. Living with someone takes no commitment, no responsibility, no accountability, no security. I believe that the children in these no-sweat relationships suffer from them. And six years old is prime time for noticing that mommy and daddy aren’t really bound to each other and for fostering the insecurities that can result in knowing that this family isn’t really a family, but just two adults that want to fuck without having to go home afterwards. I have a right to my opinion, just like anyone else here.
As so many others have said, absolutely get professional counseling. Try not to look at the school meeting as a source of shame, but an opportunity to hear some ideas about how to best help him. You can benefit from the help of professionals who have seen kids like this before.
You may need to try to focus on small victories at this point. You’ve mentioned that he does have good days, and that’s worth celebrating even if he’s still acting out in ways that aren’t inappropriate on other days.
Most importantly: Escalating the physical punishments to belts and slapping IS NOT the answer. The more traumatized he is by that kind of treatment, the worse his behavior will get.
I’m sorry Alice, but it is very, very unlikely that the child is smearing his shit on the walls in the school bathroom because Mommy and Daddy aren’t married. That behavior is the hallmark of serious psychological problems that are far beyond bratty acting out due to insecurity. It’s considered an indicator that the child has ODD, Conduct Disorder, or has suffered sexual abuse. I think astro is frighteningly close to the mark when he says this is likely a problem that is going to affect the child for life, and needs immediate intervention by a pediatric psychiatrist.
As everyone else has said, you really need professional help, but I’ll pick up on this one point. The two of you may need a reality check: he’s your child, not your peer. There are many things that you just can’t explain to a child that young. You treat them with love, kindness, and discipline (consistent rules etc, not physical punishment unless necessary). Lead and teach by example. If you do your job right, one day he’ll become your peer.
Look at it another way: he was apparently fine at grandmother’s house, so isn’t it likely that she was doing something you aren’t?
Well, I did say that I didn’t think them not being married was the cause, but sometimes there’s no single cause when a child is troubled. But an accumulation of circumstances could certainly aggravate an underlying medical diagnosis. Which brings me back to the point that I think that we can all agree on- the OP needs to seek professional help for this mother and child, and now.
You are correct, you can have your opinion, and I can call you out for it. You seem to have a hell of a lot of venom for this topic. I take a lot of offense at your characterization of the OP, and anyone else who live together without being married. Nashiitashii and I have lived together for nearly five years and I daresay that our relationship has required EXACTLY the same amount of commitment, responsibility, accountability, and security that any married couples’ does. We have to work together to hold down the house, and maintain our relationship just like a married couple. The only place that it would differ is financially when a couple’s money is co-mingled in absence of a pre-nup. If someone sticks it out just so that he doesn’t lose half his dough, that household is going to be easily as toxic as a household where mummy doesn’t have a ring on her finger.
I also would like to point out that children with ADD/ADHD can be very difficult to discipline and teach. It would be easy enough to point out that no, your child can not be your peer, or that if you just do* this* certain thing or that, that you will be able to fix them. You will not fix them. With medication and counseling, strategies and goals, you can help them to control it. I may just be pessimistic, but I can see my own son dealing with this and actually being disable by it for the rest of his life. But again, the first step would be to make that call that starts the help.
I’m not a doctor and I don’t know the OP, but I have a feeling the kid would have turned out this way even if the OP were the child’s biological father and married to his mother. The few students I’ve encountered with ODD (which it sounds like the kid has) all had married parents. My point is, if it’s a mental illness, it’s coming from within and the parents’ marital status has little to do with it. It only would have exacerbated things if the OP and the kid’s mother were openly in conflict about it and it was affecting the child. It doesn’t sound like it was. In fact, the OP sounds like he has worked very hard to be a father to a difficult child, and should be commended for it, despite the shortcomings of which he is well aware.
You sure told me. Abuse isn’t called abuse because the child screams when it occurs. Attempting to minimize the abuse as you are only enables it to continue.
Lung CA has nothing to do with any of this and is a poor analogy. I don’t live in an ivory tower and have been open here about my own parenting troubles. I don’t see two parents “honestly doing their best”–I see individuals enmeshed in a downward spiral of abuse, power struggles and frustration. I am angry that this situation has occurred and shared my feelings. You see it as judgement; I see it as a reality check to the OP that this is NOT ok to do to a child. “Selfless concern”? It’s selfless concern to beat a child and terrify them with displays of violence?
The OP came here for help and advice. He’s gotten some good suggestions from many here–including me. What have you contributed?
No, I just have a lot of venom for people on this board that attack people for having a different opinion. My feelings on the subject are an important part of my morals, and the values I want for my family, and I feel just as strongly about it as you do about your side. Do either you or your girlfriend have children? Because what you do when it’s just you two is up to you and nobody’s business, but when you involve children then it’s slightly different.
I just made a very small poll of my own 10-year-old. He states that he would not necessarily feel insecure if I were living with someone I wasn’t married to, but no way would he feel that this man was his dad, ever, unless we were married. I’m just saying that I can see how that could increase a child’s stress level and feelings of insecurity, and kids do act out these things. Not sure about the shit-smearing, but I definitely concur that there’s some underlying psychological problem.
Sometimes, you project your *own *shit so hard that it gets on the kids. Don’t mistake that for the kids *naturally *“knowing” or feeling the same things you do.
To the OP, I have nothing to offer except my sympathy and best wishes, and agreement with everyone else that you need professional help.
A 10 year old’s perspective on a man being added to your life, right now, is very different from a 4 year old’s perspective, which how old the boy was when the OP came into his life. The child does seem to consider the OP his dad, and calls him Dad. Really, I think the marriage issue is completely beside the point. That’s just my opinion. It muddies the waters when the issue really is a deep, serious psychological problem in the child that his causing his parents, especially his mother, to behave in ways that are totally inappropriate. Imagine how badly she’d be behaving if the OP wasn’t around, and she had no help.
here as well.