I'm Cody. I'm Mandy. This is Gavin and he is the second of our six children.
The age span is from nine months old to 12 years of age.
Gavin has Oppositional Defiance Disorder. Which looks like a really angry child that goes off as a
light switch and doesn't calm down, for sometimes hours. His anger
could last more than half the day easily. It was crazy. He would
threaten to harm himself. Other people. He threatened to run away. He would destroy
things. It was a rough situation with him being the second oldest,
expected to be responsible in that respect, it was difficult to keep the
others safe. Manage the home. Frankly, I had no time for myself as a mom. I was
always managing one crisis and one fire. It was never a structure, organized. He
thrives in organization, but he always created enough chaos that there was
never a chance to provide the structure that he needed for his problem.
One of our Following Instructions tasks was to get him to learn how to
Follow Instructions. So his job was to, when I addressed him, to look at me.
When I made the request to simply say, "Okay," not argue and get it done. One
of the one of our funnest ones was folding socks. He's playing faces now
cuz he doesn't like doing it now, but the first date was fun because he knew there
was a reward coming. So we would start by telling him to fold, you know, three pairs of
black socks. He'd have to make sure he did really good. I mean socks are hard.
Yet to find the right ones and with six people of different shoe sizes and
different types of socks. There's a bazillion different types of socks and
the dryer eats too many of them, anyway. So, what did you feel like when we did socks?
Willing to do it.
Mm-hmm.
Beforehand that would have
created a war, not a battle. Gavin, one day, and he'll remember why more than I would,
but he got angry and we went into a war and he used a reading trophy that he'd earned
at school to completely demolish his bedroom door from the inside and all the
way through. It was no longer a door; it was a tunnel to his bedroom. We
didn't really quite know what to do at that point. This was during time, this
happened during our intervention. It was during one of the rougher weeks that you
have, they happen. And so we sat down. We looked at him and said Gavin, "You
know. You've destroyed your door." He looked up at us as we praised. We praised
him for looking up at us. We praised him for responding that he'd heard what we said.
We said, "The consequence is that you are going to lose everything in your
room. Except your bed and your dresser with clothing." I left just that
because when I took everything out of his room. I felt a little bit bad
about it. I left a box from my brother who's living in Pennsylvania and who he
misses really bad. So he had one possession outside of what the state
requires. Until he successfully did odd jobs around the house here. For Grandma
and for other people. Until he earned enough money to replace his own door.
That was the consequence that was set. He lost his all of his possessions
until the door replaced. It took him all summer, but he did it.
You have to have steps. When you don't have them it's really confusing. When Jeanette and
Melissa got done with us. I was so excited! I'm like, "Why can't we like go to
the hospital and teach all the mother's, before they even leave with their newborn,
these steps." She's like, "Well we're not that far yet." It really you have to come
home to understand. I came from a family I'm the oldest of seven kids. I really
felt like I had a handle on parenting, when I started this mess of six. I
love it! I wouldn't trade it for the world, but I really thought that I knew
what I was doing. When Gavin was so intense all of
the time, I no longer knew what to do to keep him safe from himself and the
others safe from him that we actually almost sent him away. I realized that
at that point I didn't know as much as I thought I did. It was a really humbling
experience. We tried several different parenting programs. Before having help
from the Youth Village and I was so grateful. When they came and they share
with us really easy steps. There were other programs that offered steps but
they just weren't--hey didn't stay in my head as well as these did. These were
these actually made sense. They weren't tell the child, "one...two...three...go to your
room. Stay there all day." They weren't... they weren't like that. They made sense.
They combined logic and they taught us how to deliver a consequence
lovingly and still let the child accept responsibility. That was so helpful.
My husband it's been so much easier just to run the home that way. We're now,
it's what January, this was like this has been since October and our home runs so
much smoother.
With this program that came in.
About week four... how long was the program?
Six. Six weeks. About week four is when I was just about at my breaking
point. Thinking there's nothing was going to help him. Week five it, week four, week
five it started really turning around. And it was just like a breath of fresh
air. I was just like the hallelujah chorus started playing in the back of
my mind because I seriously thought there was no hope for him. When we
started this program, the evaluation we had for him was I think 30 points higher
than the no 150 points higher than the institutionalize recommendation and then
when he got done. He was probably 20 points below that
recommendation. Our instructors have never seen such a dramatic change like
that. They said the biggest one they saw was a 15 point difference and after that
they thought that was just a miracle.
He's so much more fun to be around so we spend more time doing the things that he wants to,
because we want to rather than because we feel coerced or threatened into it. He's more
amiable and allows the other siblings to have turns and chances and other things
without having a total battle because he realizes, if they get to do it they want
and I get to do what I want, then we get to do more fun things than we have
before. Because there's more energy. There's more time. There's because we are
spending so much less energy controlling how he's behaving and protecting
everybody. There's more time to play games which is one of his most
favorite things to do. There's more time to let them sit down and just kind of
veg. We like to do family movie nights. We've had more of those. He's
been so excited. Because he come be able to say, "Hey that movie night this is what
we're doing." We'll put in a movie and well I'll just crash. Sometimes I'll
make popcorn and the hot chocolate as you guys saw earlier today. There's
more time for that and there's more energy for that. We're so glad that this
is something that taught us how to react to these situations. Not giving up was
the hardest part of it though. That's that's the one thing about learning
anything that has steps. You have to be willing to be consistent, especially if
you have a child that's as intense as our son. I mean you have to be willing to
be consistent. Consistency is hard. It can be really exhausting. But it's
worth it to be patient with it.
you