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
twothreego 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
