I don't know about anyone else, but these two "features" of FASD are probably the ones which drive me nuts the most. DD is like a magpie, and picks things up all the time. Fortunately, they are mainly no-value items that happen to catch her eye (pencils, paper, art supplies, junk), but sometimes there are better items in the collection. My fear is that later she will graduate to more pricey items, and get into bigger trouble, so we want to nip this in the bud ASAP.
She's pretty sneaky about it, too - there's always a reason, "So-and-so really wanted me to have it," "They were giving them away," and my personal favorite, "I found it." Everything she sees has been "found" - found in people's backpacks, in the lost and found, set down for two seconds by someone nearby. And when I discover these items, asking her where they came from, she lies. It takes several attempts to get the truth, if we get it at all. When she was getting in trouble at home when I found these items, she would give them to the teacher at the end of the day, saying, "I got this for you." When the teachers got wise, she gave things to other students. When the kids started reporting it, she just plain threw things away. We tried telling her that if her name wasn't on it, it wasn't hers.... so she scribbled her name on every stolen item in pen. That followed the rule, right?
We have other kinds of sneaky, too - lots of things snuck to school, and subsequently lost (3 irreplaceable necklaces are gone this way, I believe, never mind a fair amount of money). We find that if the teachers know she can't bring anything from home to school, then they can more easily identify the stolen items. So she tried hiding them in her pockets (which we started checking), then tucked in her waistband (which we started checking), then in her brother's stuff (which we started checking, and he'd tattle anyway). My favorite was the day she had taken a long time up in her room "getting ready" (a big red flag). She came down the stairs and I heard, "step, CHINK, step, CHINK, step...." Hmmm... turns out she had three pennies and a Chuck-E-Cheese token hidden in her sock. And she planned to do what with them?!? She knew enough to try to hide them, but didn't occur to her that meant she shouldn't do it. And don't get me started on the constant lying!
OK, so I know all this is common with FASD. That's the problem - everything I've read says this is common, but offers no solutions on how to deal with it. "Mainstream" parenting books say to ignore it because it's just a phase, but I can't ignore it. Society won't, and the end of that road is not a good one. Never mind the complete loss of trust - everyone at school assumes she is behind every missing item.
We seem to have made progress over the last 4 1/2 years by keeping in constant contact with teachers (including middle of the day e-mails), frequent backpack/pocket checks, not allowing items from home, consistant consequences (in person apologies, loss of privileges, loss of backpack, etc.), and giving teachers the authority they need to say, "no." The teachers/day care personnel have gotten very good about responding with, "Thank you for apologizing" instead of, "That's OK." We realized she would believe that it really was "OK," and we didn't want that to be the message she got. Some might argue with us, but we have always called a spade a spade. It is stealing - we don't use euphemisms - and it is wrong, according to society and our faith. As each new situation comes up, we identify that as stealing, too. It may sound harsh, but I think after she finally gets the message on one scenario, she finds a new one, and we need to help her put that one, too, in the "wrong" category. On her own, she won't make that generalization, so we have to do it for her. We also emphasize that once we've asked for forgiveness, the Lord gives us a clean slate the next day to make better choices. I know some people may not agree with our methods, but they're the best ones we've found through trial and error. We are down from daily+ incidents to once every few weeks, but they still happen.
So why am I ranting about this today? This morning DD was a little too quick to close her jewelry box as I came up the stairs - red flag. Found a little "nothing" fur toy, but knew it wasn't ours. After 1 lie, she admitted that it was taken from a family member whom we had visited recently. Grrr... So she will have to apologize to that person face-to-face in a few days. Then at the end of her field trip, turns out she had spent part of her brother's share of the lunch money to buy herself a treat (leaving not enough for him), and then lied about that, too. Grrr.... It just drives me nuts, and though we have made a ton of progress, my blood just boils!!!
Please tell me I'm not alone in getting frustated by this!
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5 comments:
Oh, my daughter does this too. She "finds" lots of things. When I went to get her stuff at the end of the school year, her teachers had thoughtfully packed up FOUR bags of stuff she had snuck to school. This is AFTER she lost her backpack privileges. In one of those bags was her soccer ball. How that girl managed to sneak that thing to school after we search her every morning and watch her every move is pure talent. If you get any good answers, please blog about them. I'm interested to know, too!!
You are not alone. My 10-year-old is the king of "finding" things. And we've handled things just as consistently as you have.
I can honestly say things have improved.
The key is consistency and supervision. The fact that the school has been as helpful as they have is a great benefit. When they know they're monitored pretty much everywhere, the thrill dissipates.
Good luck.
We have seen a lot of improvement over the years, too, fortunately. It's still frustrating though, and I wonder if we'll ever manage to eradicate it completely. We always say that if she could just put as much effort into doing what she *should* be doing as she does into sneaking things, she could accomplish so much!
Having everyone on the same page is absolutely essential. Sadly, the more they "win" (i.e. get away with a theft) the sicker they become. We changed my son's school a few years ago for various reasons and although we forewarned several of the teachers (I was viewed as just plain heartless, thinking the worst of this delightful little boy), he was getting away with "finding" things several times a day. He was stealing kids lunches right out of their lockers, odds and ends right off the teachers desks - incredible. It was only when he was caught red-handed stealing food out of a teachers desk that they wised up and started watching him. He still stole obsessively throughout the year. None of the kids trusted him. He gave reasons why he needed their food - I was forgetting to feed him apparently, although he had a mega-lunch packed every day that everyone plainly saw him eat, he didn't know who something belonged to -yadda-yadda...always an excuse, but no change in the behavior. Several parents threatened to remove their kids from the school if he was allowed to stay. In-house suspension made no difference, detention was fun!, having to do chores for the teachers he stole from (art teacher, rr teacher) were really FUN (hey, can I do this tomorrow too?) - nothing helped. He's now 14, home schooled, and steals us blind. I can't take him into a store - he is a freakin' Houdini with his slight-of-hand. He'll eat off the floor or shelves of the store and only gets caught if we happen to see him mid-chew. He's been known to swallow things whole to prevent detection. Every single time we've ever believed things were improving, it seems that it just meant he was getting better at hiding stuff. We'd go weeks with no offenses and then BAM, we'd find a whole slew of contraband hidden inside a stuffed animal in his room. One day he came home from school and threw his school shirt in the laundry really fast (red flag), as he walked away from me I saw all these horrible brown marks on his back. It looked like someone had been beating on him. I ran over to him and quickly figured out IT WAS CHOCOLATE!! He had stolen four choco covered granola bars from his teachers desk and hidden them in his back waistband under his shirt (where they started to melt) before he could sneak off to the bathroom to eat them!! Ingenius! I need to find this boy a career in something he's good at.
Have you ever seen those skinny, eating contest winners? You know, huge people all around them and they eat 100 hot dogs or some other disgusting feat? That COULD be my son (anyone know how to get him on the circuit? - lol).
Hi Heather-
I'd have to agree with all of your commentors because our DQ has shown all of the behaviors mentioned. But unfortunately, she has also become sneakier too. That is the part that scares me. I know that others look at me like I am overeacting to tiny things that she borrows from siblings without permission. We do it for all the same reasons as you do. I hope your DD does better than our DQ has with this.
(I don't know if you remember me, but we met at your first FASD Family Retreat! Thanks for linking to me and I'm so glad you started a blog!)
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