Updates on my RADical life

In the past five months, our lives have been chaotic at best.  Beginning just before my last post at the beginning of June, May 26th; to be precise, our RAD Kid decided it would be a stellar idea to beat up his former best friend as they were getting off the bus.  The boys were friends, the parents were friends so what part of screwing that up doesn’t sound just stellar?

Difficult conversations were had that day.  Not with the RAD kid because he doesn’t process those things.  Despite two years of therapy and two years with our family, he still is incapable of processing “If A, then B” or “If I want to achieve this/ have this/ do this, then this is what I have to do”.  My conversations, because DH was on AT of course, were with the neighbor kid’s mom and with the police begging them to press charges and incarcerate him.

Imagine that feeling?  Being a parent.  Having a troubled (disturbed isn’t a stretch) child that you love, begging the system to help you.  What would you want to happen in that case?  What are your expectations?

What we got is nothing.  Despite telling the police that the Czar needs jail.  Not deserves, mind you, NEEDS.  He needs the jail experience.  He was referred to diversion for the January incident.  He learned nothing.  The requirements of the program were that he continue therapy.  Big deal.  I told the police this.

So what happens?  He’s sent to diversion again.  Only this time it takes longer to get the letter in the mail so the reasons for it are well removed from the Czar’s mind.  The assault (the charge was 4th degree) happened May 26, he didn’t meet with the diversion committee until August 26.  By this time he’d completely forgotten about it so managing the confusion was a little fun.  To help him try to process consequences, we did make him pay the $150 diversion fee which cleaned out his iPod Touch savings account.  They also required him to attend a “Decision Making Class”.

Labor Day weekend, he was with some friends and that’s always dangerous.  Bored kids are a bad thing and these particular kids decided that they wanted to go inside an old school building (currently school district administrative offices) and “look around”.  Of course the Czar was the first one in.  The one that tried the door, found it locked and gave the old thing a tug hard enough to pull it open and set off the alarm.  Breaking and Entering FTW!  He was removed from the building in handcuffs but eventually let off with a warning.

Our discussion of logical consequences was super fun.  The Czar didn’t think that there should be any.  I grounded him for a month.  His reply “I think that’s a little harsh.”  The alternative I offered was 6 months.  Needless to say, he’s grounded for a month.

That Decision Making Class was super effective.  The Czar got smart with his Dad the day after he completed it.  DH asked him for something and the Czar refused to go get it.  Here’s how it played out:

“You can’t go in my room.”

“It’s not your room.  You don’t pay rent.  That makes it my room and if there’s something in there that I need and you won’t give it to me, I’ll go get it myself.”

So DH goes in to the lovely teenager’s room and tries opening the closet door.  It’s stuck so he goes to the other side of the closet.  Presto!  A cache of stolen property!

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