No Dishes were Broken

Squeaker just finished up a week of doing my kitchen chore of setting the table, washing dishes, and wiping counters. She had to do this in addition to her own chore of sweeping. The extra chore was a consequence for being disrespectful and rude in church last week including calling me a not-so-nice name that starts with a B during worship. Not cool.

I've been having her stay in the main service instead of going to the junior high class on Sunday mornings. Some weeks she is okay and some she is difficult but it's an important skill to learn and I think she is capable of handling it. But sometimes when she has an angry, reactionary response she has a hard time reeling things back.

She had to "make amends" for her behavior by doing some of my chores. This actually meant more work for me as it takes up more of my time to check chores and have the redone correctly then to just do it myself. I also had some concerns as to how many dishes we would lose if she was angry about the extra chore but mostly she did it with a pretty good attitude. Hopefully there was some lesson learned. On Wednesday night we had particularly goopy dishes and she was hitting herself in the head saying "Why did I act that way at church?" Good question. She often immediately regrets her actions but has little ability to control impulses evidenced by the fact that she mouthed off on Thursday and got two extra days of dishes.

Out of the three middlers she actually shows the most remorse after an outburst. Of course, her impulsive actions are often compounded by a mood disorder and past trauma so sometimes it takes a while to get to the point of repentance and trying again to do right. And sometimes just when I think we've made progress we seem to go back to square one. But at least there is some acknowledgement that the behavior was not okay.

The middle boys on the other hand are unable to make a connection right now between their behavior and consequences. This often means that imposing a consequence lets loose a whole new bout of raging. So far we have no answers as to how to deal with it but we keep at it hoping that eventually something will click for these very angry guys.

Onward and upward.