Learning to Listen Instead of Reacting....

Living with kids who have impulse control issues is challenging. It often comes as a part of the FASD package and makes a lot of us crazy. One of my biggest frustrations is that things that are essential to family life - car keys, glasses, medicines often go missing in the house at critical moments.

Yesterday it was Jesse's glasses. He took them off to go play soccer, put them on his special shelf and they disappeared over the four hours he was gone. It's taken me years to learn not to freak out, round up the usual suspects and scold them into admission. Doesn't work with these kids - they just clam up, deny and fabricate unbelievable stories about other people having done it. I have learned to quietly 'wonder' where they might be and to listen for clues. (My goal in the moment after all is to find the glasses. ) After several hours of fruitless searching yesterday I casually asked the child I suspected was the culprit where they thought the glasses were...they said "next to daddy's bed' and danced off to swing. Later I looked and that is exactly where they were - buried under books and in danger of being stood on - but safely recovered.

It's hard to change my parenting to meet the mental abilities of the different kids we are blessed with. Coming down hard on these kids doesn't seem to help them change behaviors - that isn't how they learn. Instead it builds barriers between us and makes helping them to grow up strong even more challenging. Learning to listening and look at life through their paradigm is helping and I'm learning that strong parenting is sometimes silent and watchful. Waiting for the right moment to deal with things and helping them learn how to make a mistake and step forward in confession might be the biggest tool they have.