wikiHow coaches teenagers on how to sneak out of the house. If parents knew what teenagers know and what they think before they actually sneak out of the house, parents would be in a better position to guard against this dangerous behavior. Especially, notice the part entitled, "TRICKS PARENTS USE TO CATCH KIDS." If you're not already aware of these tricks, add them to your arsenal.
Type rest of the post here
Parents should know what teens know about sneaking out.
Posted by:Lloyd Woodward--Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Sally, Rocco, and Cisco: To Be Continued.
Posted by:Lloyd Woodward--Monday, October 26, 2009
Cisco walked in the door at 6:15AM. He thought he would make it back before we woke up. He was wrong. We told him this was a violation of his house arrest and that we were taking him up to Shuman Center. He went willingly.
Fortunately, Cisco has an excellent P.O. who had all the paper work in order and Cisco was admitted within fifteen minutes. We attended our PSST meeting that afternoon. I don't remember everything about the meeting because Cisco's welfare was on my mind but one thing that stands out clear is that a parent who attended the PSST meeting talked about the death of a child, due to drugs.
I take this moment to pause and be thankful that Cisco is in the system. That he has not fatally hurt anyone including himself and that we did the right thing by taking him to Shuman.
Our son spent 90 days at a rehabilation center this summer and was home and clean for an additional 40 days, he was attending a program at Gateway Rehab, he was doing ninety 12-step meetings in 90 days, his grades were good. He has a supportive network. I wrote down these and other reasons and asked his P.O. to consider letting him come back home. It was a positive experience to explain to Cisco that we wanted him home, there would be rules and restrictions that needed to be followed but we wanted him home.
Cisco had a hearing on Tuesday.
Luckily, the judge agreed to let Cisco come home after a home detention monitor was set up.
It's curious but this is when I went onto an emotional roller coaster. I truly wanted Cisco home but began to doubt if it was the best decision. After all, what do I know about addictions? I was wondering if Cisco would make it even a day on the home monitor. He might be impulsive and run away or something. I doubted if Cisco had enough respect for Rocco and myself to follow the rules.
After the hearing, the reasons why he should be placed all came flooding into my consciousness. He may hurt someone or hurt himself. I would be the one to blame because I went to court and expressed that he should be home.
Fear and doubt led to sleepless nights and sleepless nights lead to confusion.
To make matters worse there was technical difficulty in getting the phone line into our house for the home detention monitor.
Then I came home from work one day to a message that Cisco was shipped out to Auberle and that he was safe. That was the whole message: "Hello, This is So-and-so, we have your son at Auberle Male Shelter and he is safe. If you have any questions please call 412-XXX-XXXX.
- to be continued -
Learning To "Un-learn" by Rocco
Posted by:Lloyd Woodward--Thursday, October 22, 2009
Try this little exercise. First fold your hands loosely. Relax. Notice how comfortable you feel. Next move all of your fingers down one. Notice how uncomfortable it feels.
I once participated in a week long very intensive and comprehensive driving class so that I could transport company personnel. One of our first lessons was to learn to “un-learn” some of our driving skills. Some of this took us out of our comfort zone, especially when they explained Rule #1:
“If you determine that there is no way to avoid crashing your vehicle then save yourself first and worry about your passengers later.”
We all felt a little uncomfortable with that. We all had that time-honored ideal instilled in us of sacrificing ourselves to keep others out of harm’s way.
But they made it clear that, as the driver, you are the most important person in that vehicle. You are responsible for keeping as much control of the vehicle as possible. If you are incapacitated, then you have lost the ability to control the vehicle and then all of your passengers are in extreme danger.
Looking back over the past few years we can see now that we needed to learn to “un-learn” some of our parenting skills and to try something a lot less comfortable.
Our son’s attitude and grades were deteriorating and he was having more and more difficulty dealing with teachers and other students. We knew that we were good parents and were ready to use all of our best parenting skills to help our son through his issues. To address his problems we researched pamphlets, books and the internet. We worked closely with him, his school, private tutors and several counselors to get a handle on his problems.
We didn’t realize that our biggest roadblock was that he was quickly becoming an addict and that, as an addict, our son considered his school, his tutors, his counselors and especially his parents as his biggest problem. The last thing that he wanted to hear was that the individuals that he was hanging with were using him as much as he was using them. Using them to get high and to gain affirmation that there was nothing wrong with their behavior. They reaffirmed that it was everyone else that caused all of his problems. It was the school and all their bullsh*t rules, it was the other kids that he felt were just as bad if not worse than he was (but got away with it) and it was especially his parents forcing all of their family time garbage, church crap and their useless counselors on him. He didn’t “get it” that his attitude and his failing grades were making his difficulties worse. He didn’t “get it” that “guilt by association” and more and more encounters with the police were making everything worse for him outside of school.
And I am sorry to say that at that time we didn’t “get it” either.
Our family was out of control and we were sacrificing ourselves; our family, our emotions, our social life, our jobs and our own physical and mental health. We can’t say exactly when it happened because it is all kind of a blur now but we knew we were out of control and we were about to crash. We were out of options emotionally and financially. We needed some intensive and comprehensive lessons on how to learn to “un-learn” some of our parenting skills and to become competent at something a lot less comfortable…
… “to save ourselves first”.
We needed to take back control of our family and our own lives before we could save our son’s life.
We were very fortunate at that point to find and to begin attending the PSST sessions. They have provided us with some very uncomfortable but valuable lessons on how to handle our son’s addiction and to take back the power and how to talk less and act more. These are by no means the easiest methods to employ. It felt awkward, painful and unpleasant to admit that yes my child has an addiction problem, they were out of control and we needed to take assertive action. Nevertheless the more that we learn and the more we put into these lessons into practice the easier it becomes. You will see that once you get your child into the system you will discover a storehouse full of valuable resources to help you that you didn’t realize were available.
Over the last year we have seen encouraging results. We are not through with our problems yet but we have regained much of our control and are on a better course. We now realize that we are not alone in this. We have found a lot of caring people who understand exactly what we are going through and who offer a lot of support and encouragement.
We can only urge you to take the time to stop into a session and to try something a little uncomfortable that can make some real changes in your life.
What we have learned is that, yes we are good parents and that we are doing the best that we can for ourselves and our son.
ADHD
Posted by:Ken Sutton--Sunday, October 18, 2009
Posted for a parent named Linda
As a parent of an ADHD child, I have always been a bit confused by the diagnostic label since my son could focus on quite a few different activities from reading to sports to computer games for long periods of times. Attending to boring (for him) math was a different issue altogether. But was that an attention problem or an interest problem? From my perspective, what I always felt my son lacked was self regulation and impulse control.
A social worker sent me this website for LD OnLine a resource for learning disabilities and for ADHD information. The page this link takes you to is written by Dr. Sam Goldstein who explains that ADHD is more a problem of self-control than attention. FINALLY, an explanation that makes sense and matches perfectly what we have observed in our home all these years!
http://www.ldonline.org/article/32632
The LD OnLine website has lots of articles on it as well as forums for readers to discuss common issues.
One article I found on the website was a review of the research on kids with learning disabilities that looks at their high rates of involvement in risk behaviors, school failure, substance use and abuse, and juvenile delinquency. The article casts a critical eye at the research findings and asks good questions about whether the learning disability (ADHD and many other diagnoses seem to be lumped together in the category of learning disability) caused the other problems or if something like the lack of success in school triggered low self esteem that triggered the other problems. The article points out that of course most kids with LD do not end up as juvenile offenders, but if you are reading my post here and have a kid with ADHD or a LD, it might be safe to say that our kids could have qualified to be in these studies. Anyway, the writers of the article found that the most promising resiliency forces for the kids included awareness and knowledge. The more we know, the better we and our kids can help ourselves.
http://www.ldonline.org/article/Risk,_Resilience,_and_Adjustment_of_Individuals_with_Learning_Disabilities
Relapse Takes Mom for a Ride on an Emotional Roller Coaster.
Posted by:Lloyd Woodward--Saturday, October 17, 2009
Hi, This is Sally. I have finally found a few minutes when my mind is clear enough to explain about Cisco's relapse. Cicso had 90 days clean in Ridgeview plus approximately 40 days clean in our home when he relapsed. Wow, that very last word was hard to say :(
Friday a week ago, women's intuition had me wake up at 4 a.m. and I went downstairs to Cisco's room. I got that sick feeling in my gut when I saw the empty bed. He was no where to be found and he was on house arrest. This was a violation and I knew it had to be reported. So I climbed the stairs and went into our bedroom and stood their a minute with my head hanging low.
I dreaded having to wake my hard working husband who was in a peaceful sleep to tell him this bad news. Rocco shook the sleep from his head and sized up the situation. In his logical manner his plan was to first wait by the front door and see who Cisco was out with. I am honest enough to say that my first feelings were just IGNORE this episode, go back to sleep, let this blow over. I'm sure Rocco felt the same as he stared out at the dark, wet street. Rocco said that maybe Cisco was just walking around and not smoking dope. After awhile it sinks in that if your kid is out at 4 in the morning while on house arrest the authorities need to be called. I dialed the number but could not speak so I handed the phone to Rocco and he got everything set into action.
TO BE CONTINUED...
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