<<I am dealing with an issue in my home that seems to also come up a lot for you, and I was wondering if this is something you’d be able to give me pointers on. My kids (4 year old girl and 7 year old boy, the 7 year old hasn’t been diagnosed officially but we are almost positive he has ADHD) have been very destructive and I feel like there are two problems: One is the actual destruction, and two is the way I handle it.
I feel like there is a certain lack of caring about property (ours and others) that really bothers me needs to be addressed. The issue is that I see that my way of handling it is not effective and I need to figure out how to address it in a way that they learn that it’s wrong without me getting angry or shaming them (“if you’d be 2 I would understand this, but you are 7!”).
And also, how do you deal with the constant needing to replace items, clean/fix items, or living with damaged things that irk you every time you look at them? Emotionally, it really drains me to live in a house with so many ruined things but I can’t afford to keep replacing them and chinuch-wise I wouldn’t want my kids to think everything is just so easily replaceable either way.
Examples: knocking the paintings off the wall and then stepping on them, completely taking apart his wooden bed frame (so there’s just a mattress on the floor now), moving furniture and scratching the floor, writing her name on her furniture, writing on the closest surface whenever getting her hands on a writing utensil, pumping out all the soap with each bathroom trip, putting toilet paper in the sink and turning on the water for fun, ripping paint off the walls, ripping books… I could go on and on with more but here are just some that came to mind.<<
When I received this email, I read it out loud to my husband, who laughed and said, “It sounds very familiar. We definitely know all about that!”
It’s easy to laugh about it when it’s not in the moment, but it’s really hard to see the things around you being destroyed. It overall has gotten much better in our home than it was three years ago, when it was literally non-stop destruction, all day long. But even now, I regularly deal with things being ruined or broken, and with the emotional upheaval due to visitation changes in the last few weeks, the destruction has ramped up. Daily, something is broken and has to be thrown away or put to the side for repair.
I’ve delayed responding to this, even though I began writing a response right away, because it’s not easy for me and I don’t want to give a pat response that would lead you to think I’ve mastered some kind of magical calm.
I find it frustrating and sometimes downright infuriating. Lately I’m finding myself getting annoyed about it more frequently than in the past.
Maybe it’s because in the beginning I thought it would pass, and after 3.5 years, my patience is worn down. Maybe it’s because it’s the summer and everyone has been home for a long, long time, and I don’t have time to myself to recharge. Maybe because there are other stresses from the foster care system that are compounding, and draining my emotional energy. Maybe it’s the discouragement that it was getting better after so much patience and compassion, and now it’s all getting much worse. Probably all of those.
So I don’t always have the calm, measured, helpful response that I want to have. Maybe what I share isn’t going to be helpful, but I’ll share nonetheless.
I’ve been as proactive as possible to prevent damage: putting all games with small pieces out of easy reach, reupholstering our rattan backed dining room chairs with heavy duty leather look vinyl, taking apart and then rebinding many childrens’ books after laminating the front and back covers for increased durability with heavy use.
I always buy more shoes than I needed, so there are backups when shoes are thrown into trees or the sea or wherever else they disappear to, and I won’t be frustrated at the last minute when it’s time to go to school and there are no shoes to wear. We locked up all tools in a shed, with a code that couldn’t be accessed. We tried to keep knives, markers and anything else that could be used to damage things out of easy reach.
And I tried to supervise him all of the time. Which is impossible, but I tried. That was exhausting.
While that prevented a lot of damage, you can’t eliminate access to every possible thing, and I’ve been amazed at how creative one child can be in finding ways to break things.
Some things were in the category of ‘annoying/inconvenient’ because they were a small cost and easily replaced or fixed (like dumping bottles of shampoo down the bathroom sink when going to the bathroom, stopping up sinks and toilets).
Books that were cut or torn into little pieces were not replaced, though sometimes they were less damaged and I could repair them. (Being in Israel, it’s not easy or cheap to buy them again.) I’ve thrown away so much clothing that was drawn on with markers on the way to school (that was reduced when we asked the teacher to keep his school supplies at school instead of in a backpack, but it still happens in school).
Then there is the damage that was more expensive and difficult or impossible to repair. The upper safety railling of a metal bunk bed was ripped off. Young trees were chopped down. He carved lines into the car window using a large decorative pin while we were driving to visitation. He drilled a hole in the side of our new pool the first day we used it. He broke the plug where my computer cord connected and I had to buy a new laptop. We replaced all of the doors on the first floor of the house because they were broken.
There were 12,000 shekels of damage the first year; I stopped counting after that but it would definitely be at 20,000 shekels by now, and much, much more if we didn’t do the repairs ourselves/decide to live with the damages.
With all of my efforts to keep my home well-maintained and looking nice, there’s constantly something needing to be fixed: ripped window screens, broken window blinds, walls that have been colored on and deeply gouged, damaged furniture.
Today he threw a plastic chair at someone and broke it, the day before he treifed up the frying pan, the day before that he accidentally set the day-old sandwich maker on fire, the day before that he took off his new water shoes and threw them in the Kinneret during his sailing activity…it doesn’t end. Sometimes it’s just twenty shekels of damage, sometimes a few hundred. But it’s daily.
When he smashed a hole in the door of the new closet in his room three days after I bought it, also peeling a laminate strip off the matching bed (and now he’s begun cutting the laminate off the headboard), I was frustrated. I had spent so much money and time redoing the room and my happiness at how nice the room looked was matched by my deep frustration and anger at the moment that I saw the wanton destruction. My response won’t inspire anyone with being well thought-out and controlled:
Me, not yelling but definitely not soft and gentle: “Why? WHY? We want to have nice things for everyone. Why are you breaking every single thing?!?”
Not a model response.
But I’m being honest. It’s draining to deal with this on an ongoing basis, and though I have a lot of tolerance and patience, sometimes I can’t seem to dig deep enough to find even one more drop.
So the first thing I want to do is validate that it’s really hard to deal with something that is constant like this. It’s much easier to be patient and tolerant when it’s a one time situation.
When you think that a child is doing something on purpose, to annoy you, to make your life hard, to ruin what you have, it’s natural to escalate to angrier thoughts and behavior. The first thing I try to do is shift my thinking so I don’t look at the child as my opponent who is keeping me from having the home I want to have, or to define him as trying to push my buttons. This helps me tremendously.
Being careful about how I think about what I’m seeing when looking at damage helps me to respond calmly the majority of the time. I can take a wide-lens view of the situation, and put the damage into perspective. Even when it’s malicious (usually not) or intentional (usually), does he really know what he’s doing? No. He’s acting out of impulse, and he’s not trying to ruin my house or upset me. He feels a need in the moment to do something, and he doesn’t pause before acting on it. That’s his brain function, not a character issue.
Then I take a moment to think about how to handle the damage. When it’s smaller damages, it’s easier to stay calm. Okay, I’ll buy more shampoo. Okay, we’ll replace the window screens. Okay, we’ll replaster the walls. Okay, we’ll patch the pool. Or, okay, we’ll live with the engraved car window – we don’t have to replace it.
I try to take deep breaths. I try to pause before responding. Sometimes I don’t respond at all, because I don’t trust myself not to get angry, and I want to wait until my first feelings of anger have passed.
I hardly ever reference the financial cost of replacing or fixing something, as he has no concept of money yet. And while that’s part of the issue, the the bigger issue is learning to take care of what you have, to respect what belongs to you and to others. I talk about it in terms of, taking care of our things because then you have what you want when you want to use it, it feels nice to be in a home when things work and look nice, and it doesn’t feel good to have broken things around us.
I don’t talk about this constantly, though, because it would turn into a lecture that would be tuned out. Mostly I check that no one is hurt, say, “Thank G-d no one was hurt, that’s the most important thing. Now we’ll clean up/fix it.” If there’s something that he can to do to make the situation better, I give him an action (like a soapy rag to clean a wall) and praise him for taking responsibility.
For us this has been a long and slow road, and as I mentioned, the recent setbacks have been discouraging. I do believe that if you do the right thing long enough, even when it doesn’t look like it’s making a difference, eventually you’ll see results. Awareness and understanding is developing inside the child before they manifest in visible behavior.
A very real question is how to keep yourself calm and regulated during that long road. You won’t and can’t always be calm, and you have to be compassionate to yourself when you fall short.
Please let me know if this is helpful, and if there’s something you’d like to clarity about!
Avivah
One Response
I just want to add , that (only) those of us that have ADHD children can really understand and feel the pain. I know all children might color on the walls, throw their Mac N’ cheese on the floor, and start the birthday cake (by taking with their hands) before you sing happy birthday, but our ADHD children do these things and more more frequently. We also don’t know when it’s going to happen. (I am speaking as a Savta now Boruch Hashem , but I was on the lookout each day, ( 30 years ago) without time to relax) . Only with Hashem’s kindness did my ADHD child turn into a true Mentch, sweet and caring Husband and Father. He has thanked me and my husband many times for our patience and caring for him.
Make sure you have your healthy outlets. Exercising with friends, singing in the choir, art work, you need to keep up your own healthy emotional wellbeing. Your house might not be neat and walls clean , but as long as you can see his pure Neshoma shining, you get a kiss from Hashem by taking care of his precious children.