lying, sneaky ds is too smart for me!

[blessedwithboys]

i have lurked here for 2 yrs. i can usually find an answer to any ques i have, but this one has got me, so here i am, newly registered, and hoping to get some get advice!

my oldest ds is 9, and i have been AP from the start. it all came naturally to me, except for the GD part. i just don't get it. i understand natural consequences (dc jumps on bed, mom says stop, dc falls and bumps head, thus hopefully learning not to jump om beds) and logical consequences (dc plays rough on nice leather couch, mom knows he knows better, says no sitting on couch for *insert appropriate length of time*). but i just don't get the part about "no punishment". does that just mean no stupid arbitrary "consequences" that don't connect the "crime" to the "punishment". (for example, my ds calls out in class after being told to raise his hand and wait and so is given a "detention" which involves copying definitions from a dictionary. ?????) is that the type of thing that in GD is considered "punishment". society "punishes" law-breakers. fact of life: break the rules, get punished. or would a die-hard GD'er say that if fewer dc were punished, fewer ppl would end up as adult law-breakers? lol can someone explain please?

anyway, here is the thing that got me to register and post. i got new carpets installed today (hurricane damage...i've got a splitting headache already from the fumes) and when we moved ds bed, i found a detention slip under the matress. it was dated 6 weeks ago. obviously he hid it avoid (punishment? consequence? or is the consequence the punishment?) i called his teacher today and found out that he did serve it. detention is the same day that he stays late for a club he is in. so the devious lil bugger just didn't bother to tell me. btw, he apparently "rammed his rolling backpack into the legs of another student". i do not support the giving of standard detention for this. i think he should be made to write a letter of apology to the child, and then a list of other actions he could have taken to express whatever emotions caused him to do such a thing, actions that do not involve hitting another person. certainly not an hour of definitions. so to be honest, i am not thrilled that he served it. had i seen the notice, i would have contacted the school to share my opinion and try to restructure the (again...punishment? or consequence?). at any rate, he served it, and never planned to tell me. what should i do? should i even bother to bring it up?

i can think of a few reasons he hid this from me. one, he thought he would just go to chess club like nothing had happened, but didn't count on the teacher redirecting him to the detention room. two, there is a horrible gap in our mother child relationship combined with a horrible lack of trust in me on his part, and if i don't act quickly, i will lose him forever lol three, its just normal kid stuff. tell him i found it, talk to him about why it was wrong, hope like crazy he didn't tune me out immediately following "honey, we need to talk". another thing that bothers me is that, according to his teacher, when she found him heading for chess class, she asked him if he remembered his dtn, he told her "my mom can't pick me up late today". she said "aren't you headed for chess now?" and he didn't reply, just went to dtn. ok, he lied, but (i know you don't know him irl, but...) was that just an auto reponse to getting caught? is tha typical 9 yo stuff?

i called my xh, and of course i said "i have no intention of spanking him, so if you want to be included in this, help me think of something creative. we must match wits with the monster lol" and of course he said "what do you mean you won't spank him? that's why he doesn't obey and respect you!". so now i am at a total loss. please help! TIA

[Linda KS]

I would let him know that you know, but I wouldn't make a big deal of it. I suspect that you making a bigger deal of things than he feels they need to be it is the reason he didn't want you to know in the first place.

I would just talk to him about it, trying really hard not to make any value judgments. May be he just felt it could deal with it on his own and didn't want to discuss it with you. He served the detention -- I think he acted very responsibly. May be he knew you would contact the school and he would have found that embaressing. I think a lot of boys get to an age when they would rather deal with things themselves than have their mommies take care of them.

[blessedwithboys]

thanks linda!

it didn't occur to me that he would see it as being old enough to handle it on his own. i have to think about that one for a bit. the fact that he tried to go to his club instead of the dtn, and would have if the teacher hadn't caught him makes me wonder, though. and he hid the slip...i'm gonna chew over that theory. thanks for giving me such a thought provoking idea!

i may just let the whole thing go. his dad will come for him friday, though. if i even think he might spank him, i'll violate the court order and not let him out the door!

can someone address the whole punishment vs. consequence thing?

[Ruthla]

This is kind of a tough one....on the one hand, I don't tolerate lying...on the other hand, I would have supported the school's discipline if my child broke a rule at school. To me, that IS natural consequences: you break a rule at home, Mom deals with it, you break a rule at Grandma's house, Grandma deals with it, you break a rule at school, you deal with the school's justice system.

Are you certain he deliberately deceived you? I can certainly imagine how a 9yo could get busy and forget to show a piece of paper to his mom (was it under his bed or wedged between the mattress and the boxspring?)

I would probably handle this by sitting down and talking to my child, focusing on "I" statements. "I feel sad when you don't tell me what's going on." "I feel angry when I hear about this so long after it happened." "I feel hurt that you didn't feel safe enough to tell me about it right away." The goal is not to punish- but to make the child aware that you DO care and that his actions HAVE hurt you. Explain to him why you don't condone lying. As far as getting involved with school discipline- ask him how he feels about it. Would he rather serve the detention or get Mommy involved to try and change things? Respect his wishes, as long as it's not going to cause any damage (we're not talking about corporal punishment in schools here!!!)

Before calling a teacher/bus driver/etc at the school, I usually ask my child "Do you want me to call the school and try to straighten this out?" before proceeding. I've called the bus company on several occasions to complain about a bus driver. I've held my tongue on many occasions when one of them had a disagreement with a teacher or lunch aide. (Although I am getting the school psychologist involved against dd's wishes because of a consistent problem with completing written work in class, and her therapist and teacher taking radically different approaches. This is something she is incapable of handling on her own.)

GD isn't about 'ignoring' behavior; it IS discipline. At the same time, when you have your child in a school, you're letting go of a certain amount of control. You also need to "let go" of a lot of things simply by having an older child- respecting your child's individual needs means that a 9yo has more autonomy and independence than a 3yo- and 9yos should be free to make some of their own mistakes and deal with school problems on their own if they don't want you to interfere. You might need some practice in listening to him, helping him sort out his feelings, and then NOT taking action- just helping him figure things out on his own. Since you mentioned that you and your 9yo are not currently very close, you may need to learn some new ways of relating to him now that he's older and naturally wants more privacy.

About your conversation with your ex about discipline- think of it as a gentle reminder about WHY he's your ex and not your dh!!!!

[Dragonfly]

Here are a few good threads to get you started:

http://www.mothering.com/discussions...l+consequences

http://www.mothering.com/discussions...l+consequences

http://www.mothering.com/discussions...l+consequences

http://www.mothering.com/discussions...l+consequences

tell him i found it, talk to him about why it was wrong, hope like crazy he didn't tune me out immediately following "honey, we need to talk".

One thing you might try is asking him to talk. Tell him that you found it and let him know that you're concerned that he might have felt that he needed to hide it from you. Ask him if that's true and why. Be prepared to really listen and not dismiss his explanations. Ask him if he can think of a way that he might feel safe coming to you with something like that in the future... then go from there.

Hope that sort of helps.

[Ruthla]

Please be careful with court orders!!!!

Originally Posted by blessedwithboys

i may just let the whole thing go. his dad will come for him friday, though. if i even think he might spank him, i'll violate the court order and not let him out the door!

Please be careful with court orders!!! If your ex wants to be vindictive, he could file for a change in custody/visitation if you repeatedly deny visitation. What kind of discipline will he grow up with if he lives with a spanker and only gets visitation with you?!?!?!?

[captain optimism]

My ds is a lot younger, so I haven't been there done that. This is a big kid, so you can ask him questions directly. You can say, "I was moving your bed for the new carpeting, and I found a detention slip. I called your teacher and he said you had to serve a detention for ramming another child with your backpack. I want to know why you didn't say anything to me about this, tell me what you were thinking." You can make it explicit that you want to know about problems he has at school.

Your consequences (having him deal with the angry feelings and then write a list of possible other actions he could have done to address them instead of acting violently) are much harder than sitting in detention! He might also care more about what you think of his behavior than about what happens to him at school.

My niece (now she's 18!) used to lie to my SIL a lot. She was afraid of being hit but she was even more afraid of her mom being angry with her. The problem with punishment (and even consequences) is that children may not seek their parents as allies for help with misbehavior. I don't know what I would do in your shoes, but I do know that you shouldn't let this pass without comment, because that's not helpful.

[blessedwithboys]

i guess sarcasm is hard to convey in print. i was being silly when i said there is a gap in our relationship. we are very close. that's why i was surprised that he had hidden the dtn notice. and yes, it was hidden, stuck waaaay under the matress, on top of the boxspring. deliberately, not accidentally. i try hard not to be terribly subversive when the school gives him what imo is a dumb punishment. like, i won't let him skip the dtn, but rather than do definitions, i ask the teacher to assign a task that relates more to what he did, but i still make him stay after school and go to the dtn room. (generally...there were a few times when i talked w/him and got a feel that the teacher just was wrong, and spoke to her and we let him off the hook).

we have a tradition of laying in bed together while i nurse my toddler to sleep, then spend "talking time". whenever he asks for TT, i always give it to him. so tonight he asked for TT. after he covered what was on his mind, i brought up finding the slip. i said something like "i found xyz, and it made me feel sad that you didn't tell me what was going on. i talked to your teacher and she said xyz. do you understand why mommy is upset?" he was like, "huh? what dtn? i didn't lie!". yes, he knows what a lie is. so he lied about not knowing he lied. we got nowhere. so after talking in circles for 15 mins, i kissed him, brought him to his own bed, and just resolved to forget it ever happened. no lesson learned for ds.

about the court order...i get what you're saying, but there's no way i'd let him go KNOWING he was gonna get spanked. i'd just call the judges chambers 1st thing monday am and explain. i'm willing to take my chances on this!

[Linda KS]

This is my understanding of punishment vs. consequences. If someone else can explain it better, feel free to jump in:

I think that punishment is something an adult does to a child when they are "bad." It is often the same thing no matter what "bad" thing the child has done, be it a time out, a spanking, grounded, etc. The point of punishment is to make the child miserable so they will obey later.

Consequences can be either natural or logical. Natural consequences are things that will go wrong for our children just because of what they have already set in motion. We simply get out of the way and let the events play out. Many parents step in and rescue their children from the natural consequences of their actions because they don't want them to suffer, so using natural consequences is more about getting out of the way and NOT taking action. The natural consequence of what your son has done is the loss of some of your trust, which is a sad thing.

Logical consequences are something we impose on our children that are related to their actions. For example, if a child was neglecting their pet, getting rid of the pet would be a logical consequence. Logical consequences made sense when allowing the natural consequences to unfold would be to large or distant. Allowing a pet to slowly starve would be the natural consequences for a child refusing to feed it, but that would be cruel.

Does this help at all?

[Dragonfly]

Originally Posted by blessedwithboys

"i found xyz, and it made me feel sad that you didn't tell me what was going on. i talked to your teacher and she said xyz. do you understand why mommy is upset?"

Forgive me if I'm speaking out of place here, but I can kind of see why he lied about lying. Your statement made him responsible for your feelings. So, now he's not only dealing with your potential upset about the detention (maybe the reason for the first lie), but also facing being responsible for your sadness because of something else he did. That's a heavy load to bear and he apparently chose the escape route.

Maybe if you have the same conversation and make it about his motives/feelings and not about your feelings, he might be able to open more? Be concerned about his feelings, not sad about his actions. IMO, the former is a jumping off point for change & growth in your relationship while the latter is kind of a dead-end statement that conveys disappointment.

[captain optimism]

Originally Posted by blessedwithboys

i said something like "i found xyz, and it made me feel sad that you didn't tell me what was going on. i talked to your teacher and she said xyz. do you understand why mommy is upset?" he was like, "huh? what dtn? i didn't lie!". yes, he knows what a lie is. so he lied about not knowing he lied. we got nowhere. so after talking in circles for 15 mins, i kissed him, brought him to his own bed, and just resolved to forget it ever happened. no lesson learned for ds.

I was with you up until the part where you gave up. Why did you decide to forget all about this? That doesn't seem like it will help your son in any way! You are his mom, you know that he did something wrong and you are essentially letting him do it. Is that good for him? Why is it good for him? It seems bad to me, like he knows you know he did something wrong and you think he is too dumb to understand that. But he's not.

If he were hitting his sibling and you caught him and he said "I didn't hit him!" would you back down? I don't think you would, because it would be too important to you.

I would deal with this at a different time than right before bed. He needs to sleep and you need to sleep and you can't afford to be sufficiently persistent. I understand your reluctance to impose some kind of GD double-jeopardy (first he does the detention and then you impose some kind of creative "think about what you did" penalty) but on the other hand, he can't think that he can do bad things in school and you aren't going to know about it. (yes, I think ramming another kid with his backpack is a bad thing!) I would sit down with the piece of paper you found and be really clear that you want to know any time he is in trouble at school, whether he is at fault or someone else is. If you can't trust him, then tell him you are going to make regular phone calls to his teacher to check up on him, and follow through with that.

If the school thinks he's old enough to control his impulses and not hit other children, and they think he should be able to tell the truth to a teacher about where he is going, I don't think your expectations should be lower. Do you?

[LongLiveLife]

[QUOTE=Dragonfly]Forgive me if I'm speaking out of place here, but I can kind of see why he lied about lying. Your statement made him responsible for your feelings. So, now he's not only dealing with your potential upset about the detention (maybe the reason for the first lie), but also facing being responsible for your sadness because of something else he did. That's a heavy load to bear and he apparently chose the escape route.
QUOTE]
Okay, but isn't mom's sadness the natural consequence of ds's dishonesty? I would let my dc know my feelings. Lying hurts people, and kids should know this.
I just think letting it go teaches a dangerous lesson.

[Dar]

I'm one of those no-punishment folks (including punishments related to the offense, aka "logical consequences"). I think the easiest way to understand it is to think of how you would live with a roommate, or spouse. Somehow you manage to resolve issues without punishing them, right? The same works with children, especially children who aren't worried about being punished, and who see their parents as allies in problem-solving.

If my child went to school and had a problem there, I'd try to help her resolve it. If she got in trouble and didn't tell me about it, I would wonder how I'd given her the message that I wouldn't be on her side, and that's what I'd talk to her about when I told her I'd found the slup. I wouldn't call the teacher before talking to my child, though. My loyalty is to my child, not the school.

If she came to me with the detention slip you mentioned, I'd listen to her side of the story, commiserate about how detentions suck, and pick her up whenever she needed to be picked up. That would be it.

She'll always have the choice to go to school or not go to school, which may make a difference.

Dar

[mamaduck]

My son's school doesn't do punishments at all. But if he were in your son's shoes, I can picture him making the decision to deal with the situation on his own and not to tell me about it. We are very close, but sometimes he prefers to deal with something upsetting and get it over with, and not have to talk about it again.

I think if I found the slip, I would casually tell him, "Oh -- I found this, and I understand that you handled it and its over with. Did you want to talk to me about what happened? Did you feel that you were treated fairly?" I might also add, "This is the kind of thing I like to know about -- just so that I know how school is going. If it happens again, could you let me know about it?"

9 is a big kid. Big enough to have relationships with teachers that don't always need to involve mom.

[captain optimism]

***

[blessedwithboys]

those links helped me figure out the semantics of the whole pun/conseq thing. thanks.

dragonfly- of course you're not out of line! i asked for input. i'm thinking alot about your point. i really didn't mean to make him feel bad about my emotions, and i think i worded it slightly differently in person to him, but you're right to suggest that i could have only turned him off more to opening up to me.

otoh, i agree with LLL, too. so i guess there is a balance.

ds and i have a long standing tradition of doing all our "big" talks in bed at the end of the day. i try to wait for him to give me a cue that he is in a mood to be open and sharing b4 i bring up the heavy stuff, unless it is majorly urgent. i figured this was urgent in october, so i waited for him to express a readiness to be talkative. and i gave up b/c we were getting very frustrated. i put him to bed lovingly, w/ no hard feelings. we hugged and kissed and he wasn't visibly upset, just glad to be done with the convo! lol

if ds knows only one thing about me, its that i live to be an advocate for my kids! i fight tirelessly for what they need. i am very involved in his school and activities. so i didn't DO anything to make him think he couldn't come to me. in this case, i would have expected him to serve the dtn, but as i said, i would have asked the teacher to assign something realted to the infraction, not copying definitions. btw, he told me (and i DO know him, so i believe him) that he and the boy were playing but the teacher turned in time to see him and missed the rest. i believe him; he is still HN and very hyper active/impulsive. very much a physically oriented playing kind of kid. i'm thinking that he just did a "kid thing". not motivated by anything in particular, just something a 9yo boy would do. i wonder if i over-thought the whole thing?

dar, this is just mho, k? i would not feel comfortable equating my relationship w/my dc to my relationship a dp. someone has to be in charge in a family, right? that is the adults. adult partners are equal in authority and on the same "level" if you will. dp's do not "raise" each other as a parent raises a child. i am not responsible for the discipline of my (hypothetical) dp. i would not expect to punish him, nor would i allow him to punish me (insert "apply logical consequence" if it is your preference) i DO believe that dc are equally important in a family, and that their needs and desires and preferences should be given due consideration. i am responsible for the "raising" and discipline of my dc. i tell ds constantly that every choice has a consequence. make a good choice, get a good consequence, and vice versa. ( an example: i am a single mom, my time is limited. dinner is put on the table at the same time each night. i give the dc the opportunity to give input on the weekly menu. if they help, they eat food they like. if they don't, then i serve what i have chosen, and they can eat, or they can be hungry. they know that i offer a snack 30 mins b4 bed every night, but if they refuse dinner, esp if they wouldn't give suggestions for the menu, they cannot have a snack at say, 8pm, when the pre-bedtime snack is 8:30. this prolly sounds harsh, but i'm not talking about a baby that must nurse on demand. i talking about kids that are old enough to understand. so "good"= plan meals, eat, feel satisfied. "bad"=don't plan meals or don't eat, be hungry until next eating opportunity. i just CANNOT hand out snacks all evening when it was their choice in the first place to not eat at dinner time) life is all about every action having an equal (and sometimes opposite) reaction. how can i teach them to function on planet earth if they don't have some sense of that? i am a first-class negotiator, but i don't ALWAYS get my way. if dc are never given logical consequences (aka punishment) how do they learn to be functional adults? i am afraid that by only "talking it out" they do not get a sense of real life. as an adult you can not always expect every one else to be willing to sit down and "talk it out" with you. if you are habitually late for work, you lose your job. how likely is a boss to sit and talk over the problem, and ask about your current emotional state then offer to help you resolve your issues so you can get back on track to be on time the next day? doesn't it do a disservice to dc to never have a consequence? i'm not trying to pick on you, i guess your words just brought out some of these feelings and i needed to put them down. i'm trying to learn more is all.

and as for me saying i decided to drop it...well, for the moment, i was getting too frustrated to continue. he just kept insisting he didn't lie. i would like to resolve it, esp b4 his df arrives fri pm. mostly so ds can get some sort of lesson from this, but also b/c i don't want to lie to xh, but i cannot allow him to spank ds. i want to tell him truthfully that it has been handled. i might lie to him and tell him that i got confused and the slip was from a dtn that i knew about, and it was a mistake on my part. i really try to keep him involved; he is pretty good dad most of the time. he just thnks the "big things" deserve a spanking across the board. but i don't want ds to see me modeling lying. i'm gonna sleep on it!

[blessedwithboys]

mamaduck:

i just really mulled over your words. my instinct tells me this is not what happened with ds, but i'm gonna spend some time thinking of ways to ask him if that is what he felt. but i don't want to suggest it b/c he may use it to just back out of the whole situation. lol so i'll really think of just how to put it. thanks.

CO, i'd like to know what you had wanted to say. i'm really trying to learn and improve myself. pm me if you like. i won't be too offended by anything anyone says, after all, i came here admitting i was having a problem and i needed advice, right? so share!

[blessedwithboys]

ok, it didn't take long lol he was not trying to be mature and handle it on his own. he was sneaking and hiding. if it was the former, the dtn slip would have been left in his backpack or he would have just thrown it out. but he HID it under the matress. he hid it b/c he did not want me to find it and be upset that he got ANOTHER dtn already this year. he was not being bigman, he was sneaking.

[Dragonfly]

Originally Posted by LongLiveLife

Okay, but isn't mom's sadness the natural consequence of ds's dishonesty? I would let my dc know my feelings. Lying hurts people, and kids should know this.

Sadness is a valid feeling when you've discovered that your child hasn't been honest with you, for whatever reason, yes. The problem is that the focus here shouldn't be mom's sadness. The issue needs to be resolved so that mom and son can work together as a team, so whatever is keeping them from working together should be the focus.

Do I want my child to not keep things from me because he knows it would make me sad or do I want my child to not keep things from me because he feels he can always trust me to help him (as much or as little as he needs)? My child isn't lying to make me sad, so my sadness isn't really central to the issue.

I'm exhausted, so probably not explaining well. I'll try to revisit when my brain is fresh.... well, less stale, anyway. :LOL

[Viola]

Originally Posted by Dragonfly

Do I want my child to not keep things from me because he knows it would make me sad or do I want my child to not keep things from me because he feels he can always trust me to help him (as much or as little as he needs)? My child isn't lying to make me sad, so my sadness isn't really central to the issue.

I'm exhausted, so probably not explaining well. I'll try to revisit when my brain is fresh.... well, less stale, anyway. :LOL

I think you are making sense, but it sounds like you are arguing against the use of "I statements" in general. "I statements" are used to express feelings and keep us from saying "you did this or you did that." I'm trying to think of how to refocus the I statement so that it is less about the mom's feelings and more about the child, but it seems like a big part of any discussion is going to be about feelings about things. I guess she could say something like, "I feel worried that you didn't want to tell me about this because it is important to me that you feel that you can trust me" or something like that. Or, you could use the last half of the sentence without the feelings, I guess.

I hid a note from a teacher under a bed when I was 7 because I was so worried about how my mom would react. I knew that I did something wrong, but I just wanted to pretend like it didn't happen. In my case, I returned a library book in bad condition and my mom had to pay for a new copy, so the issue wasn't going to go away. I just wanted to believe it could.