Have you adopted a child with passive aggressive behaviors? It can be difficult not to get angry when the child breaks your things several times a week. Perhaps your child is one who seems to enjoy making special messes that you find in the morning. Have you ever noticed that your child’s passive aggressiveness seems to get worse, or episodes more frequent, after one of your angry outburst? Unfortunately, your righteous anger seems to feed their behaviors. Therefore, the secret to reducing or eliminating your adopted child’s passive aggressiveness is to minimize your reactions.... more

Did I mention that I hate school buses? For reasons I’m sure Freud would be able to explain, I have channeled all my anger, resentment and unresolved negativity about our due process court case with the school district onto school buses. The sight of them makes me cringe.

Today, after the debacle of an endocrinologist appointment, we returned to our neighborhood just in time to…you guessed it…get behind the school bus! Now ours is a large neighborhood, and we live in a cul-de-sac at the very back of it. The school bus makes no less than six stops along... more

Most days I’m able to get up and do my “mom thing” without much emotion or forethought. Today was like any other day, tooling along as I juggled convincing LuLu to do her composition assignment, letting the cable TV people in and out of the house to repair our service, and conferencing with LuLu’s teacher.

This afternoon we headed off to the long-awaited endocrinologist appointment (made 2 ½ months ago). I had major trepidation about this appointment, because I’d been forewarned by all the doctors “on our team” that endocrinologists are notoriously cautious... more

Now I’m not intending this to sound like whining, but it might. Instead, you have to understand that sometimes I just “observe” my life and have a vague recollection of what it would be like if I wasn’t parenting LuLu.

Yesterday LuLu, Kay and I had our semi-annual dental cleaning appointment. The girls’ appointment was scheduled for last week, while we were in Illinois; so we were fortunate that they had time to take them at the same time mine was scheduled on Monday. However, the way they had it set up was that Kay and I were to be cleaned at the same... more

I decided to try Julie’s reverse psychology, of prescribing the behavior that works so well with Lulu, on my teenage daughter. I told her that I had to go into work for a few hours. I knew she was going to want to take something while I was gone. I wanted her to know that it was ok for her to take whatever she wanted. I didn’t want to have that between us. I told her that it was causing a problem with our relationship and I didn’t want that to happen. She was quite upset by my telling her to go ahead and take whatever she wanted. She adamantly said that she didn’t want anything. She said... more

My daughter, as well as many other people in the world, cannot accept the blame for anything she does. Today, during a discussion about a school assignment that she didn’t turn in, she made the following statement. I have been asking God to help me, but he isn’t! I can tell you for sure, that her behavior will not change, if she doesn’t own her behavior. If she will not take responsibility for her actions then she cannot change them. This has been a major blocking point that has prevented my teenage daughter from improving her behavior.

She refuses to take responsibility.... more

We’re headed to Florida this morning, since Super Dad received a call last night that his father’s health is worsening. Knowing that he’s 91, the news is not shocking. But switching our plans and attention to Grandpa from LuLu is a bit challenging.

And so it is when parenting children with special needs. When “life happens” that doesn’t involve your special needs child, it really DOES involve your special needs child. Super Dad feels the need to visit his dad and to be there. So he needs to go. Oddly enough, he was scheduled to keep LuLu with him on Friday... more

This morning I was running a little late when the phone rang. Even though I didn’t have much time to talk, I answered it anyway when I saw who it was. It was an adoptive mom of six children with at least 10 years of experience parenting special needs children under her belt. We had run into each other at the dentist a couple of months ago and chatted for about 30 minutes about the similarities in our 10-year-old daughters’ behaviors. “Hi Julia, Do you think it would be alright to send my daughter to school with her glasses taped on her face?” I was a bit stunned by her question.... more

In the process of getting caught up in her history workbooks, our 10 year old decided to lag behind in her computer assigned history and science. Apparently, she thought I wouldn’t notice. However, if she considers the last three years of school then she would realize that I would notice, and that I would care. She is a very bright girl so I am not exactly sure why she keeps making these choices, unless it is passive aggressive behavior. I asked her to work on catching up her computer schoolwork while I was delivering mail so that I could have my computer when I got... more

Taking LuLu shopping is always an adventure. You’d think after being in our family for nine years, I’d be able to successfully do grocery shopping with her in tow and not much difficulty. So yesterday we headed out to gather up the food for our party on Sunday. LuLu has taken to wandering off, a behavior that started about six months ago. So I set the expectation up front, before we ever got into the store that she must stay in the same row of the store as I was in or shopping was over. (Yes, I’m prepared to abandon the shopping cart if need be…and I have done... more