Liar!

My son has started lying lately.   Both he and his sister have been capable of lying for years now but in general they’re pretty honest children.   Their lying mostly consisted of bending things in their direction.  But my son has started lying in a different direction.   He’s hearing things we say he can, can’t or must do and then later saying we never said that or directly defying us with his actions.

Today he’s highly disregulated.   He’s spent a lot of the day watching YouTube videos of Fortnite.   The channel he’s watching is clean language and content-wise and the videos are of challenges or experiments they’re trying out with the different items in the game.   I’ve sat with him and been interested myself.

My husband is leaving to go visit his parents for three days this afternoon and to celebrate my father-in-law’s eightieth birthday.   My children were tasked with making a meaningful card for their grandfather before their father left for the airport.

My son had a very difficult time doing this.   He first tried to do something that was quick, taking only two minutes, so he could get back to his video watching.   The thing is, he loves his grandfather and if he was taking the Adderall today he would most likely spent two hours making a beautiful card with drawings—but without the medication, he’s just not able to.

There were some words exchanged in which he accused me of not telling him things—things he had heard and agreed to—so he lost screen time.   He went into the bonus room to spend time working on a card but was barely able to complete any content.   I offered the Adderall but he didn’t want to take it.   Our friend who is a physician stopped by and said the medication can make them feel differently and he might not have wanted to take it for that.

My husband came home and we had two more incidents where my son started to scream at us, saying we were the liars while not owning up to his own behavior and words.   He was so vile to his father that I took him to the front door and told him he wasn’t allowed inside for a while.

That last bit was strategic because next door they have a bounce house inflated, the weather is nice and his friends are outside.   In just a few minutes he calmed down and started playing with his sister.

I don’t think I handled it in the best way.   As in I’m sure there is a better way to work with him when he’s like this.   I’ll talk to Liz about it on Monday and see what she recommends.

The Big Boy Update:  My son likes lots of cereals mixed together when he eats cereal.  Only he’s found a new favorite: Captain Crunch.  It’s always been one of my favorites too.  He likes it with milk in the bowl instead of milk on the side.   It’s so crunchy, we agreed.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has been upset all weekend about their class picture day on Friday.   She dearly loves her teacher but something happened where she was being asked to smile (which is very hard for her to understand how to do) and “got in trouble” for not doing so.   She even talked to my mother and father about it last night.   I sent an email to her teacher to let her know because I know she would have never meant to upset my daughter.   I’m sure things will be fine tomorrow, but for right now, my daughter doesn’t want to go to school ever again and doesn’t like her teacher.