Topix Chitown Regulars

cycle003 wrote:

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When some Floridian mentioned taking multiple showers I was thinking it seemed excessive (how easily we forget), but what did I do last week? Took multiple showers many of the days.

This past weekend was SO hot and humid. It was bad. I am taking my daughter to the beach Friday (last day of school)- I hope we survive!!! I even bougth beach chairs the other day!!!

Sublime1 wrote:

Seems to me that you guys are teaching her that she can disregard the rules of your house with impunity.
If sending her back to her folks isn't something you and J can stomach, I suggest you figure out some other form of negative consequence with teeth, i.e. that will bother her, that you can stomach and enforce it.

Yeah. I don't have a problem scraping up all they shyte on the floors (besides the garbage) and putting it in to a bag and either tossing it or making her buy stuff back, piece by piece, but she has a job and graduation money that she could just go out and buy more of whatever. I don't think it would have the punch it had when my parents did it to my sister when she was 10 or 12 or whatever. I'm thinking if we sent her home just for the summer (and she's at camp for *most* of it), she might get a new appreciation for the rules at our house, and we could let her stay with us on school breaks and next summer, etc.

Stina wrote:

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I agree. She has to endure some kind of consequence.

Maybe have her wear a diaper and run around the neighborhood, like that girl in MN was forced to do. Bwahahaha.

:p

RedheadwGlasses wrote:

I have no advice, Matilda, because you can't let her live like that in your home, but you can't let her live with her parents, because that's the worse of the two evils.
Maybe put a tent up in the back yard.

No way, not the backyard! We're just starting to really make that area look nice.:-)

I feel like nothing short of standing there with her while she cleans the room and pointing out where each specific item needs to go and then inspecting it every single day (remember, she's hiding stuff now) is going to work. She's 18, J and I both work full time, we don't have time for that kind of helicoptering. There has to be some level of trust and right now, there's not any.

Water boarding?

Sublime1 wrote:

Seems to me that you guys are teaching her that she can disregard the rules of your house with impunity.
If sending her back to her folks isn't something you and J can stomach, I suggest you figure out some other form of negative consequence with teeth, i.e. that will bother her, that you can stomach and enforce it.

edogxxx wrote:

<quoted text>Yep, that's how I roll, baby! I wonder if Jess would have more sympathy if I was a woman trying to get an RO. Getting denied would be a travesty. Because I'm a man, I'm wasting the court's time.

You are kidding, right? If you were a woman saying "I wasn't scared, I just wanted to play his game because he was annoying me. I hasn't bothered to use my words like a big girl yet," then I probably would have come down HARDER on you.

Oh, and grounding sucks more for us than it does for her.

Is she a camp counselor? If so, she is probably not going to come back the same person at the end of the summer.
She will have grown up a little bit.

Just something to consider.

Matilda77 wrote:

Kid is straight out of Hoarders. If she puts something somewhere and doesn't need it, it stays there until she is asked specifically and often multiple times to clean it up/move it/throw it out. It doesn't occur to her to take care of her belongings or things she uses around the house. She can look at a pile of junk and we can ask her to throw out the garbage, donate what she doesn't use, and put away stuff she wants to keep, and maybe two things will get taken care of. She'll buy food, say, a pint of ice cream, eat half and then just leave it in the freezer indefinitely, even after being asked to clean out the things she has bought that she isn't going to finish.

Maybe you could find a therapist who specialized in hoarding for her? Just a thought...

Matilda77 wrote:

She'll buy food, say, a pint of ice cream, eat half and then just leave it in the freezer indefinitely, even after being asked to clean out the things she has bought that she isn't going to finish.

You've been painting a compelling picture of her, with me shaking my head at each detail...til we came to this one. What's the problem with this? She eats half and puts it in the freezer? And? Its not gonna go bad. We've got probaly 4 quarts of icecream in the freezer right now. One of them is opened. There is no timetable for finishing it. It will stay until someone gets a craving for ice cream. I don't understand why you think she should throw it away.

Just tell her that if doesn't straighten up she will have to go stay with uncle Edog and then show her his Facebook page and his comments here. If that doesn't scare her straight, nothing will

Matilda77 wrote:

J and I are going to have to decide what to do with SIL. We took her to camp yesterday, after giving her a nice loooong list (but easily completeable in the 2 days she had--hell, it was maybe 2 hours of work) of chores to do before leaving. We were in a rush to get out the door and stupidly did not check her room until we got back. Garbage everywhere, hidden food. I pulled back the comforter on her bed and there were open cookies, chips, a toothbrush, a dirty sock and a bunch of other things. It was so gross. Open candy bar on the floor under her bed. J had told her that if we had any more problems in this regard, we were sending her home, and I said as much last night when we discovered this. But...I don't know. It's *really* not a good environment for her over there. Torn and conflicted. I'm sure J and I will discuss heavily in the next week and a half that she's gone.

Matilda77 wrote:

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No way, not the backyard! We're just starting to really make that area look nice.:-)
I feel like nothing short of standing there with her while she cleans the room and pointing out where each specific item needs to go and then inspecting it every single day (remember, she's hiding stuff now) is going to work. She's 18, J and I both work full time, we don't have time for that kind of helicoptering. There has to be some level of trust and right now, there's not any.

So have daily inspections. Multiple times. You on't have time to stand and monitor, but surely you have time after work to review what she was supposed to do and verify it was done right or spotlight that it wasn't done or it was done wrong and have her correct it right then. And then you go watch tv or something while she's doing it.

And yeah, what sub said. You need a punishment with teeth. But considering she's gone soon, I don't know what will have teeth. Taking away her freedom won't work like on other kids, since you said she's happy to follow you around the house.

Matilda77 wrote:

Oh, and grounding sucks more for us than it does for her.

I am confused though. YOu are discussing sending her back home, but when would that be? She's a camp counselor for the summer then going to college. So this potential deportation would be for how long? How much time is there between end of camp and going off to college?

Jess in NJ wrote:

Is she a camp counselor? If so, she is probably not going to come back the same person at the end of the summer.
She will have grown up a little bit.
Just something to consider.

Yeah, but it's her second year doing it. From all accounts, she did well there *but* promptly 'forgot' house rules, seriously, the first weekend she came back home. Like, breaking down boxes to put in the recycling. "Oh, we didn't have to do that at camp, so I got out of the habit." You were gone FIVE DAYS! You should have remembered immediately when ALL THE OTHER BOXES IN THE BIN WERE FLAT! It's just pure laziness when she can get away with it.

Matilda77 wrote:

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Yeah. I don't have a problem scraping up all they shyte on the floors (besides the garbage) and putting it in to a bag and either tossing it or making her buy stuff back, piece by piece, but she has a job and graduation money that she could just go out and buy more of whatever. I don't think it would have the punch it had when my parents did it to my sister when she was 10 or 12 or whatever. I'm thinking if we sent her home just for the summer (and she's at camp for *most* of it), she might get a new appreciation for the rules at our house, and we could let her stay with us on school breaks and next summer, etc.

Well, to be fair, and I mean this with all due respect, and to be helpful, part of the problem in this has been you and J, it seems. You’ve done what many folks do when raising kids. They don’t enforce consequences.

Sometimes that can be due to just plane laziness, but that’s not the case in yours and J’s situation. Rather you guys have made the classic mistake of threatened a consequence that you don’t have the stomach to enforce. You also only have one consequence, and its a nuclear consequence. There's no need to have one and only one consequence that is so severe.

I like to have a range of consequences from mild (time out, no dessert) to more severe (up in your room, no tv at night and/or no sleep over on the weekend). I like to start with a mild form of consequence and if they don’t behave themselves, the consequences increase in severity. This has been the way it's always been. So, my kids know this. They know when they get put on time out, if they don't stop the nonsense, it's only going to get worse.

So, what you two need to do is figure out a punishment or a range of punishments that you can stomach enforcing and that will have teeth and act as a stick so to speak.

The buy back thing is alright, but maybe just cut to the chase. Maybe just tell her she has to pay you 25 bucks a week or whatever, if her room isn’t kept clean every SINGLE day and if it happens more than one day a week, every additional day it’s an extra 10 or 15 or 25 bucks or whatever amount you feel is likely to produce a change in her behavior. Be clear about what you expect in terms of cleanliness. This will require you to check daily, but I suspect once she steps out of line and doesn’t keep it clean and you actually enforce the consequence, she’ll step in line. It's best to be sort of strict at first, as well, until she learns that you mean business.

The hardest thing for me to do is to enforce consequences with my kids, sometimes. As hard as it is for me to do so, it’s the best thing I can do for them. The worst thing IMO, that you can do with a kid is allow them to disobey reasonable rules and merely threaten them with consequences that are never enforced.

So, you and J should sit down and figure out some consequences and try enforcing consequences first, and then if she won’t respond, then send her back. I bet you she will respond.

Mister Tonka wrote:

<quoted text>You've been painting a compelling picture of her, with me shaking my head at each detail...til we came to this one. What's the problem with this? She eats half and puts it in the freezer? And? Its not gonna go bad. We've got probaly 4 quarts of icecream in the freezer right now. One of them is opened. There is no timetable for finishing it. It will stay until someone gets a craving for ice cream. I don't understand why you think she should throw it away.

After like 6 months and it's basically a goo covered freezer burned icicle? I'm not talking days or weeks. She's not *ever* going to finish it, she's already gone and bought more that she hasn't finished. She's got four pints in there right now that haven't been touched in months. And even if it *was* still good, we don't have that kind of freezer space to just indefinitely keep everything she brings home.

She does the same with perishable food. It'll rot there in the fridge until you specifically say "Throw out the fried rice from two weeks ago, before it sprouts legs and walks off."

Mister Tonka wrote:

<quoted text>I am confused though. YOu are discussing sending her back home, but when would that be? She's a camp counselor for the summer then going to college. So this potential deportation would be for how long? How much time is there between end of camp and going off to college?

She comes home every week or so on the weekends, with a couple of two week long stints where she stays there. It's like 5 days on, 2 or 3 days off for the most part. Then she'd have about 3 weeks between camp and school starting.

I dunno, I don't know what else to do. And that was the threatened punishment, which she obviously didn't take seriously.

Sublime1 wrote:

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Maybe have her wear a diaper and run around the neighborhood, like that girl in MN was forced to do. Bwahahaha.
:p

It would get her attention!!!

Timmy wrote:

Just tell her that if doesn't straighten up she will have to go stay with uncle Edog and then show her his Facebook page and his comments here. If that doesn't scare her straight, nothing will
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Tried telling hr that. Guess she's not too keen on the idea. I'd set that girl straight!

cycle003 wrote:

Last week's Dear Prudie Live:
http://live.washingtonpost.com/dear-prudence-...

Chock full of extreme situations!