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| Clark, learning here that manual labor can be fun. |
At our house, you hear us say things like these:
- We would rather hear bad news than no news at all.
- Do you think I would keep my job if I lied to my boss?
- Tell us the truth, and we’ll reduce the punishment. Lie to us and we’ll find out anyway and raise it.
- If you lied like that to your friends, you’d have no friends.
Our system works well with our non-ADHD children. Of course, they all believe they are smarter than us and will never get caught. We must remain accountable for involved parenting, for setting up the structure of rules that motivate the kids to be accountable. Showing up at home or an event earlier than expected or when not expected at all, just once or twice, works wonders. Requiring receipts with change, like an employer would, encourages honesty. Keeping the phone numbers of their friends’ parents in your mobile phone contacts makes the kids sit up a little straighter. And friending all their friends on MySpace and Facebook works, too — over time they forget you are even there. We've even threatened them with requiring photographic proof via text message of their location, and I am not above GPS monitoring if we learn we have issues, although we haven't had to go there so far.
All bets are off, though, when it comes to lying and the ADHD child. I am a firm believer that lying is a symptom of ADHD, part of the “the only time frame is NOW or HUH????” aspect of their brains. When our son takes his meds, his truthtelling (and helpfulness around the house) shoots up. Without the meds…whoa, Nellie. Clark only started taking medication in 2009. Pre-2009 was not so pretty.
A few weeks before school was out for summer during the pre-medication days, Clark (of Lacrosse Gloves Make Sense to Me, fame) got a note from his theater teacher that said he was failing the class because he hadn’t turned in an assignment. The note required a parent’s signature.
Clark returned the note to his teacher signed Susie Jackson, and there ain’t no Susie Jackson in his family. The theater teacher emailed me to gently inquire/inform. Clark earned himself two hours outside labor every day for the rest of the summer, and zero tolerance on untruthfulness in any form, as a consequence.
Note: while lying may be a symptom of ADHD and while we try to guide him in a positive way about truthtelling, turning in a falsified note to a teacher raised the ante.
A few weeks later, my husband Eric casually mentioned to me that Clark needed to bring Eric’s mountain bike home from Clark’s father’s house, as it had been gone from our house for two weeks since Clark last borrowed it. If you wanted to be a stickler about it — always a bad place to go with Clark — we forbade Clark to use Eric’s bike since Clark left it in the driveway repeatedly despite instruction to bring it inside. Thieves already removed my daughter Susanne's bicycle from her father’s driveway. And he lives in a nice neighborhood. Our cars had been jacked twice in our driveway that year, and our neighborhood is super nice, too. So, we can’t leave anything in driveways or the cars.
ANYWAY, Clark said he didn’t take the bicycle. He claimed to have looked for it, and he promised us it wasn’t in his dad’s garage.
Well, we knew better than to leave it at that. So we asked Susanne, his younger sister by 1.5 years.
“When was the last time you saw Eric’s bike, and where?”
Susanne innately knows where everything is, partly due to this “knowing” being her special sixth sense skill, partly due to hyperawareness, and partly because she is a nosey little devil.
Without hesitation, Susanne said, “Clark rode it over to Dad’s.”
Hmmmm, Susanne never errs about where things are, and she had no reason to think her answer would achieve the coveted result of getting Clark in trouble, yet.
Back to Clark…who now admitted, “Yes, I took the bike. But I lost it.”
Lost it? LOST IT? He swore he had no idea how he lost it or where he was when he noticed he lost it.
ARGH. So, do we punish for lying, or “reward” by withholding punishment because our ADHD, unmedicated child chose truthfulness (“I lost the bike”) on the second go-round? We decided just to have him work off the value of the bike in more outside labor over the summer. This equated to 35 hours of outside labor in the Houston heat. Added to his penalty for the falsified note, he now had FOUR hours a day. He agreed to this as fair and got started that day.
His three parents (Mom, Step-Dad, Dad) wrung their hands and worried, but ultimately decided that our sedentary computer-gaming boy needed the exercise, and both father and step-father reported that they spent their summer days at his age performing manual labor outside for their fathers. So, no cruel and unusual punishment. I was actually more concerned about the impact on us of having to enforce the work rule. This was going to be tough.
But we are not yet through with this tale of woe. We still aimed to find this bicycle and bring it back to its mother ship — our athlete-family’s game room houses seven bicycles on wall hooks, and it looks sorta like the pods in Alien. Clark’s dad offered continued help on his end.
Thennnnnnnn, days later, Clark called from his father’s house.
“Welllllllll Mom, I looked harder in Dad’s garage and found it.”
OK, how big, you may ask, is this garage? Is it like the multi-acre museum/lab in Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, or is it just a standard garage? Is it cluttered like Eric’s great-aunt’s house was after 40 years of collecting magazines and action figurines, or more like most people’s messy but functional garages? The answer: standard two car garage, super-neat.
“OOOOKKKKK,” I said to prompt him to speak further.
Before I could even finish getting the word out, I heard his father in the back ground.
“Clark, own it.”
Uh oh.
And Clark says, “Uh, I left it at school and Dad found it chained to the bike rack up there.”
School had been out for 2 weeks at this point!!
The dreaded untruthfulness had raised its head again, while zero tolerance was in force. And why would any child agree to 35 hours of outside labor in the summer in Houston rather than just going to look for the darn bike? His dad ultimately is the one who found it! This, my friends, is pre-medication Clark.
For the last lie, we canceled Clark’s computer camp. That caused a 6.7 magnitude Clark-quake. So, we sent him to see my parents for a few weeks to cool off.
His grandparents live on a farm. He visited them for two weeks, and the penalty remained in force there. During week one, he assisted my father, and it was a great experience for them both. See picture of him learning to drive the big tractor, which he used to cut fields of grass and mow the four wheeler path. He also helped his grandmother pack up the home of his great grandmother for another week. His paternal grandfather came to visit him in Houston when Clark returned, and Clark assisted his for an additional two weeks. The work and the bonding were a great experience for grandparents and grandchild.
That got us through half the summer.
The rest is a blur, but the yard sure looked nice.
Do our kids lie to us? Well, I once was a kid, and folks, I lied. I assume my kids get away with lying to us, too. We do the best we can, though, and they’re awfully good kids, even that darn Clark. Did I mention how much we love his ADHD medication?
The bike is hanging on its rack in our game room, no worse for the wear.
HOW ABOUT YOU? What works to achieve truthfulness in your house, especially with your neuro-atypical kids?
Until next time,
Pamela Hutchins aka Clark's Mom
Pamela Fagan Hutchins writes the Clark Kent Chronicles on parenting ADHD wonder kids, thanks to the crash course given to her by her ADHD son and his ADHD father. She focuses on the post-elementary school years. Visit her blog, Road to Joy, but hang on for the ride as she screws up her kids, drives her husband insane, embarrasses herself in triathlon, and sometimes writes utter nonsense.