Christmas Overload
by Holly
We have Santa Dog instead of Santa Claus ( our dog dressed up) and he brings presents one at a time, randomly throughout December. It's fun for the kids because it is always a suprise when Santa Dog shows up, and they can handle one present at a time. Santa Dog also has a helper, Little Elf Quin. He is our other dog who dresses up like an elf.
The presents the kids leave laying around in hopes of "losing" them, get wrapped up again and redelivered by Santa Dog at some other time. The ones they break, we just throw away and talk about how sad it is they don't feel they deserve nice things.
On Christmas morning they get one toy and some socks or something useful. That's because Christmas day is usually pretty terrible here, and quite frankly, we take the tree down on Christmas night to get the holiday over with.
We usually hold onto the gifts from other people until after christmas. We give them to the kids one at a time, over a period of a few weeks.
Try this the next time your kid is acting really horrible. Give him a present and tell him no matter how horrible he acts, you just love him so much that you can't resist giving him a present. In fact, tell him he will only get presents if he is really horrible. Then demand bad behavior. Sometimes I tell my kids I like it when they are bad because they are letting me know they need a mom, and it makes me feel good to see how much they need me. When he is good ( just to be defiant) give him a present and say "looks like you just can't follow directions." We always tell our kids to feel free to make good decisions or bad decisions, because it makes no difference to us. We are the best parents in the world, so we are happy and able to deal with whatever they decide. That seems to take away their joy in trying to annoy us with bad behavior.
We have had many problems with presents. They break them, lose them immediately, act bad so we won't give them presents. It got easier when we stopped relating presents to good behavior. It also got easier the more we drilled into them that the only one who was going to feel bad from their bad behavior was them. The best thing we ever did was learn to pretend that bad behavior doesn't bother us. RAD kids act bad to upset you. When you don't get upset, it isn't worth the trouble for them. That is why demanding bad behavior works with my kids. If I am asking for them to be bad, they will want to make me mad by not doing what I ask, so they will then be good.
If they continue to be bad, I thank them for following directions and doing things mom's way. Then I go on and on about what a good boy/girl they are and how much I love them. This actually will (eventually) reinforce good behavior because they will start to feel good about themselves for being able to follow directions and hearing such loving words of praise from mom.
RAD is strange, isn't it?
