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  #46  
Old 11-29-2004, 12:05 PM
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Ok but my stock is running low hopefully I have it. The only mistake I made with that thing was getting rid of it to soon.

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  #47  
Old 11-30-2004, 01:20 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Plantman
I asked him about it yesterday and he replied that he can't learn from a parent. He would be better learning from someone his own age.?????????
Sounds like he has given up on parents. This may be a good point to bring up with a professional. Communication is a two-way process. Sounds like it stopped working a long while ago.
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  #48  
Old 11-30-2004, 01:32 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TwitchKitty
Sounds like he has given up on parents. This may be a good point to bring up with a professional. Communication is a two-way process. Sounds like it stopped working a long while ago.
Like I said earlier, we had a long talk yesterday and he actually went and applied at a blockbuster today. He also will take a bus to a mall tomorrow and asked his Mom to pick him up when she gets out of work.

He coudln't go to the mall today cause he had some homework to do. His choice not mine. He also asked me if I could take him for his license, so maybe adults are not so bad after all!

We'll see.
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  #49  
Old 11-30-2004, 01:52 AM
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Two words... Recruiters Office...


Really.
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  #50  
Old 11-30-2004, 03:06 AM
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You have a situation on your hands. Hope it works out for all of you

I have 2 children, 21 and 19. I had professional help rasing them, in the person of my wife. She is an Art Educatoin Major and really knows what kids need and want. She taught me how to have the patients to be a Father
I would recommend professional help. For both your stepson and the 2 parents he has, you and your wife. Either a group or a professional is not going to solve the problem. They are going to provide the tools for you 3 to solve the problem.
Depression does sound like a possibility but I'm wondering if he has become depressed due to a lack of accomplishment. You try something and fail and go on to the next item and fail and after a while you figure why try??
This is a conditional depression that can be stopped, but only with hard work and small goals.
I agree with webwrench's idea that maybe your stepson needs small goals and an advocate, that would be you and your wife, there to help him. At that age, life can be overwelming especially if you have not accomplished a lot in your years. And now you want him to take on the world, quite a lot of things all at once. He may be overwelmed with it all, and doesn't know how to get out of this rut.
This will require special guidance by either a patient stepfather and mother or a Professional. My son, 21, is very succesful at what he is trying at this point in his life, but at times I still see that he needs guidance and a person who can lead him through new accomplishments ( And boys in general will not talk about their fears and insecurities. We usually have to pull it out of our son, whereas our daughter will talk your ear off.) . I think we all need help and guidance at times no matter what our age. Maybe your step son needs guidance. Firm and directing, but gentle guidance. By posting on this forum it shows that you care and will find the right tools to undertake the job.

You and your wife will have to sit down with him. Plan what will be done and establish some kind of timetable for it. Be flexible with the timetable between you and your wife but let him think it is firm. Get the drivers permit, help him with the studying. But foremost LET HIM KNOW THAT YOU ARE THERE FOR HIM. Not to do it for him but to help him and teach him. My wife and I did this with our kids school. We checked their homework everynight. Didn't do it for them but checked it and had them correct the errors and understand WHY it was wrong. This taught them study habit patterns that they use to this day. When my son was in 10th grade he had studying figured out, no more homework checking and he got straight A's. He had developed the skill of studying, what to study, and how much so he could maintain the A's. My daughter did this in 11th grade.
You need to work with your stepson to develop these skills of obtaining goals. What it takes and how much work to put into each one.
Try to remove yourself from the emotional attachment we get with our children. Just do the task of teaching him. This is a technique used in the Boy Scouts. Provide a direction with established rules that are known and followed by everyone. Each Scout developed at his own pace.
Most important is for you and your wife to have a unified front. Follow the rules and provide consistant guidance to him. Life is easier when we know the rules and they don't change. So its up to you two to provide this consistant leadership.

Music. You have mentioned this numerous times. Either it is an escape, which is common for teenagers, or he has a true love of music. Search out avenues for him to express his love of music. He does not have to be a Beethoven. There are plenty of jobs in the music industry that do not involve playing instruments. See how far his interest goes. Contact a radio stattion about a tour and talk to some people in the industry with him. A possibility is the High School music teacher, I know he won't like that but it may be a source of information for you.

Again, let me say I do think you need professional help to find the right direction for the 3 of you. Let the professionals help you find the right tools to get your stepson moving in the right direction. The High School may be able to get you going, as a start, in the right direction. They face this all the time.

Dave
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  #51  
Old 12-01-2004, 04:44 PM
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Plantman;

The military is no option, they won't take him. The pot thing sounds like a real possibility. If he is going down the street to a friends house for a 'little' while, that is enough time to smoke a joint. You won't necessarily smell it on him either.

My advice is to search his room, with his consent and with him present, after you've had the sit down 'talk' about pot with you and your wife. If he's smoking pot and it is in your house tell him that you are calling the police. (Call your lawyer first). Substances like pot can cause depression, btw. If he's smoking a lot of pot, then he needs to be in rehab. And if he refuses the rehab, then he should be out of your house. At the very least, there is only one way to deal with substance abuse and that is confrontation. Period. There are different methods of confrontation, and there are people more expert on that subject than I, but you owe it to him to do this, if he is an abuser.

I wish you the best.

DS
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  #52  
Old 12-01-2004, 05:21 PM
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I would be cautious about implementing some of the, uh, more robust measures advocated here, there is the danger your stepson will hate you for the rest of his life if it goes wrong. There is scope for developing some real resentment, on his part, if you are seen to be exercising power or control over him unjustly, as he sees it. I would leave his pot alone, so long as he is not stoned 24/7, in the same way that you would leave the occasional beer alone. Teenagers can be *********s, I was, and I suspect most of us were not too sensible at least, it's natural, and he may well develop out of it naturally too. Just a few thoughts.
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  #53  
Old 12-01-2004, 06:29 PM
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Being a bit closer to 18 I can tell you he may be depressed and all that but he needs a serious kick in the ass. It's not like this is a new situation. You've tried working with him and done all you can. I'm not sure if there's such a thing as a military college but that's where he belongs... in an extremely structured environment where they'll tear him down and build him back up as a new person with motivation and self respect. Failing that... I agree with what's been said above. Set a date by which he has to have found a job AND move out. Far too easy to skate by when he's under your roof. If he's not appreciative of what he has... time to go. He can go sponge off his father.
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  #54  
Old 12-01-2004, 10:59 PM
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Sounds like the kid is respectful, well mannered and has great potential.
You mentioned learning issues. This may be at the root of the whole problem. Low self esteem, under acheveing, depression, ect...
I highly reccomend you check out Dr. Mel Levine

http://www.allkindsofminds.org/

and read his books "The Myth of Lazyness" "A Mind at a Time" and check out the web site carefully, listen to the clips, etc...
I have "A mind at a time" on CD and will send you a copy if you're interested.

Excerpt from "The Myth of Lazyness"
Laziness is not an innate trait. We all are born with a drive to produce, and like saplings growing in an orchard, we have within us the resources to bear fruit, to be and to feel useful and effective. Most of our own success and that of our children is experienced and demonstrated through accomplishments, the attainments of our heads and our hands, the sum total of our school, family, and career contributions. From early in childhood on through our adult years, we want to show what we can do. We gain energy and feel good about ourselves whenever our personal output wins the approval, the acceptance, the respect of our friends, our families, our bosses (or teachers), and, most of all, our own self-critical selves. To feel fulfilled in life, it helps immeasurably if you can take pride in your work.

Some individuals somehow, somewhere lose momentum; in the pursuit of accomplishment they fail to produce; they stall out. And often they face accusations of laziness. In truth, through no fault of their own, they suffer from hidden handicaps that disrupt and interrupt their output. They are not lazy; they have output failure.

The power and the vulnerability of the drive to be productive are frequently neglected. I believe that adults and children alike feel that a large part of who they are comes from what they do, particularly what they have produced or are producing, and what they aspire to achieve in the future. Casualties result when individuals have output failure and come to believe that their work is worthless and perhaps never will be worthy. Our society pays an exorbitant price to restore their mental health, to punish them within our justice system, to deal with their underemployment, and to cope with the many other negative effects of their thwarted drives toward success.

WHEN WORK IS WORKING

On the positive side, there are countless diverse ways to savor recognition and personal satisfaction from high-quality output. Garnering rave reviews for your leading role in a musical comedy, scoring a hat trick in hockey, getting mostly A’s on your term papers in religious studies, raising a well-adjusted child, and successfully replacing the gasket in a car engine are among the varied instances of output success. No one can emerge productive in all fields of endeavor, any more than any single piece of high-tech apparatus can accomplish all of the chores around the house. Each of us is destined to exhibit one or more personal forms of productivity. What matters is whether the necessary mind and body assembly lines are operating the way they should. Are you doing what must get done? Are the resulting products of sufficiently high quality? Are you generating enough output or are you putting forth a feeble trickle of inadequate stuff? In other words, is your work working?

THE EASILY AND OFTEN MISUNDERSTOOD BREAKDOWNS: OUTPUT VIRUSES

Thanks to progress in the neurosciences and related fields, we have learned a great deal about brain wiring, including how, when, and where it operates. As a developmental-behavioral pediatrician specializing in learning differences, I have spent three decades concentrating on the varied and often subtle breakdowns within a developing brain that trip up basically bright children during their school years. In particular, I have studied the wide spectrum of dysfunctions, the very numerous discrete weaknesses that deprive so many students of success. Kids afflicted with these difficulties are the innocent victims of their own wiring. They have specific shortcomings in areas of the mind that control essential aspects of memory, language, attention, motor function, and other processes required for mastery of school subjects. The gaps in these areas are called neurodevelopmental dysfunctions. Some are inborn, some acquired. Some are mainly genetically caused; some stem principally from environmental conditions. But most dysfunctions are mysterious, of unknown origin. I have described the wide array of these heartbreaking limitations in my book “A Mind at a Time.”

Many students wrestle with learning problems that are totally transparent. They manifest obvious trouble becoming good readers, mastering computations in mathematics, succeeding on scholastic aptitude tests, or surviving the social demands of the school day. But there is a substantial group with hidden miswiring, and they have been woefully neglected and misunderstood. These are individuals who struggle with output failure, a phenomenon that can decimate their productivity in school and cause some to fail in the workplace as adults.

At first glance, kids and grown-ups with output failure may seem entirely competent — so much so that they tantalize us with their abundant intellectual promise. But then that promise isn’t kept. Often these individuals absorb and process information well; they learn, but they don’t produce. They keep promising and intending to do things, but they seldom come through. In most instances, they can read far better than they can write, and they can interpret information but somehow can’t put what they learn to productive use. It seems as if they have working disabilities; they are unable to get their minds to work! So their intake greatly exceeds their output, and they disappoint themselves even more than they disappoint others. People say glibly that they are not “living up to their potential.”

THE ORIGIN OF THE TERM ‘OUTPUT FAILURE’

In the early years of my clinical practice, I was struck by the sizable number of children referred to me who learned more effectively than they worked. I saw a particular concentration of such students cropping up during their middle school years — when there often is a dramatic upsurge in the demands for high output of high quality (particularly in the form of writing). These students had in common their inability to meet the intensified production demands. They became less and less successful as students. As I got to know them, I kept having flashbacks to my medical school days when we learned about “cardiac high-output failure.” The following quotation from the sixteenth edition of Nelson’s Textbook of Pediatrics captures the common phenomenon: “The condition, high-output failure, produces the signs and symptoms of heart failure ... when the demand for cardiac output exceeds the ability of the heart to respond. Chronic severe high-output failure may ultimately result in a decrease in myocardial [i.e., heart muscle] performance.”

Perhaps because of hardening of the arteries or high blood pressure, the heart is forced to work too hard. Eventually the organ weakens. The failing heart becomes dilated, its beats increasingly feeble, so it is unable to fulfill adequately its blood-pumping role, its output job. The same cycle can pertain to a mind, one that has become ineffective — when the demands upon it keep on exceeding its output capacities. When a mind is forced to strain excessively to meet production demands, academic output failure may ensue. Incidentally, we don’t call a failing heart lazy.

In 1981 I and two of my colleagues wrote an article entitled “Developmental Output Failure in School-Aged Children” for the medical journal Pediatrics. We described a group of students with various forms of output failure. Since then I have continued to study this too often neglected or misunderstood phenomenon.
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  #55  
Old 12-01-2004, 11:00 PM
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Here's the rest of the quote

OUTPUT FAILURE AS A WIDESPREAD PHENOMENON

Output failure is not a distinct syndrome, nor should it be understood as any sort of label or category. It is a result, not a cause. Low output occurs when one or more neurodevelopmental dysfunctions interfere with productivity. This is a very common phenomenon, examples of which include trouble writing a report or difficulty completing a project. Students who manifest output failure are a heterogeneous group. They have a mixed bag of neurodevelopmental dysfunctions and strengths. Some have serious problems getting organized. Others find it too hard to put their thoughts into words. There are those who can’t deploy their muscles in a coordinated, efficient manner. Still others lack the mental energy, the stamina needed for output. Some may experience problems remembering. But all of them face one or more high hurdles stubbornly obstructing their pathways to successful output. For the most part, their actual output barriers are seldom identified and dealt with. Instead, too many of these students stand unjustly accused of laziness or charged with some other form of moral turpitude. And they unfairly assume the blame for their reduced output.

Output failure is by no means confined to the first twenty-one years of life. The condition plagues numerous adults as well and very commonly leads to chronic career underachievement and gnawing discontent. We all know of individuals who seem competent and well meaning but whose productivity in the workplace is inadequate, perhaps even unacceptable. It may be the plumber who took forever and did a shoddy job fixing your bathtub drain, or the accountant who had to keep applying for extensions because he couldn’t get to your taxes, or a coworker who triggered bitter resentment because she never accomplished her fair share of the workload. It may be the person who comes up with great ideas but never carries any of them out. A traditional military adage applies here; as the commanding officer says to his platoon, “The people who rise out of the ranks are the ones who can get the job done.” Like students with output failure, the countless adults who cannot seem to get the job done deserve our understanding and our compassion. They are not intentionally turning off their spigots of output. Branding them as lazy accomplishes nothing.

“The Myth of Laziness” is intended to shed much-needed light on the phenomenon of output failure. As it explores the dysfunctions that result in output failure, this book will uncover some of the principal ingredients of successful output. Because I am a pediatrician and the bulk of my clinical experience has been confined to the five- to eighteen-year-old age group, most of what I have to say will concern productivity in school. However, I will also devote attention to some adult mechanisms and manifestations of output failure. Often the identical neurodevelopmental dysfunctions that thwart output in children can lethally affect adult productivity, too. A child may fail to do homework because she lacks mental energy. An adult with low mental energy may often be late to or absent from work because she has agonizing difficulty getting out of bed in the morning. An adolescent exhibiting problems with time management in school may be the equivalent of an adult who is always late for appointments and often running behind — perhaps without even realizing it.

Over a lifetime, the course of output failure may vary. Some individuals seem condemned to lifelong frustration with productivity. The problems they endured in school return to haunt them throughout their careers. In other cases, children with output failure become successful and remarkably productive adults in their chosen niches. Still others may develop signs of output failure as adolescents or as adults despite having created their share of praiseworthy products at an earlier time of life. As the demands on them change, as people themselves change, as their environments change, their output can change — for better or for worse.
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  #56  
Old 12-02-2004, 07:44 AM
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I really do not think he is smoking pot anymore. He has been acting this way all his life. He always acted much younger than his age. Coincidentally, he looks much younger as well.

I'm taking him today to schedule an appointment to get his drivers license and get him some much neede practice as well.

Not in my SDL of course... he drives the minivan.

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