I'm a parent of a toddler, so I'm here to view responses. Sorry, OP, but I cannot impart any wisdom.


Spanking and punishments don't seem to be working. Have you talked to the boy (he sounds like the root of the problem) about the things that bother him and why? He's able to use logic and reason at his age, but does not have the life experience to implement these things in a constructive manner. Try working with him and not against him.

Good post. Never needed the first sentence, but making them earn extras might make their lives more sane and tie good activities more firmly to good results.

You need to have a long chat with the doctor about this, and if the medication is helping or hurting.


I took that shit as a kid for a few months.  It destroyed me.  Thankfully my parents let me give it up.  Forcing a kid to take some of that shit is child abuse, and I'm not just being dramatic.

Some of that behavior is kids being kids.  Some of it is environment.  I was always bored as hell in school.  They would not challenge me, and of course I couldn't leave.  Teachers insisted that I start meds and my parents gave it a shot.  It was horrible.  It made me very socially anxious, killed my personality, and the crash at the end of the day usually resulted in me shaking in a heap on the couch, crying uncontrollably for about 20 minutes.  Fuuuuuuuuuuck that.

Maybe your kid doesn't have the same side effects I did, maybe it's a different med or whatever...  but look into it.  Those drugs are extraordinarily powerful, and they come with very serious side effects.

Make very sure that the type and dosage is correct for your kid if you're going to play with drugs.

I was just like that in school.  My mom pulled me out of school in 6th grade. I got my AA at age 18 and found good work in town to pay my own way through school.

I don't do well with people who think they have authority simply because they're an adult.  I'm 23 now.

I quit being a little shit because it hurt like a motherfucker. I was ashamed to have lied to my dad, not because I was punished for it, I was ashamed because I let him down and he told me so. I was ashamed because he told me how much he loved me and how much he cared about me. I was ashamed because afterwards after he had explained to me why I was spanked and what I did wrong, he took me to get ice cream.

I felt like a piece of shit, it hurt mentally and physically. Thats why I stopped being a piece of shit.

You've got to love your kids and be there with them and for them. You've got to do things together and share things together.

If your kids never respect you they'll never respect anyone and be a piece of shit their whole life. You get there respect by respecting them and loving them, even if it hurts sometimes.

Ever been smacked in the rear by a bamboo stick? I can assure you it hurt plenty. Here is an example of a typical scenario - son is being disrespectful/rude and mouthing off to me. He gets a warning to stop, he doesn't so he gets grounded. This angers him and he calls me a name. He gets spanked, gets even more angry and calls more names, gets spanked again. Sometimes he might go for a third round, other times he stops after the second. But here is the kicker, the next day its like his brain resets and we may go through the same thing again, or at least multiple times in a week. Now, since I don't use the stick any longer, the groundings just mount (one day, two days, three days grounded, etc.).  The out come is the same though, brain resets the next day and its like the prior day's even never transpired.



 

I think it's time for military school.

My old man had this same problem with me when I was 10. He wasn't around a lot to raise me, and he feared that being strong headed like him beating me would just piss me off.

One summer he put me to work with one of the guys from the synagogue who owned a roofing company, but the guy was out in the truck all day and working with his laborers.

All I did was carry heavy shit in the Alabama heat, get sunburned, cut, scraped and almost fall off two or three times a day.

Some of the other guys had their sons with them, too (this was decades before Mexicans did all the roofing in Alabama).

Put the little shit to hard labor. Make him realize that life is full of pain and suffering and there are no guarantees.

To this day I thank the old man for setting me straight.

511 leather belt applied generously & vigorously.
https://www.copsplus.com/prodnum6565.php

Isn't that the sort of thing that gets you charged with child abuse now?  I thought it was more or less illegal to try to force your kids not to be little fucktards.  

The thread is turning into an episode of Dog Whisperer.

That's not very reassuring!!

I'm not sure what advice to offer you, OP, as our first is only 8 months old.  It does seem about that age my sister and I would fight like cats and dogs.  Of course, I got my ass whipped and learned to stop instigating.  Granted I didn't grow up with very many electronics and rarely watched TV.  If I were punished by my parents, it meant no going outside to play, no sports, no GI Joes, etc.  I had to sit inside and read a book.  Although no ADHD, or anything like that, it was torture for me.  My reward for good behavior was the ability to do some of the things I liked.  I'm sure it wasn't very easy or fun for my parents either.

Best of luck to you.

What do you do with your kids for fun? On general week days and weekends? Do they respect you? Do they want to be with you and do things with you?

1.  Pull the video games, phone, basically any and all privileges for your boy.

2.  Quit worrying about your daughter.  If she's getting to do fun stuff for at least okay behavior, if not exceptional, it may encourage your boy to improve his.  Right now your son is being an ass to her, provoking her, and getting her punished too.  Don't play into this game.


3.  Seriously consider a trip to the shrink for your son.  He's showing signs of mental illness here.  Treatment may be possible, but you need to recognize that you have, potentially, major issues here.


4.  Ignore anybody who suggests beating your kids. I'll almost guarantee you that this will backfire.

As others have said already, you need immediate discipline!

In fact I would look at local military schools. I have seen kids really turn around after going to military school.

The local one I have experience with has a 1st Sgt in every room in addition to the teacher who's sole job it is to keep the kids in line.


Your kid's need a serious attitude adjustment, and right now! Either get them straightened out yourself or get help, but you need to act now!

bout the only thing I can see it perhaps a military boarding school.  I have a sister in law who also lost the battle long ago. Her husband is a spineless drip, and she is an enabler. Between the two of them they have completely ruined their adopted kid. He has stolen from them, lied to them for as long as he has talked,I have witnessed him slap the shit out of his mother (something the BIL did nothing to stop, I was forced to step in because it happened in my home) broken their property, ignored the dog they adopted at his request, been disrespectful to adults his whole life, and he has continued this to the age of 18. About the only time I have seen him behave appropriately is around my house, I told him that if he ever breaks anything of mine or my families, disrespected my family in anyway l would settle up with him. Funny, he seemed to believe me.

I fought this for a long time. I did not want my son on medication. Then one day at school he totally flipped out during a fire drill. The teacher and principal could not handle him. I came to pick him up from school and he totally flipped out and fought me putting him in the car.

Turns out, he did have an undiagnosed condition. I ended up having to put him on meds and we go to weekly therapy sessions. It's made a tremendous difference in his life. He's gone from problem child to almost model classroom behavior. We're still working on getting all the details together, but no more freak outs in the classroom.

He and his sister still fight. As a parent, you have to realize some of that is normal. I've popped butts in the middle of the grocery store because they needed it.

We do the same thing, but only give them a count of 3 (was one of the tenets of 1-2-3 Magic, which have consistently been doing for over 5 years now). Its amazing how often my stubborn little daughter will ous hte boundaries and gets to 3 only to get grounded that day. Then she pleads what can she do to get ungrounded, and doesn't like it when we tell her "wake up the next day."



 

I work with juvenile delinquent kids, from the sounds of it your son is attention seeking. There is a couple of ways to diminish this behavior, one way is to find a hobby of his and interact with while doing it and see where that goes. Or you could talk to him when he is relaxed and what he wants and what is he trying to do to get it, it's called reality based therapy if you want to look it up. Then if all else fails make his life hell, for every time he acts out in a negative manner take something away and ONLY give it back when he acts like good for a week and start giving him more chores to do around the house. He will eventually break and act normal then, but never use any type of medication, my personal belief with that is it is robbing the kids of their youth.

You didnt do it hard enough then or your kids just need it more often. My daughter is 8 and we did the 1, 2, 3 thing years ago. It still works to this day.
If they are that "tough" that the belt doesnt straighten out behavior then I dont know what to tell you.
The only thing I can think of otherwise is immediate action when bad behavior starts, no telling them to stop no threats nothing, just immediate crushing response from you and your wife.

edit, whenever the tantrums come out of them whip out the phone and tell them "this is going on Facebook", that works like a charm too.

FPNI.

 
What does "grounded" look like?

Can you describe what the One, two, threeeeee thing is?  And what you suggest as an alternative?

So, what new tactics would you recommend (kinda why I laid it all bare and made this thread)? I've always been told how important consistency is, which is why We've stuck to trying to ingrain on our kids good values and behavior.  



 

We have a student of a similar age and behavior issues.  Do other students not like him or are afraid of him?

ADHD is sort of manageable with or without meds. My grandson is ADHD and without any meds he's like a wild animal, like you describe. When he's visiting us he's off meds and tons of fun but we're 100% involved in every day activities and it is exhausting.

The biggest issues we've seen managing any part of his behavior is diet, boundaries, and absolutely no video games. The biggest hurdle is diet because his parents eat everything out of a box. Although he does love my grilled salmon

Sounds like you have your hands full with his behavior. Is your daughter acting out or defending herself? I've seen both sides of that kind of conflict.

Good luck.

I have a brother in his late 40's that sounds like your son.

He is not wired right.  No amount of various forms of help have done anything for him.  

I have no answer for you. Sounds like your son....like my brother..........has a serious disconnect.

Also this is complete bs.  Hate to call you out mike but its simply not.  That age group is still huge in developing personality.

Their lives are too easy, time to buy a farm.  Kids up at 5am doing chores until school, as soon as school is over back to chores until dinner time and then off to bed.  Summers and weekends treat them as slave labor.  Also ditch all of their electronics, phones, TVs, computers, IPods etc.

ADHD and ODD are different nowadays. Basically, in early schooling, if you are normal, intelligent boy and are not getting enough exercise because of the nanny state and bored in school because it is dumbed down so no-child-is-left-behind, you are reacting in a normal way by acting up. But you get diagnosed as ADHD/ODD and get drugged (dumbed down) enough to sit still for government indoctrination/education. The flip side is, at the upper middle class high school where my mom taught, they had so many kids with ADHD/ODD/etc diagnosed, gotten by the parents so the kids could get extra time, etc, for tests, there weren't enough "normal" kids to make the schools standardized tests valid for the district.

Check with AP he knows what to do.

Your children obviously have no (healthy) fear of you or your wife (too old to fear Santa Claus, or God's wrath if you are not religious) but they probably fear being taken away and placed a group foster home. They start acting up you pick up the phone and dial child services and pretend to be talking to the authorities to come over for a pickup. Bet they snap right out of it and change their ways. Unless of course they are really rotten and call your bluff.

Already sought it (after an incident in 1st grade, and he is now halfway through 4th grade). The psychiatrist diagnosed him as ADHD and ODD. According to the psychiatrist there is little ot nothing that can be done for the ODD, and that is 85% of his problems that result in him getting in trouble.

 

Sorry to hear it.

I didn't see Love and Logic mentioned in your post, and I can't recommend that system enough. It isn't perfect, it is kinda mushy, but it sure has made life easier around here. I love the cool tricks it teaches you.

Another thing that's helping my family cope with some rebellious behavior from our thirteen year old is informing her that the choices she makes indicate the kind of person she is. What we choose to do defines who we are. If she chooses to lie, I ask her directly if she wants to be known as a liar. If she breaks her word, I ask if she wants to be known as flaky. After all, I'd never loan my Jeep to an untrustworthy person!

It sounds like your boy is pushing boundaries, and that's a challenge. Dr. Riley has some stuff on that subject.

Also, strike the fear of God into those little hellspawn. Love isn't enough.

This is a test of wills and you are losing because you seem to be discarding your disciplinary tools instead of combining them for an overall effect. You need to reinforce the "Tier" system and become the "Warden", Observe carefully what they most enjoy doing and deprive them of it when they transgress, Force them to earn that activity back thru a set period of good behavior. Failure to comply results in loss of more items/activities and spankings should continue as well to reinforce that what your telling them is not a "passing storm" that they can weather out and then continue on with business as usual.

They should get the idea that their lives become increasingly worse with each act of defiance with no chance of you relenting in the least until behavior improves. Be just as quick to reward as to punish to show the positive reinforcement of good behavior. However, do NOT let them choose the reward, a grounding "sentence" should be carried out to full term with no time off for good behavior, parole, or early release. You can try to make the conditions surrounding the grounding a bit easier, but the kids need to understand they can't just "be good for a little while" and get themselves out of the initial punishment. As always, YMMV.

We live on a hobby farm, so they have plenty of chores and space to play. And no, I'm not going to take drugs.  



 

Oh shit....that doesnt sound very comforting.......




















....jk

Haha, I pissed my mom off so bad one time she dropped me off at the local juvenile detention center and drove off for a few minutes.  I think I was good for a year after that.

I'm not a child whisperer but I do work with them on a daily basis and activity and exercise does wonders for some children.
OP might hire a good parenting coach, they will come in and video tape and watch the video with you . They will show you the visual ques  to looks for so you can head off bad behavior.
It might not work in every situation but the service is available.

Yeah, thought I did in my OP, but apparently I didn't (I was trying to keep it short(er) for the ADHD GD crowd that can't be bothered to read anything over two sentences).



 

Bend your son over your knee and spank him. Yes. Do it.

It sounds like you didn't do this enough when he was younger. He's probably learned that he can throw tantrums and act like an ass and there are no consequences for it.

Since you came here asking for help, you should have put all the relevant info in the OP, such as your son having AHDH and having to take meds. That's a pretty important piece of info if you really are seeking help from others.

My son is slightly younger than yours and has the same behaviors.  


I punished him as well and it just seemed to have no effect.  It was always because I was mean.  My second son is basically the opposite and responds to punishment like most kids do.  I've come to the conclusion it is something more, which has been the case.  He is now on medication, which I fought for a long time.  It has helped with his focus at school though, so this is good to stop him from falling behind as we continue to get things sorted out.




Things that have worked the best are as follows:




1.  His diet.  This takes a lot of work, but then again we have been spending 2-3 hours a night on him doing schoolwork to keep him up with other kids, so keeping his diet strict has improved things.  Lots of protein and fresh vegetables.  




2.  I had read a study several years back about circulating testosterone in adolescents that indicated those showing antisocial behaviors responded better to reward motivation.  Their behavior was also influenced strongly by social interactions.  




With this in mind we have worked on improving our families social interactions.  One main thing is eating family meals together every day.  This includes breakfast and dinner.  This is something we have not been good at and it has helped a ton, especially breakfast.  It calms him down as we discuss our plans for the day.  




We have also used a lot of reward motivations for behavior and still reinforce stuff with punishment.  For instance, I tell him in the morning if he has good behavior in school I will let him play his video games for 30 minutes when he gets home.  If he gets a negative statement on his behavior sheet, he will get a spanking instead.  Though after said punishments, I still give him reward opportunities if his behavior improves.




Things have gotten much better.  




One thing we are still trying to work on is how he interacts with his mother.  He is at least fearful of my punishments enough he will stop misbehaving if I tell him to, but this doesn't work when his mother tells him too.  I'm not sure how to fix this, if you have any insight please share.




Good luck though, I know this is a huge deal that is constantly on your mind every day.  


 

They need a get along shirt.

My mom instilled the fear in me at a young age. I knew not to push her buttons. Having an ear bleeding scream helps. Still makes me cringe when she gets on to my neice.

If I didn't say "thank you" or "yes ma'am/sir" and generally have good manners, I knew what the consequences were.

You need to put the fear into the hellions.

I dreaded bringing home a note from school. I would've never made it to the point of your son. I doubt I'd be walking right now if I did.

I don't know about 1-2-3 Magic.  Assuming the punishments have been consistent there is one thing that jumps out: your son does not "get it".  He may be getting spankings, time outs, etc., but he does not realize that he gets these things by being bad -- he is not taking responsibility for his behavior.

And I think this stems from letting little things slide.  "Mom is mean and punished me for no reason" should earn a punishment for disrespect, and then a conversation on how he earned the grounding by acting up in the car and then he earned further punishment for being disrespectful.

I am going through something similar with my second son (three years old).  He is testing constantly, and you can see in one day how letting things slide just adds up to more, worse behavior.  There are manner / respect issues where some people may say "that's not worth punishing over", and I disagree:  bad behavior has to be corrected, otherwise they do not learn there are consequences to their actions.  You may let the occasional snide remark go unnoticed, but some day someone won't -- and he'll get punished, be it hit from a peer or disciplined at school or work.

I re-read this post often.  I integrate much of it into how I discipline my children though I am woefully short on the praying part.

Oh, and the "spoiled" part is something my wife and I disagree with a bit, and that goes a little bit with discipline too.  My wife argues that we have the best behaved and least spoiled children of their peers, and while she is correct I argue that is not a reason to go easy on them: they are so well behaved because we maintain discipline.

These are good responses. You might also try to get one or both of them involved in a physical activity. Something they could do together with tasks for both and firm rules might help them get along better. If one acts up then he or she doesn't  get to participate.

I don't agree with that. My wife and I are now raising our two nieces who came from an environment with absolutely no structure. These two girls have made a miraculous turnaround. They came to us at 5 and 11 years old. In our house they know that there consequences to poor behavior.

FPNI.

I was tough to handle. There were two ways people got me to behave:

1) Beat the hell out of me. I got the belt at 14 for being with a friend who got caught stealing.
2) Be in the position to beat the hell out of me or to report the behavior to my parents, and then keep whatever incident between us; that would earn my respect.