If you thought about it.... it could be funny

When you think about it, it really could be funny. That little thing that randomly “pops” into your head and turns your day upside down and for Caleb it is usually soooooo trivial. How about… the peas are touching my potatoes….. there are onions in the meatloaf, and it’s not because you don’t like onions, but because you BELIEVE that there should be nothing in the meatloaf, but just meat and ketchup. Trivial, I know!

So you watch Super Nanny to get some ideas on how to feed a fussy eater, you do all the tricks that she tries and take her tips to heart but she is dealing with “normal” children. I hate that word “normal”. It’s not that I don’t think my son isn’t “normal”, because to the naked eye he is. He is like everyone else when he is outside playing with his friends, watching t.v. and by all stretch of the imagination is like everyone else. So why can’t he be labeled “normal”, well just below the surface he’s not. His ideals are completely different, the way he processes thoughts, feeling and ideas is different. So the Super Nanny tricks and tips don’t work. It is suggested that you give your child a choice and if they eat they eat and if not into time-out they go.

Now take into consideration that your child has Bipolar Disorder coupled with Oppositional Defiant Disorder….. whose only reaction is “Okay, I won’t eat. I don’t care!” I will tell you though I have never been the type of parent to run back into the kitchen and cook something else. If something is “touching” something, I will rearrange the food on the plate. And oh, my God have even “cleaned up” a plate. (Don’t ask) I will tell you that I am normally the only one that fixes his plate so I all ready know the “dos & don’ts”. Dad just says that I am being silly and “spoiling” but so be it. If Caleb fixes his own plate and something is touching something, believe it or not he doesn’t care. I don’t know if he takes pride in the fact that he fixes his own plate now (on some occasions- *smile*) or that he doesn’t want to believe that he can be
that(!) trivial.

You’d like to think that it is the latter of the two because after all “the gravy spilled onto my green beans and therefore I will not eat them” does sound silly. The fact that “ the child sitting next to you on the bus is loud and that bothers you when you are being louder than he is” is silly. It’s funny he can get annoyed by the volume on my t.v. but he can have his t.v. turned up for the deaf to hear it. That’s silly. You have to wonder at some point in time do they recognize their own trivialness. Probably not but it would be awesome if he did.

We know that kids can be very strong willed in general, so what makes them actually Bi-Polar? I can give a million and one descriptions on why it does, but we already know the answer to that question. Eventually the strong will child be reasoned with. On some levels Caleb can be. Time-outs work, but only when he actually cares about not being able to do anything. When he is one of his “moods” he can stay in “time-out” forever. You can tell him okay, your time out is over and he will still stay in time-out.

Now the question can be do you give your child another time out for not coming out of time out? Or do you force the child to get up and move? You have to admit it is pretty funny. It is frustrating and when you are dealing with it, it’s not funny at the time but when you think about it (after the fact), it is.

You want to know how trivial I am? Yes, secretly you do… I can tolerate all of a Caleb’s behaviors and all his “dos & don’t” but when it come to dealing with other people and their idiotic behaviors. But that’s another blog all together.