And when I mean impulsivity, I don't mean blurting out, or flickering lights, I mean pilfering and stealing. Those impulses are an issue for him even without sugar, but on sugar it's much much worse.
We have relations that get this. They've changed their sugaring and even they can see how that improves his behavior.
We also have relations that don't quite get this. We had hoped that they might honor the sugar restrictions just because we asked them to, but that's not really happening. I think they honestly don't get it and are just trying to be nice to the poor deprived child, When Garbanzo spends time with them, they give him snack baggies full of chocolate chips and sodas and so forth.
This is a two-pronged problem:
We also have relations that don't quite get this. We had hoped that they might honor the sugar restrictions just because we asked them to, but that's not really happening. I think they honestly don't get it and are just trying to be nice to the poor deprived child, When Garbanzo spends time with them, they give him snack baggies full of chocolate chips and sodas and so forth.
This is a two-pronged problem:
The greater problem is that he sees them disregard his parents' wishes because they disagree and he takes it as license to do the same. This is HUGE as it may take weeks or months to re-establish the notion that our authority is not disposable.
It's the same thing we see after he comes home from camp. At camp, things are done differently. Mom and Dad's ways are irrelevant at camp. That's fine. It's camp. But the week after camp it is so hard for Garbanzo to re-enter the family that we ALWAYS take the week after camp to go family camping. We are together, Dad is with us, every little twinge of blowing off authority is squashed immediately. And there are so many fun things to do, so many pleasures around, that it isn't worth his while to maintain insolence. But we can't go on a family camping trip every time he spends time with his Sugary Relations. And thus far, we haven't found a manageable reset mechanism.
2.) Lack of Disclosure.
It's the same thing we see after he comes home from camp. At camp, things are done differently. Mom and Dad's ways are irrelevant at camp. That's fine. It's camp. But the week after camp it is so hard for Garbanzo to re-enter the family that we ALWAYS take the week after camp to go family camping. We are together, Dad is with us, every little twinge of blowing off authority is squashed immediately. And there are so many fun things to do, so many pleasures around, that it isn't worth his while to maintain insolence. But we can't go on a family camping trip every time he spends time with his Sugary Relations. And thus far, we haven't found a manageable reset mechanism.
2.) Lack of Disclosure.
The other problem is that they tend to sugar him up at the end of the visit and then not tell me, so it has taken me awhile to figure out that after spending time with them, he needs a different sort of day. If this was the only thing, I could live with it. But the authority issue is trashing our home life.
