Oh god, yes. We had to teach her how to lie when she was maybe 8 because she didn’t get the concept and was being too blunt and hurting her friend’s feelings lol. We often wished we hadn’t afterwards though, because she became like this. She would do things very similar to this, and we learned we had to be really careful with her around doctors, teachers, etc.
For instance we got a call one day asking if we were food insecure at home. Apparently she had been begging for food from her friends and the lunch lady for months telling them we had no food at home, we were poor, and she had only been having bread and water. /facepalm
So I sent them pictures of her lunch cupboard (we started having her pack her own lunches very early to force the skill and executive functioning) which was overflowing with food and snacks.
I asked her why she did it and she really didn’t have an answer.
ODD is tough to throw in the mix. I remember when she was a toddler she begged for ice cream and when I finally gave it to her she screamed “NO!” she didn’t want that. ODD kids are like that lol, but take much longer to grow out of it.
I have a coworker who has a kid with ODD and the best advice I have after watching (and commiserating with) her, is be mean NOW because as soon as he had a little puberty in him she lost all control and ability to get him to do anything he didn’t want to do. It’s better to be a monster for a few years now so you can continue helping them later, you know?
Also for compulsive lying, I hated doing it, but I highly recommend during the early years using a technology tracking software on their devices. We used Qustodio. It works on most phones and devices and allows you to set times they can use them and times they will not work. It allows you to keep tabs on what they are searching for and more.
We used it early on to control how many hours a day she was on the device, and felt especially vindicated when we learned she was on it for hours during the school day, even after her school banned phones!
What made us put it on her phone though? She left her discord open on her laptop and I happened to glance at it and saw a concerning conversation when she was 12. Mind you, we are open minded and don’t give a fuck if she wanted to masturbate or have sex when she was ready. We never snooped.
What I saw though was a sexual conversation and a lot of lamenting about her parents (lamenting is normal, and we never brought it up) with a man who seemed to be much older. He seemed like a good guy, seemed supportive and wasn’t reinforcing her complaints or encouraging her isolation from us. Thank god.
Upon further snooping we realise he is fucking 19 and she has told him she is 18! She was catfishing that poor boy! We sat her down and spoke with her, asked her what the fuck she was thinking. Told her that if someone besides us had found out she could have accidentally sent that boy to prison and ruined the rest of his life!
Told her that it wouldn’t matter if we didn’t want to press charges or she didn’t want to press charges, if the wrong person found out it wouldn’t have mattered, they would have arrested him, sent him to prison, and eventually charged him for being a sex offender.
We made her tell him her real age and stop talking to him. To his credit, the moment she told him how old she really was, he noped out of there, removed her, and went non-contact.
So yeah. Qustodio was a necessary evil. We never turned on the web search tracking or the message tracking, but told her that we reserved the right to check her messages any time. We did use it to prevent her from downloading weird apps constantly, and to schedule times she was allowed to be on the phone.
Like… not during school hours and not at 2 am on a school night. You know.
She was able to “get around it” by clicking menus fast, but it would still log that she was on it or doing something with it, so we would take it away after a talk when this happened. When she hit 14 we turned off everything, and just monitored, and only turned on the block as needed.
Sorry you’re going through it now, I see you. I appreciate how hard it is to be the “mean parent”. <3
thank you so much, i dont have a lot of support that understands what we are dealing with, so it feels good to not feel like a piece of shit over all this stuff. it is so dangg hard!! my parents just whupped my ass instead of parenting, so i feel like i’m making shit up as i go lol, no good examples to look to even if my child was a “normal kid.”
I feel you on that. You are welcome to DM me if you ever need support, I am no expert and have fucked up more times than I would like to admit, but I have been there before at least. <3
Oh god, yes. We had to teach her how to lie when she was maybe 8 because she didn’t get the concept and was being too blunt and hurting her friend’s feelings lol. We often wished we hadn’t afterwards though, because she became like this. She would do things very similar to this, and we learned we had to be really careful with her around doctors, teachers, etc.
For instance we got a call one day asking if we were food insecure at home. Apparently she had been begging for food from her friends and the lunch lady for months telling them we had no food at home, we were poor, and she had only been having bread and water. /facepalm
So I sent them pictures of her lunch cupboard (we started having her pack her own lunches very early to force the skill and executive functioning) which was overflowing with food and snacks.
I asked her why she did it and she really didn’t have an answer.
ODD is tough to throw in the mix. I remember when she was a toddler she begged for ice cream and when I finally gave it to her she screamed “NO!” she didn’t want that. ODD kids are like that lol, but take much longer to grow out of it.
I have a coworker who has a kid with ODD and the best advice I have after watching (and commiserating with) her, is be mean NOW because as soon as he had a little puberty in him she lost all control and ability to get him to do anything he didn’t want to do. It’s better to be a monster for a few years now so you can continue helping them later, you know?
Also for compulsive lying, I hated doing it, but I highly recommend during the early years using a technology tracking software on their devices. We used Qustodio. It works on most phones and devices and allows you to set times they can use them and times they will not work. It allows you to keep tabs on what they are searching for and more.
We used it early on to control how many hours a day she was on the device, and felt especially vindicated when we learned she was on it for hours during the school day, even after her school banned phones!
What made us put it on her phone though? She left her discord open on her laptop and I happened to glance at it and saw a concerning conversation when she was 12. Mind you, we are open minded and don’t give a fuck if she wanted to masturbate or have sex when she was ready. We never snooped.
What I saw though was a sexual conversation and a lot of lamenting about her parents (lamenting is normal, and we never brought it up) with a man who seemed to be much older. He seemed like a good guy, seemed supportive and wasn’t reinforcing her complaints or encouraging her isolation from us. Thank god.
Upon further snooping we realise he is fucking 19 and she has told him she is 18! She was catfishing that poor boy! We sat her down and spoke with her, asked her what the fuck she was thinking. Told her that if someone besides us had found out she could have accidentally sent that boy to prison and ruined the rest of his life!
Told her that it wouldn’t matter if we didn’t want to press charges or she didn’t want to press charges, if the wrong person found out it wouldn’t have mattered, they would have arrested him, sent him to prison, and eventually charged him for being a sex offender.
We made her tell him her real age and stop talking to him. To his credit, the moment she told him how old she really was, he noped out of there, removed her, and went non-contact.
So yeah. Qustodio was a necessary evil. We never turned on the web search tracking or the message tracking, but told her that we reserved the right to check her messages any time. We did use it to prevent her from downloading weird apps constantly, and to schedule times she was allowed to be on the phone.
Like… not during school hours and not at 2 am on a school night. You know.
She was able to “get around it” by clicking menus fast, but it would still log that she was on it or doing something with it, so we would take it away after a talk when this happened. When she hit 14 we turned off everything, and just monitored, and only turned on the block as needed.
Sorry you’re going through it now, I see you. I appreciate how hard it is to be the “mean parent”. <3
thank you so much, i dont have a lot of support that understands what we are dealing with, so it feels good to not feel like a piece of shit over all this stuff. it is so dangg hard!! my parents just whupped my ass instead of parenting, so i feel like i’m making shit up as i go lol, no good examples to look to even if my child was a “normal kid.”
I feel you on that. You are welcome to DM me if you ever need support, I am no expert and have fucked up more times than I would like to admit, but I have been there before at least. <3
hey, if you can admit you’ve fucked up, you’re already ahead. i may take you up on that sometime :)