Jose decided at the end of last week to wage another food war. He made it very clear after I sent him outside to walk, that his plan had been for me to send him to his bed. He definitely did not want to have to go outside and walk. I figured that he would raise the white flag or even just end in a truce. It didn't happen. He continued to refuse anything that I gave him to eat. He also refused to do school work. He in turn got to go out to walk the next day. He didn't get to play over the weekend because his school work wasn't done and he still refused to eat.
We've had these wars before. He refuses to eat. He used it last year and made himself vomit until I realized that it was just to get out of going to school. He would also do it over homework to try and get out of it. I can't imagine vomiting if I didn't have to vomit. I just couldn't do it! Kids who have been in foster care can often call up vomit, pee, or poop at any given moment. They use it as a form of control over their world since they had very little control in foster care over any other aspect of their lives. I am a veteran at these wars. I hold my ground and make sure they stay safe. As a result, I make a concoction of a milk shake that has tons of protein, fat, and calories. I mix whole milk, protein mix, and baby formula and insist that they drink it even if they are not "eating" because if they refuse that then I would take them to the hospital to "keep them safe".
Jose will push his wars farther than anyone I've ever seen. Yesterday, I thought we'd get a fresh start at the week. I served up homemade chocolate chip muffins and bananas for breakfast. Definitely one of the kids favorites, so I thought surely he'd cave. He said he'd rather have peanut butter and crackers (this is what I had offered for breakfast on Sunday that he refused) than that and threw a tantrum while heading out to walk. He also refused lunch. I decided that he pushed it too far by a whole lot. I informed him that he wasn't walking or doing anything else for that matter. His desire for control had gotten way out of hand and he was proving that control was something that he couldn't handle at all.
I told him that he had obviously let his bad decisions push him to the point that he wasn't even as able as a baby to make choices. As a result, I am making all his choices for him. I started with liquids only as options since he didn't want to eat. Today he moved to baby food that I fed him and the milkshake mixtures. Tomorrow will be more of the BRAT diet (literally if I do say so myself). We will then work up to regular food. He has been told that besides eating he does have another option. We could always take him for a gtube to be put in like Julianne was fed through. He has seen one of those, so he has decided to eat. I am doing it gradual because he really may have made himself where eating became difficult physically after making that choice for so long.
He has also been told that he will have the same options for school. He can either get his butt back in gear and do his 4th grade work, which he is more than capable of, or he can go back to preschool level. If he chooses the latter then he will have to work nonstop to get through all the grades and back to 4th grade before he gets his priveleges back. He didn't look thrilled with that option so I guess we will see what he chooses as of tomorrow.
He is such a good kid most of the time. Then the littlest thing can set us back this far again. The spells of food wars have gotten a lot farther apart recently. I will celebrate the day that they really are over though. Jose doesn't often show signs of RAD, but he definitely has some RAD behaviors. He is attached now I think, but he definitely still has some behaviors that are very RADish. He has even written about hoping that other adults will "pity" him and does this food thing, which are the main behaviors along with a very large LAZY streak. He'll get past this though!
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