See that little guy. I took this picture one year after we adopted him from Russia. He still looks so small for 11 years old.
But don’t be mislead this child was anything but frail. In fact, in this picture he had just won the Gasparilla 15k for his age group. It was an amazing moment in his little life. And the result of a creative consequence.
The problem: Grant had too much energy…
The solution: My friend Dave trained him to run–every day for five miles and on Saturdays sometimes ten or fifteen.
Dave probably saved me from insanity that year. And he may have saved Grant’s life as I am convinced there would have been a mutiny of sorts with his siblings. He was making the entire family crazy with his over-zealous antics.
Sometimes you have to get creative when it comes to correction and keeping Grant in the acceptable behavior range took a lot of creativity. The running really helped his physical impulsivity but not his verbal impulsivity.
The problem: Grant couldn’t stop talking.
The solution: We made a non-verbal cue game out of it. Whenever the family was gathered at dinner for example, Grant had to sit where he could watch me. If I covered my mouth with my hand (and I had to be creative here with a napkin, fake yawn, etc) it was Grant’s cue that he was talking too much and he had to cover his mouth with his hand to help him stop talking.
There were lots more ways that Grant needed behavior training and negative attention became a source of explosive anger.
The overarching problem: Grant needed constant correction and it was frustrating him.
The overarching solution: I had to use positive ways to correct him like the ones above. The normal correction that worked with my other children such as time out or a loss of a privilege only made Grant angry because he would lose everything! It was that constant.
The prognosis: Grant matured and learned to control his impulsivity. It took years and it was a marathon of an effort, but he won the race.
I won it, too. And one day maybe, I think I might get a medal for it.
