We've battled with Raymond's ODD (oppositional defiant disorder), for years now. As he's gotten older, it's seemed to have risen to a peak. There have been days where hardly anything gets done, because something very little turns into something humongous! Our main concern, is accountability. Raymond cannot accept responsibility for anything negative that he has done (even when you catch him in the act).
The other day when we came home from the pumpkin patch, I noticed some scratches on the side of our van. Upon closer inspection, I realized that Raymond had scratched his name onto the sliding door. At first we calmly asked him why he would do that to our car, and that caused him to erupt into a tantrum. He screamed, cried, and pleaded that it wasn't him. My husband firmly told him, that we know it was him because it is his writing, and his siblings cannot write like that. The punishment was no video games, or computer games, until he can admit that he did it.
Yesterday night (while outside playing with the neighbor boys), he calmly walked up to the front door and yelled through the door, "alright guys, I did it... I wrote on the van." And that was that. We told him that we were proud of him for admitting it, but disappointed that he would scratch our car. We didn't want to make a big deal out of it, because we need him to understand that it's okay to make mistakes. I feel like we've taken a big step, and I'm so proud of him for admitting fault for something!
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