We received our packet by James Lehman from Legacy Publishing in less than a week. We have been eager to get started but cautious at the thought it may help us. We have seen a total of nine doctors/therapists in three and a half years. No one has been able to put their thumb on exactly what we need to do as parents to help Dylan lead a productive life. No one has been able to say, we get what is going on with Dylan and this is how you deal with it.
Randy's sister, Jeannie, had suggested the program to us based on the infomercials but as with any infomercial we were reluctant that we could find success in the mail. I don't know what took us so long but thankfully we finally did it. As we were planning the cost of additional therapy we decided this route would be much cheaper. The publishing company is running a special right now. If you fill out the survey at the end of the program you can get a refund so that helped me feel better.
We have watched the Jump Start video and listened to week one lesson and action steps. The Jump Start video paints a picture of James' philosophy on how to parent behavior challenged kids and teens. We liked the picture he painted and found some clear differences on books or theories we have heard before. We found that we have used some of the right skills and some wrong skills. What struck us as shocking is that he described Dylan exactly without meeting him or us. Exactly.
James describes lots of different characteristics and it just so happens that Dylan fits every one of them. Most kids that are challenging could have only some of the characteristics and parents would still benefit from the program. The purpose of the program is to get the tools you need to be an effective parent. What we didn't realize is that one of the real reasons for a lot of Dylan's behavior issues is because he doesn't have the ability to problem solve and he has taught himself specific coping skills that are creating the conflicts we have with him. I am over simplifying this a bit because I don't want to accidentally plagiarize his program.
To begin you do a pre-evaluation so you are thinking through what your issues are. With each chapter you take a pretest and then listen to the lesson with the workbook for reference. You find out if your thought process for parenting actually lined up with effective parenting. For week one we have learned about 16 characteristics, identified Dylan's specific characteristics and have one tool to use and practice mastering.
My tool for the week is to not engage in the manipulation to avoid or put off tasks that Dylan finds unpleasant and unnecessary. For example, this morning I told Dylan to brush his teeth. He said he didn't want to because the toothpaste tastes too spicy. I repeated for him to brush his teeth. He said it again. I repeated my instruction to brush teeth. Normally I would have engaged in some back and forth about the toothpaste not being too spicy, etc. He turned and began brushing his teeth.
I'll let you know if I continue to not fall into the manipulation trap.
P.S. I dedicate this post to Jeannie! Sorry we didn't take your advice sooner! You have never failed us before!
October 07, 2010
I am so hoping this works for you. Forget home schooling! You pay taxes so that teachers in your area get the full experience. If every student were perfect, they would never be challenged. All jobs should be challenging or there would be boredom. Do you really want teachers to have boring jobs? That's right. You're doing them a favor. lol J