Hope springs eternal that Consequences Will Work. What if it doesn’t? That simply defies logic, so we go back and try again. WAnd when it does, it seems so random or accidental that I can’t be certain that anything has truly been learned !! Ahh, life with fasd. As for “lifetime parenting” — I’m at the “Lalalala, can’t hear you, lalalala,” stage. You know, that river in Egypt. — Rachel

I certainly don’t have any answers. Since my bio-kids grew up in the same age range and my adopted kids I’ve gotten alot of the “He gets away with everything!” comments from my bio-kids, but I think if I had to do it over (knowing what I know now), I’d make it clear from day one that the “troubled” children received different consequences because they had FASD and their brains work differently, so we have to do discipline different. I would try to really make the other kids understand the younger kids issues instead of expecting them to just all get along and ignore the challenging behaviors.

I finally broke down today and bought a keyed lock for my laundry room/pantry and moved all of the food in there that my son is prone to stealing – the flour, dried beans and rice are still accessible if he really wants to eat them in my main kitchen cupboards. I have avoided the whole “lock all your food up” concept from the beginning because I just didn’t want to live like that (not to mention it being inconvenient to ME) and felt like he would eventually get over this obsession with food. Not happening so why am I killing myself with frustration over all the crumbs in his room? This is a simple solution to a decade old problem and I just had to get to this point to do what I needed to for my son and (unfortunately) give up on the dream of him being “normal” anytime soon.

If anyone has any ideas on what to do with kids who just won’t/can’t learn from consequences please let me know – I do all of the Love and Logic stuff, it’s just not clicking with him.

For instance – you take in an adult male dog who has no clue that it is not ok to mark inside the house. You could try keeping him from marking inside the house by swatting him with a newspaper every time he does it. Or you can spend your days with his leash hooked to your belt loop, so he never has the opportunity to lift his leg while in the house. And if you have to go out of the house and can’t take him with you, put him in his crate. Unfortunately, you can’t put a kid in a crate. And 3 kids would be a lot tougher to monitor nonstop in comparison to 1 dog. But I definitely found it to be effective for dog training.