Girls, Oh My

We have been conducting an experiment for the past few days. Lauren has been pouting, whining, not doing her school work, and just plain regressing in her behavior. She went on medication to try to control her seizures and about the same time we began to make her use her communication device every day all the time. this is because her ability to speak has declined considerably. At any rate we wanted to see if the behavior issues are a result of the medication she is taking or the fact that she has to use her device, which by the way she does not like to do at all. We had been told that the meds can make patients quite irritable and since they are helping to reduce the seizures we did not really want to take her off of them because seizures are not something that you want to leave uncontrolled if at all possible. We decided instead to take away the communication device. She just thinks that someone else at school needs to use it more then she does so she is not in on what is going on.

Guess what her behavior has dramatically improved with no issues either at home or at school the entire time we have been doing this. I am relieved that this has nothing to do with her medication. Now we have to work on an attitude adjustment which is going to take some time.

It has been more then a week now since Hanna threw everything out of her room and since I got tired of trying to get her to clean up the mess or cleaning it up myself I had her choose three outfits and confiscated all of the other stuff. Some of it was given to Lauren to wear since they wear the same size, some of it was given to a friend`s daughter, some was taken to the thrift store, and one basket was locked up so that she can earn it back if and when she chooses to. She does not seem to have any problem with wearing the same things over and over again. I heard a bit of talk about them going swimming for phy-ed soon so I wonder what kind of a scheme she is going to come up to deal with that? I did ask her about it and she said that she can just skip swimming (one of her favorite things to do). I told her that she would not get to take part in "fun Friday" if she did not swim and she said she would figure it out by her self. That Indicates to me that she is likely going to try to manipulate her way out of this mess. She has a swimsuit in the basket that she can earn back and we are not just going to feel sorry for her and give it back to her.

We have to be on the lookout for trouble ALL the time I guess. These girls are work I tell you. Lucky for me Lauren can usually get her act together and we can generally reason with her. Hanna, well she is just someone who does not get it and likely never will.