Odd transition to joy

I've written before how much I love my job.  And the end of this particular week is part of the reason why; I got off the airplane to join a thousand of my colleagues who, like me, love doing math.

No, really.  Last night at the opening banquet of our summer convention I saw all sorts of friends huddled in conversations about generalized eigenvalues; people who compared notes on their latest teaching assignments; smiles and hugs all around.  After dinner for 400 people, there was a musical where we sang -- I kid you not -- lyrics like these (to the tune of "All that Jazz"):

Number theory and topology!
         And all that math!
Graphs and hyperbolic symmetry!
        and all that math!
Come on, guys, let’s congregate today
here at the summer meetings of the MAA!
We’re having lots of fun
Right here in Madison
With All!  That!  Math!

I'd planned to stay at a nearby dorm, but a good friend grabbed me and put me up in the second bed in her hotel room.  Whatever stereotype you might have of the soulless, humorless mathematician -- you wouldn't have seen it last night.  

This sounds neither "miser" nor "mom".   But maybe, after the first part of this pretty awful week, a break  is a good idea.  Today I'm going to hunt down some people who might want to grab lunch and talk about projective geometry.  Yes.  Harmonic homologies, here I come!

The day after

I have a friend who described the strangeness of life continuing onward after her father's death; she said it was eerily like a stone dropping in the water.  There was the splash, and after that the water covered over so that to most people it was like nothing had ever happened.  But she knew the stone was there, at the bottom of the pond.

For me, the day after C-son left is more like trying to put together electrical sockets and cheese -- the pieces of this picture don't seem to fit together at all.  On the one hand, I've been canceling his many many appointments, telling family and friends about the change, packing up his things.  On the other hand, I'm getting ready for the mathematical meetings that I've been looking forward to all year.  (In fact, I'm writing this post from the airport).

The strange transition from sentiment to pragmatism is something that apparently I'm hard-wired with.  Here is the letter my dad sent me when I let him know about what was going on.

I am sorry to hear about C-son.  You, like your mother, are wonderful in your attempts to rescue those in need.  While it is always sad to fail in an attempt, you should take pride in you successes.
On a separate note related to family vacation; I have booked a Midsize SUV from Hertz in Durango with you listed as the driver. I expect to meet you at the airport, but if not, the Expedia Confirmation number is [############]. (one notes that  the number is large enough to provide a separate number for each person on the earth to rent 25 cars.
Love,  Dad

The child who left our home

Yesterday, C-son left our home.

This is hard to describe, not only because there are so many emotions but because there are so many parts to the story.  There is the side of C-son's social worker who said, "I'm sure you can work through this."  And the side of our own social workers, who said they'd never seen a case this difficult.  There is the side of my step-daughters who say, "but every time we saw him, he smiled and was so cheerful."  But there's also the side of K-daughter, who was there when he was throwing hammers at the house and pulling knives out of the drawer in a rage, who is terrified that he'll come back to our home.  

I think I agree with all of them.  He's a poor kid who has been through a lot.  I know we were his last shot at having a family, so I felt an especial obligation to work harder than I have so far:  if we'd just gotten him on the right meds, could it have worked?  I wanted to be superwoman.  I wanted to be the one who saved him.  I don't at all like admitting that not only was love not enough, but love and discipline and positive reinforcement and everything else I could think of were not enough.  *I* was not enough.

He'd gotten increasingly defiant and angry this past week; the stealing I mentioned a while back was just a small part of it.  There was an argument that started when my husband told him to come home from skating by 8:45 -- C-son reacted by cursing, throwing things, locking himself in the bathroom.  The next night, a similar discussion resulted in the hammer-throwing and knife-pulling.  I sent the other kids to the attic to get them out of his way.  He left under custody of the police, who took him to the local hospital under a "302" (mental health observation).  He won't come back to our home; there is a good chance I won't ever see him again.

A weird irony of this is that my last few hours with him were much like my first week with him:  buried in paperwork and a confusion of bureaucracy.  My first few weeks, I spent hours trying to negotiate the tangle of insurance questions to get him the medications he'd run out of.   Admitting him to the ER was a tangle of custody questions: was I allowed to sign him in?  Which of the two social agencies actually has legal authority to admit him?   I spent about two hours at the hospital filling out paperwork, and they asked me to stay longer in case they had more questions in a few more hours.  But by 11:00 I was going brain dead and had to leave.

And so today we begin the process of figuring out what our lives will be like without C-son here anymore.  For us, I expect it will be much calmer and more predictable.  There is an uncomfortable sense of relief.  Here.

But for C-son, I know, not so much.  Drat drat drat.

Changes ($137)

First, I will pretend that everything is the same.

Last week, the 20-week grocery average was $137; this week it remains $137.  This,  because we spent $37 this week on groceries.  There were also (on the part of my husband) multiple trips to lunch restaurants with the boys -- I don't have any idea how much those cost us, but I'm throwing up my hands and over-estimating it at $100.  Which keeps things the same as before.  Grocery-wise.

But the truth is things are not the same with the people in the home.  Today we are in the midst of a big messy change, and I'm not sure how it's going to work out.   So I'll keep this post short and write more tomorrow.

Cell phone update: ay-ay, or I-I?

Two weeks ago, I bought my boys cell phones and signed them up for a pay-as-you-go plan.

The pay-as-you-go started with lots of "go" and therefore lots of "pay".  There has been a bit of the "Ay-ay-ay!" at the beginning of this experiment.  So what has happened in the meantime?  How have things settled out during the past two weeks?

Well, the boys have indeed stopped purchasing those expensive ringtones that they bought on the first day.  But (at least for a while), they couldn't stop themselves from making out-of-network calls, or even sometimes ordering new games.  Technology is fun, after all.  So, more money got spent that the boys could ill-afford to spend.

After a few days of their mom (me) seeing her boys blow through the minutes on the phones, I decided we needed to have a talk.  By some miracle of inspiration, that's all I said:  "We need to have a talk about the cell phones."  I didn't say why.  I didn't (this truly is a minor miracle) start nagging right away.

The boys came to the table like adults.  They knew the score, they told me.  They'd been using up their minutes way too fast.  I didn't say it; they did.  I was a proud mama.

We discussed possible alternatives.  The boys didn't have much (other than vague promises that they'd try for more self-control).  So when I suggested some ideas, I was surprised -- stunned, even -- to see how happy they were to agree.  This is like the twilight zone:  Super-Mom with her kids, the Ultra-Agreeables.  We should have our own TV show or something.

Instead of my looking over their massive phone use and saying "Ay-ay-ay", we went to two kinds of "I":  Immediacy and Information.

Immediacy:  I suggested that if they spend more than their allotment of money for the day (that is, if they call out of network and incur additional costs), that they lose use of the phone the very next day.   That is, they don't wait 20 or 30 days until they use up their money to quit using the phone, but they take the "no-phone hit" right away.  To my utter, utter surprise, they all loved this suggestion.  Go figure.  And I've had to enforce this rule exactly once so far (with the impulsive J-son); for the other two boys, this rule reigned in all excessive spending immediately.  I am floored.

Information:  I've started giving them once-a-week paper updates with the subtraction done for them.  It's one thing to say, "you won't get more money until October, and you have only $39 left on the phone."  But when I added the line, "This means there will be at least 42 days between now and then that you can not use your phone", something in their demeanor changes.  They've voluntarily started giving up their phones for days at a time right now.  They've considered sharing phones (although I'll believe that when I see it).  

I feel like both of these solutions have implications for grown-ups:  that somehow doing the subtraction (buying X means I'm giving up Y) could help with budgeting.  Or making deals with yourself about spending today leading to money fasts tomorrow would help to curb today's spending.  But I can't make the connection, somehow.  I'm just glad that we seem to be hitting some kind of happy cell-phone equilibrium here in the Miser Mom household.

Perhaps.  We'll find out for sure sometime between now and October 10.

Locks and snares

Last day of writing about stealing.  For me, if there were a fun aspect of this --- there's not, actually, but if there were --- it would be the physical part.  James Bond-esque traps to detect the burglar.  Carpentry projects that remove objects from temptation's way.  So, I admit that when I start suspecting theft, I go all 007.  


When I thought maybe one of our kids was drinking our booze, I removed all bottles but one (that's not unusual in our home).  On that one, I drew a small, unobtrusive line at the height of the remaining alcohol.  I also used candle wax to attach a piece of thread to the cap and the bottle.  This was not so much to catch the child in the act as to confirm whether I was imagining things.  When, a week or so later, the thread had come off and the liquid had gone down a half-inch, I felt almost a relief -- I hadn't been hallucinating.

It's for the same reason -- to make sure I'm not losing my marbles -- that I sometimes leave a small object like a ball at the base of our bedroom door, in such a way that opening the door would roll it away.  It's almost more for my ease of mind than anything else.  And peace of mind is especially important in a home where there's been stealing going on -- otherwise, any thing I casually misplace becomes a reason for panic that it's been picked up by the wrong person.

On the other hand, when the ball gets rolled away AND the candy jar seems lighter than usual, then I know I'm not just misremembering the candy level.  A weirdly helpful kind of certainty.

So, if the "traps" are for my own sanity, then the locks are to help the kids:  "Lead me not into temptation".  Once they're convinced (after many half-hearted tries) that the gummy vitamins are completely inaccessible, they begin to lose interest, develop new habits.

The problem with locks is that they're a pain in the . . . in the family.  I resisted putting locks in my sewing room for a long time, and finally gave in when I realized that was the most humane way of keeping my kids out things they couldn't help themselves from getting into.  When C-son recently  started going through things in our bedroom, I was much quicker to add them.

I don't recommend safes for deterring kid-burglars.  First of all, they're very expensive -- tiny ones too small to use can easily be $70, and most safes run in the hundreds of dollars.  But more importantly, they're a pain to use: you don't want to bend over and lock and unlock a safe several times a day.  And if you start leaving things out of the locked area and your kids discover this, you've extended ten-fold the number of times they'll scout around to see whether you've done it again.  The locks have to be easy to use consistently.  All the time.

Combination locks are great.  Not only do you not need to keep track of a key, but if you worry that the kids have mastered the combination you can change it.  (In contrast, recently one of my kids found the key to a regular lock and took it, which resulted in very very tense discussions to get it returned).   Another huge plus for a combination lock is that it has its very own "trap" aspect.  That is, I remember two combinations:  the one that opens it, and the one I leave the lock on once I've locked it.  If I see anything else, I know the kids have been trying to get in, and I can step up my vigilance.

My sewing room closet door, with an added lock.

 Here's a lock I added to my sewing room closet door last year -- in that closet, I can store lots and lots of stuff away from the kids.  The combination lock uses letters, not numbers.  My current "closed" word is "Woote" (that changes occasionally).  I'm very certain that the kids haven't messed with this lock in months.

Close-up of the lock in standard (for now) closed position.

Here's a lock we just added this past weekend to my husband's ugly dresser.  

The lock didn't make it any prettier, but it does mean he can use his entire top drawer to stash away electronics, his wallet, etc -- which is what he was used to doing anyway, without the lock.  And we do know that unsuccessful  attempts were recently made to get in.  So we'll be careful about being consistent and careful about this for the next month or so.

Here's a somewhat less ugly lock.

I have a solid oak nightstand, and I didn't want to completely uglify it.  So I added what my hardware store calls a "keyed sash lock".  It's meant for windows, but I think it doesn't look that bad on my nightstand.  For what it's worth, I got this idea from a lockable nightstand that my sister bought two years ago.  She doesn't have kids who are live-in burglars like I do, but one summer when she had a bunch of different house guests she lost some heirloom jewelry, and decided to have a safe place of her own.

The disadvantage is keeping track of the key.  I thought I could put it discretely on a hook elsewhere in the room; as I mentioned above, that was a huge mistake.  Drat.  

These locks were fairly inexpensive and easy to install (each lock cost me somewhere between $8 and $20, depending on the type).  As I've said, I really wish I didn't have to lock things up in my own home.  But given the circumstances, these are the least stressful part of restraining and retraining my kids.

Stealing away

More on stealing.  Today, not focusing on the why or wherefore, but instead just focusing on changing behavior.


There's a line we heard from a friend; my husband and I repeat it over and over again to each other.  I'd been telling this friend how the boys had been stealing gummy vitamins out of my sewing room at night.  I described in detail the punishments we'd meted out, the lessons we'd preached at the boys at great length, and the rewards we'd promised them for future good behavior.  And my friend listened to this wide-eyed, and asked, 

"So, you think the boys won't steal anymore?".

I think my friend doesn't have any kids.  That's what I think.

Changing the behavior that my kids learned over time takes a lot of time and persistence.  And because the kids weren't really sure they wanted to change the behavior, it took even more time and even more (of my) persistence.  Of course, part of what I do is

• make it easier to do the right thing (such as give them a box full of cans of soup they can eat for a midnight snack instead of pilfering off-limits candy), 

and another part of what I do is 

• make it harder to do the wrong thing (we'll talk about locks and such tomorrow).  

But that doesn't cover it all.  For example, J-son sometimes took money, just to give it to other people.  He stole a $5 bill off my husband's dresser and gave it to some guy on a basketball court, no particular reason.  He took a $100 bill out of my husband's wallet and gave it to a girlfriend.  He'd "borrow" an MP3 player from a friend's house, and then tell me his friend had given it to him as a gift.  Boxes and locks go only so far.


Here, in no particular order, are the behavior aspects we implemented.  Let me clarify that:  I'm listing them in no particular order, but part of what made them successful is that we actually implemented ALL of them, consistently.  Order matters a lot.

• Restitution:  As far as possible, the boys paid their debts back.  Sometimes the money came out of their bank accounts; sometimes it came in chores (J-son picked up dog poop 100 days in a row after the $100 bill fiasco).  
• Punishment.  My husband took the role of drill sergeant; he'd run N-son and J-son and have them do push-ups until their arms quivered.  (Corporal punishment was not an option for these kids). 
• Counseling.  I played "good cop" to my husband's "bad cop", probing the boys about why they did the theft and how they did the theft.  I'd ask them if it made them happy to steal (they'd always say no).  We'd discuss alternatives ("you could ask for food; you could save your money; you could wait until morning.")  
• Medication.  As mentioned yesterday.
• Reward.  It's hard to reward not-stealing . . . it's too easy to turn things into a reward for not-getting-caught-stealing.  But I did set up an allowance system, with real money (the beginning of the slow death of Mommy Dollars).    And weekly allowance has always been contingent on "not stealing and not lying."  Strictly enforced.  So, sort of a reward.  
• Diversion.  We'd go out of our way to get the kids more exercise (wear them out so they'd sleep all night).  We'd try to direct them into wholesome activities and away from the kinds of kids who accept $100 bills.  This technique had limited success, at best.
• Clarifying rules.  This has been especially important with C-son.  When I hand him anything now, I will make sure either to say clearly, "This is now yours.  You may keep it," or "You may use this for the afternoon, but it is mine, and I want it back later today when you are done."   I'm much more careful to say, "The things in this cabinet belong to me.  I will let you use them if appropriate, but you have to ask me first or you're not allowed to touch them."  And I repeat over and over that he is not supposed to go in certain rooms (my bedroom or sewing room) without me there.
• Additional rules.  It is now a rule in our home that my boys may not accept gifts from friends.  The friends have to give the thing to ME, instead.  We had to enforce that rule often for things that J-son brought home -- sometimes the "gift" really was a gift, and sometimes its appearance in J-son's pocket was a surprise to the original owner.  This was emotionally the hardest rule to implement, because it embarrassed J-son, no matter whether the gift was legit or not.  But it had the quickest, most profound impact on changing his habits.

As you can imagine, in the most intense phases of this process, we were pretty depressed.  No surprise there.  It's hard to be constantly on the lookout; every time we temporarily misplaced something, we had to wonder whether it was a brain fart or a burglary.  It's hard to have these kids you're supposed to love, and instead to be constantly in their face about what they took this time.   

Each time we'd go through this cycle, my husband would turn to me and say, "So,  . . . now that we've told the boys not to take things that don't belong to them, they'll never steal again, will they?"  But of course we never meant that.  That line was our own little macabre joke.   Bad habits = hard to break.  

And yet, here we are, lo these many months later.  And for N-son and J-son, the bad habits of theft seem to basically be subdued.  I can't remember the last time the boys had to run or do pushups.   Their debts have been paid, if not forgotten.  We haven't grown complacent, by any means, but the worst of it all seems to have passed.

Now that C-son has started taking things, we've carefully started putting this structure back in place.  The big difference with C-son is that punishment is basically out of the picture; he has "ODD" (Oppositional Defiance Disorder), so any punishment just makes him 50 times worse.  [For an example, read about the battle I picked with him; restricting his access to my power drill resulted in an entire day of sulking and avoidance.]  So we rely more heavily on counseling and rules, with additional praise for asking to borrow things as opposed to just taking them.

And just as the thievery itself slowly fades away, tomorrow will be the last day I'll write about this.  Oh, thank goodness.  What a miserable topic.