Question
John,
We own and have read both these books multiple times, also frequently listen to your radio show. We are handling the situations according to your advice. As far as we can tell we are parenting by the principles recommended in these books, and have done so for quite some time. We are very confident that she is not doing this out of being micromanaged or defiance, more so out of just plain stupidity and laziness. We do not have a problem with defiance with her, what ever she is told to do whether she likes it or not she does it with no complaints,back talk or refusal. It is extremely rare for her to simply refuse to do something she is told to do.On our tickets sheet we do not have doing what your told as a target because this has not been an issue for her, following directions however is a big issue that she cannot seem to overcome. ( follow through, ill explain).
Her bathroom issue seems to be geniunely laziness or forgetfulness. She doesn't want to be bothered with taking herself... Only takes herself to pee (after she's already held it for 2 hours) She's fully aware the moment she realizes she has to go but will avoid it for hours till its too late. She would rather go through the unpleasant process of cleaning up dirty pants, cleaning up the mess, bathing and then being sent to her room to not even think twice about going earlier the next day or the day after that. Seems like theres a disconnect there and its simply not clicking, as if she does not realize that SHE has the power to change this end result. She has done this daily for the past 3+ weeks with no thought of doing something different about it the following day. Everyday, it is like she is being corrected for it like this is the very first time it has happened. We don't know how to break this cycle?
We would also like your thoughts on our other issue. Before we ever started tickets we noticed our daughter had a terrible time with following directions. We simply thought she was being disobediant at first. We had thought when we started tickets this would be cured rather quickly beings that she had never had the consequence of been sent to her room with nothing to do for extended amounts of time. We thought surely this will get her attention to pay better attention to what we say. Here we are a year and a half later and we are in the same boat still ( same target behavior since day one is still on the chart being worked on till this day). She does not seem to learn.
Here are a few examples- for the past few months weekly, I have her take her bed sheets off to wash I tell her to take them off and put them in the laundry room. Simple. Now out of 10-15 times she's been told to do this the sheets have NEVER ONCE made it to the laundry room. She simply loses a ticket each time. She is not doing this out of defiance. If I at that point tell her you did not do as I said, and tell her to take them to the laundry room now, she will with no problem. Why she didn't do it in the first place, we cannot understand. When asked where I told her to put them she will answer the laundry room but will put it in her laundry basket instead where she puts her dirty clothes everyday so she assumes thats where it must go too. 9 times out of 10 she can tell me back where or what she was to do but doesn't do it. Even though she loses a ticket every single time for it and sometimes that winds up being her last ticket, she still will not put it in the laundry room the following week. No matter how many times she loses tickets or goes to her room, her routine will never change.
She seems to try to memorize what we tell her or what she THINKS were going to say.If 3 days in a row I told her to put her boots and green jacket on and then the 4th day I said to put your boots and purple jacket on, She would have the green jacket on because thats what I had told her to do yesterday. So she assumed thats what I said. If after breakfast she is used to going upstairs and making her bed but instead I told her to go put coat and shoes on she would start heading upstairs to make her bed. She's like a programmed robot! If you change something up she cannot seem to do anything differently. She is genuinely not trying to defy us with these actions she just seems confused/lost without any improvement day to day. We are concerned that there may be something more here like a disability/delay, because we don't understand how at this point she still cannot put two and two together.
What are your thoughts on this and how should we handle the bathroom situation at this point?
