Question
When using the kicked out of garden method for target behaviors, do you have the child stay in the room? (We are assuming you do.) We have a 10-year-old boy who has been stealing things and lying (making up these elaborate stories about where he got them) and has also had some problems bullying kids.
We stripped his room and he has been in his room when not at school, aftercare, church or family outings etc. Every day he has been asking to mark another day off on his chart and hates being in his room away from all the family activity. He eats meals with the family and that’s about it. (He has not been allowed to play with his younger two brothers or their toys in their rooms etc.)
He made it two days, then one day and recently 11 days but we just found some more stolen goods and had to reset him after 11 days today (so he is back on day 1 of 14 again). He’s allowed to work on schoolwork, read his Bible, write versus from his character correction lists (if he desires to) practice his piano and that is it.
Any advice would be welcomed and appreciated. We were able to get him to confess and tell us the real story when we told him that we did not believe his other story and were planning to reset him when we found these foreign objects that he told us he had found on the playground at school. I asked him if he had even thought twice about taking the fancy sharpie pens from his art teacher (since he was trying to earn his way out of restriction at home), And he said it never entered his mind.
