Disgusting habits and taking responsibility

Page 1 of 2 [ 24 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2  Next

carpenter_bee
Snowy Owl
Snowy Owl

User avatar

Joined: 25 Oct 2012
Gender: Female
Posts: 144

14 Jan 2015, 3:43 pm

Also, FWIW, the sneaking/hiding food thing can be a sign of an emerging eating disorder. It was for me (never a serious one, but I certainly had a dysfunctional relationship with food), and I know it's pretty common behavior for that kind of thing. You may want to keep an eye on that.



guzzle
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 25 Sep 2013
Age: 59
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,298
Location: Close To The Border

14 Jan 2015, 5:14 pm

carpenter_bee wrote:
I think if you want it to stop, you need to address the real issue-- why is she stealing/stashing food? In my case, it was because I wanted to binge on junk food that my mom would not have approved of. But in this case, it sounds like mostly healthy stuff-- fruit-- so maybe she really just needs a snack at that time but doesn't want to ask for it, or maybe there is something she really enjoys about the sneakiness of it... getting away with it.


Stealing is and has been an issue for a long time.



guzzle
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 25 Sep 2013
Age: 59
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,298
Location: Close To The Border

14 Jan 2015, 5:24 pm

animalcrackers wrote:
guzzle wrote:
We do have the no food upstairs rule, kitchen is too small to eat in.
Which on the whole she keeps to
But she steals and stashes food to eat at night.


That might explain why all these things end up under her bed when she uses the wastebasket for other things; If she knows she's not supposed to have food in her room it's possible she's deliberately hiding the wrappers, cores and peels under her bed because she thinks you'll see them if she throws them in the garbage -- or that she doesn't think about throwing them out (literally, doesn't think about it at all) because she's too busy thinking about hiding them (and then forgets about them, or just never thinks far enough ahead to consider what will happen to the garbage after she hides it under her bed).

If the "no food upstairs" rule doesn't work and is impossible to enforce, I suggest getting rid of it and instating a new rule like "food scraps go in the wastebasket if you eat in your room"; "food is only allowed in your room if food scraps and wrappers are thrown in the wastebasket"; or "no foods with peels or cores allowed in your room"/"only [x,y,z -- specific foods that aren't messy and won't leave scraps] may be eaten in your room". That way, she only has one rule to remember, there would never be an issue with which rule takes priority ("no food upstairs"? or "food scraps go in the bin"? ... priority may be considered consciously or it may just be whichever one is thought of first), and she would have no reason to hide wrappers and food scraps (other than habit, I suppose).


I emptied her bin today and that had orange peel in it :?:
Spoke to her placement today too and they have called a meeting tomorrow where DD will be with someone from her unit and DH and me with the family worker because this has been going on too long for me to keep cool.
One thing that was mentioned on the phone is to possibly review her reward scheme.
So see what tomorrow brings I suppose...



animalcrackers
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 26 Feb 2011
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,207
Location: Somewhere

15 Jan 2015, 1:14 pm

guzzle wrote:
I emptied her bin today and that had orange peel in it :?:


That's good.

Maybe your latest reaction to finding all that garbage under her bed some kind of new impact (not assuming anything about your reaction, it's just that sometimes things take a while to sink in or one time something gets through when other times it doesn't).

Maybe it's just something she's slow to learn like you and others have said, or something else entirely and the hiding scraps thing doesn't apply. It could be something simple, like maybe in the kitchen something reminds her about food scraps going in the garbage but in her room she doesn't have the same cue(s) or procedural memory. (This would be a possible reason for that kind of inconsistency if it were me, anyways.)

Another suggestion is to try to get her to look for and pick up food scraps in her room once a day -- maybe as part of a morning or evening routine, if routines help her to get things done. (This is something I try to do myself, because I have a hard time picking up after myself as I go.)

guzzle wrote:
Spoke to her placement today too and they have called a meeting tomorrow where DD will be with someone from her unit and DH and me with the family worker because this has been going on too long for me to keep cool.
One thing that was mentioned on the phone is to possibly review her reward scheme.
So see what tomorrow brings I suppose...


I don't know what a placement or unit is (I have an idea about "family worker") but I hope it went well and you came up with something (or things) to try that is(/are) effective.


_________________
"Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving." -- Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

Love transcends all.


guzzle
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 25 Sep 2013
Age: 59
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,298
Location: Close To The Border

15 Jan 2015, 2:59 pm

animalcrackers wrote:
guzzle wrote:
Spoke to her placement today too and they have called a meeting tomorrow where DD will be with someone from her unit and DH and me with the family worker because this has been going on too long for me to keep cool.
One thing that was mentioned on the phone is to possibly review her reward scheme.
So see what tomorrow brings I suppose...


I don't know what a placement or unit is (I have an idea about "family worker") but I hope it went well and you came up with something (or things) to try that is(/are) effective.


We've reviewed the reward scheme and have slightly adapted it. She is an intern during school term and only comes home weekends and holidays so Friday and Sunday she has the responsibility of sorting her suitcases albeit with help of me if needed on Friday and on Sunday I always check for contraband she might want to smuggle with her to the unit. :twisted:
On Saturdays and Sundays she has to comply with request regarding tidying up and on Saturday she also has to make sure her horse riding kit is cleaned and ready for the the next week (she rides Friday evenings).
The rewards are tickets she receives when she gets back to the unit and they have a shop where they can spend their tickets non-food treats for themselves. Her getting the ticket is not so much based on whether she does the jobs or not but more as to the attitude she takes towards having to do what is expected of her. With good attitude the jobs will get done, with bad attitude it will turn into a discussion and very likely the job will not get done properly if at all.

It also came out that although sometimes DD really does tidy her room nicely it doesn't speak for itself that when I ask her to repeat the exercise a week later she actually can remember the last time as such. So this weekend we are cleaning and tidying together and if we are both happy with the result I will take and print pictures of her desk, under the bed etc... and they can then serve as a visual reminder for DD to help her tidy up without me having to be there every minute of it. She likes spending time in her room so usually I allow her a whole afternoon and pop in at intervals to make sure she is heading the right way so to speak. Like I said, on a good day she really does get what is expected of her and does an excellent job that passes the grade and other times it's all too much and everything becomes a discussion and the place looks like a bomb site. With the visual we can hopefully draw a clear line as to what is tidy :)



androbot01
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 17 Sep 2014
Age: 53
Gender: Female
Posts: 6,746
Location: Kingston, Ontario, Canada

15 Jan 2015, 3:17 pm

I'm with the composters. Maybe get a small recycling container and put it in her room. Then it is close at hand so she doesn't have to leave her room to "put the waste in its place."
Maybe every few days she can take the little in to a main compost area outside.



guzzle
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 25 Sep 2013
Age: 59
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,298
Location: Close To The Border

15 Jan 2015, 5:02 pm

androbot01 wrote:
I'm with the composters. Maybe get a small recycling container and put it in her room. Then it is close at hand so she doesn't have to leave her room to "put the waste in its place."
Maybe every few days she can take the little in to a main compost area outside.


She really isn't interested. She might throw the cores to the birds on a good day but gardening is not her thing full stop. And composting is gardening to her whichever way I turn it plus the fact that I really rather not have food upstairs so will look into allowing her a snack proper before bed time.



androbot01
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 17 Sep 2014
Age: 53
Gender: Female
Posts: 6,746
Location: Kingston, Ontario, Canada

15 Jan 2015, 5:17 pm

Yeah, I'm kinda a slob myself. Things have been known to go to fungus before I realize it.



League_Girl
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 4 Feb 2010
Gender: Female
Posts: 27,205
Location: Pacific Northwest

16 Jan 2015, 12:10 pm

If she is stealing food and wasting it, then maybe you should perhaps put locks on the fridge and cupboards? You will still let her eat when it's meal time or snack time.

I knew one mother who would grocery shop every other day because her kids would eat up all the food so fast if she bought it all at once to last them a month or two weeks. That was how she handled her food situation than putting locks on everything. All her kids were NT as far as I know.


_________________
Son: Diagnosed w/anxiety and ADHD. Also academic delayed.

Daughter: NT, no diagnoses.