jinman
Rest in Peace
- Joined
- Feb 23, 2001
- Messages
- 21,008
- Location
- Texas - Wise County - Sunset
- Tractor
- NHTC45D, NH LB75B, Ford Jubilee
This is a grandparent on grandparent rant.:laughing:
Last September, we had our 11-yo grandson come to live with us. He's somewhat ADHD, but not so much that he acts out because of it. He is just very busy and can't concentrate for long on things like math problems. If you can look over his shoulder and keep him focused, he does well. However, if you walk away, his attention will go to a dozen other things. Even so, we have worked with him so much that he can quickly do most problems and has worked up to a B-average. For things like English and science where it's identification of parts of speech or knowing definitions, he has done excellent. Just don't ask him to write a complete sentence. He can tell you how to spell a word, but somewhere between his mind and his hand, the spelling gets lost. It just seems to take too much effort to write the whole word. We're trying to teach him that it's always shorter to do it right than do it over. We've had some success, but he will need much more help. If all the world required was reading and doing, he'd be fine; however, if he has to write or make logical lists, he struggles.
So that brings me to what he does well and loves the most. Of course, it's video games. The fast action of a video game and constant changes fit his personality perfectly. It's the one thing he does that has his full attention and interest. To go along with video games, he also loves hunting and fishing. I'm using those terms loosely because hunting to him is shooting a gun over and over. We have an old BB gun and let him shoot at targets. After shooting for 1/2 hour at the targets, he wanted to take the gun and go "hunting." His definition of hunting is cocking the BB gun and shooting everything in sight. If he can't find anything to shoot at, he'll just cock the gun and shoot into the air. When fishing, if he is able to cast out his line and get a bite in 30 seconds or less, he's okay. If it takes longer, he is messin' with his pole or imagining the waves making the bobber jump are really fish. I have to admit that he is really havin' fun and is fun to watch when fishing.
Now the problem. . . His great-grandparents bought him a new BB-gun of his own for Christmas. No, they didn't ask us before buying it. We let him have it, but we sure have had to spend a lot of time teaching him safety. He has such a strong cock-shoot-cock-shoot-cock reaction, that often he has no idea if the gun is cocked and ready to shoot or not. His finger just dances on the trigger. I've drilled and drilled on him with gun safety, but it seems that his hands do things without his mind ever connecting. Last week he was on our deck with the gun and I asked him if it was cocked and told him to keep it pointed down. "It's not cocked!" he complained as he pulled trigger and fired a BB into the deck.:smiley_aafz: So I told him if he doesn't know the condition of his gun, then he's not old enough to own one and we should put it away until he grows up. That pretty much got his attention. The other thing he did was to hand the BB gun to a neighbor kid (about 9) while it was cocked and ready to fire. He didn't tell the kid it was cocked, but just handed it to him and walked away. He got another lecture over that one. The little kid had no idea that he was being handed a gun ready to fire.
Last weekend, he went to spend a day with his other grandparents. It was Christmas all over again there and he came home with a new Nintendo DS. Oh boy! Here we go again. . . sigh!:confused2:
Last September, we had our 11-yo grandson come to live with us. He's somewhat ADHD, but not so much that he acts out because of it. He is just very busy and can't concentrate for long on things like math problems. If you can look over his shoulder and keep him focused, he does well. However, if you walk away, his attention will go to a dozen other things. Even so, we have worked with him so much that he can quickly do most problems and has worked up to a B-average. For things like English and science where it's identification of parts of speech or knowing definitions, he has done excellent. Just don't ask him to write a complete sentence. He can tell you how to spell a word, but somewhere between his mind and his hand, the spelling gets lost. It just seems to take too much effort to write the whole word. We're trying to teach him that it's always shorter to do it right than do it over. We've had some success, but he will need much more help. If all the world required was reading and doing, he'd be fine; however, if he has to write or make logical lists, he struggles.
So that brings me to what he does well and loves the most. Of course, it's video games. The fast action of a video game and constant changes fit his personality perfectly. It's the one thing he does that has his full attention and interest. To go along with video games, he also loves hunting and fishing. I'm using those terms loosely because hunting to him is shooting a gun over and over. We have an old BB gun and let him shoot at targets. After shooting for 1/2 hour at the targets, he wanted to take the gun and go "hunting." His definition of hunting is cocking the BB gun and shooting everything in sight. If he can't find anything to shoot at, he'll just cock the gun and shoot into the air. When fishing, if he is able to cast out his line and get a bite in 30 seconds or less, he's okay. If it takes longer, he is messin' with his pole or imagining the waves making the bobber jump are really fish. I have to admit that he is really havin' fun and is fun to watch when fishing.
Now the problem. . . His great-grandparents bought him a new BB-gun of his own for Christmas. No, they didn't ask us before buying it. We let him have it, but we sure have had to spend a lot of time teaching him safety. He has such a strong cock-shoot-cock-shoot-cock reaction, that often he has no idea if the gun is cocked and ready to shoot or not. His finger just dances on the trigger. I've drilled and drilled on him with gun safety, but it seems that his hands do things without his mind ever connecting. Last week he was on our deck with the gun and I asked him if it was cocked and told him to keep it pointed down. "It's not cocked!" he complained as he pulled trigger and fired a BB into the deck.:smiley_aafz: So I told him if he doesn't know the condition of his gun, then he's not old enough to own one and we should put it away until he grows up. That pretty much got his attention. The other thing he did was to hand the BB gun to a neighbor kid (about 9) while it was cocked and ready to fire. He didn't tell the kid it was cocked, but just handed it to him and walked away. He got another lecture over that one. The little kid had no idea that he was being handed a gun ready to fire.
Last weekend, he went to spend a day with his other grandparents. It was Christmas all over again there and he came home with a new Nintendo DS. Oh boy! Here we go again. . . sigh!:confused2: