Fires and stealing and lying, oh my!

[Jellobiafra]

First, let me introduce myself and provide a little history. I'm a 40 year old stay at home dad of 3 young boys, ages 7 (Riley), 6 (Logan) and 4 (Lukis). I'm not their biological father, but I've been their dad for nearly 3 years now. I married their mom last year, and she is a respiratory therapist. Her ex was the bio father of the younger two boys, and was a heroin addict, and spent much of his history with the boys, not really with the boys, but in jail. He's currently in prison until 2011.

Anyway, when I entered the picture, my wife was working nights, sleeping during the day while the kids were sometimes in day care. Other times they were home while she slept. This bred an atmosphere of child lawlessness, LOL. When I moved in with her, the apartment they were in had two cracked windows, and not a screen left anywhere. The place was a wreck. The kids were, as you can imagine, a bit out of control. She was completely and wholly overwhelmed.

So, enter me

It took a good year, but they boys got under control, and started to get the idea between right and wrong. In July of 2007, I quit my job and became a full time stay at home parent.

I used what my parents used which was a mixture of stern talks, time outs, naughty chairs, grounding, and spankings (with my hand, certainly no paddle or belts ever). Spankings were only used for extreme issues, or as a last resort, meaning we had worked through everything else and nothing worked.

As of today, we get compliments almost every time we go out to a restaurant. While on vacation last year in the Blue Ridge Mountains, we asked for the bill after dinner only to find out that some random woman paid for all our dinners, asked not to be identified, and only wanted to pass along how well behaved our children are, and how she wanted to just do something nice for us. Wow!

Everything was going wonderfully, until the last few months. The house we were renting was foreclosed on with little notice, and we moved an hour north, closer to my wife's job. The kids of course had to change schools. Since that happened, we have been experiencing a great deal of problems with Riley. Last year, he was the model student and model son. He started out in Kindergarten far behind everyone else, and with a speech problem, but worked very hard. By the end of the year he was caught up and doing wonderfully. He is still in speech therapy, but he is easily understood. His problems are mostly learned bad habits.

However, since the move, and now in first grade, he is consistently getting bad notes from school. During a conference, his teacher said that not a day goes by where she does not have to get on him for talking during class. Now, on the surface, he's a young boy...can't be too hard on him about that, however we've had talks about it. The real trouble has been at home.

A month or so ago, he went through a defiant stage. We found out that he was eating toothpaste. We explained to him how dangerous it was (I even showed him a clip from a recent CSI where a woman died from toothpaste ingestion...it wasn't pretty, LOL). A few days later, he was caught doing it again. So this time, the toothpaste was taken away, he was grounded, and he lost his television privileges. The next night I awoke to use the restroom at about 4am, and caught him watching his television. Ugh. So I gave him a single spank, and unplugged his tv, and extended his grounding. We also had a long talk with him regarding his actions. Two weeks ago, I decided to start letting him watch a little tv again. One hour a day and only after homework was completed. His defiant behavior seemed to be behind us, and we moved on.

Last week, while I was watching tv in the living room, my 6 year old came out and said that his room smelled like smoke. So I went to check it out. I smelled a little. Went into my youngest son's room, and again, just a little smell. I then went into Riley's room, and it was obvious that this was the scene of the crime. I asked him where the smell was coming from, and he said he didn't know. So I looked around, thinking maybe there was some kind of electrical fire somewhere. Finding nothing, I went outside to see if it was coming from out there. Again, nothing. So back to Riley I went. Now I knew something was fishy. After 10 minutes of me getting angry, he finally admitted to "rubbing a pencil on the ground and it made smoke". Uh...what? LOL!!!

One thing led to another and he gave me the pencil, it was obviously burned, and after a bit of the evil eye and some angry words, he said he took a lighter from the kitchen drawer (we don't smoke...it's a lighter we use for candles) and burned the pencil. Still, he continued to lie about what he burned. I ended up finding a pile of things he was burning next to his bed, just inches away from a couch pillow with stuffing hanging out!

He received a spanking for the lying, and lost his tv rights again. We sat him down and explained just how dangerous it was playing with fire. Showed him pictures of burn victims. Did the scared straight thing with him. Explained to him that the spankings and grounding were more out of him lying than the fire.

Fast forward to last night. He had recently been going out to the kitchen to "sharpen his pencils" a bit too often for my liking. So during one of those trips, I snuck out there to see what was going on. His hand was deep into our change jar, stealing money. Recently, he'd been coming home with some extra change, and when asked, he said that his friend was giving it to him. I told him to stop taking money from this friend because I'm sure his parents would not be happy about it. He said ok. Turns out, he was lying again. He had been stealing money from us the whole time.

So now I'm at a loss. You can only spank a kid so much before it stops having meaning. And once a kid has been grounded, his tv and toys taken away, what more can you do? To top it off, the child seems to show no remorse, no matter how much I try and guilt him

The boy is now basically sleeping, going to school, doing homework, and reading. That's it. But we have lost our trust in him, and stated as much. We're not sure what to do next.

So I'm hoping that maybe some others have had an experience like this, and can provide some advice.