More Is Not Always better

In the last two weeks, Kalisha has done some crazy things in her shopping adventures. It seems she makes great progress, has all her ducks in a row and then shazamm...things are back at square one.

She recently attended the DeKalb County Fair with her boyfriend and each of their staff people. When she came home, I asked if she had a good time. She said they did and they had a good lunch while there.
"So what do you have in the paper bag," I asked.
"Oh, just some doughnuts for us to share."
"Good. I'm hungry for something sweet. May I have one?"
"Sure," she replied.
I opened the bag and was rather amazed at the amount of doughnuts inside.
"Kalisha, how many doughnuts did you buy?"
"Just a dozen. They looked really good and I thought we could all share."
Right...a dozen doughnuts in a house that tries not to eat many sweets.

So yesterday, I met two friends for lunch. Kalisha wanted me to drop her off at the mall while I visited. When I picked her up, several hours later, she said she ate at Chick-Fil-A. She had a chicken sandwich and fries AND their nuggets.
"Why did you get a sandwich and the nuggets?"
"I don't know. I guess I was hungry."

Later, we went grocery shopping. Grocery shopping with Kalisha is always an adventure. We have been working on her spending and selection skills for-evah...or so it seems to me and probably to her, too.
We each had a cart; I had a large one and she had a small one. She met me and had only 3 boxes of cereal and some grapes in her cart.
"Should I get some of that yogurt that is on sale?" she asked.
"Sure," I told her as she headed to the dairy case.
She came back and her cart was filled with Yoplait yogurt containers.

"How many did you get?" I asked.
"Six of every flavor."
I was doing some fast calculating in my head and even at .39 each, that was going to be a staggering sum because there must be 15 flavors.
"You can't get that many," I told her. "Where are we going to put them all?"
"I don't know but I'll put them back, Mom."

Off she went to put them back. Wouldn't you like to be the one working in the dairy department and having to put them all back in the correct flavor spaces??? It's called job security.

So I expect her to return with maybe 12 or so. No. She only has 4.
"Kalisha, you can get more than 4."
"No, it's okay. I'll get some more another day."

Some day, we are going to conquer the spending "thing."

No, You Did Not......

If you are new to this blog, welcome, and I will give you a few sentences as backdrop. Kalisha is my daughter, she has autism and is 30 years old. She has always had a difficult time with money; counting it, spending too much of it, purchasing things and then not having enough with her and allowing other people to use her debit/credit card.

She doesn't get to carry her card with her any more, so that has eliminated the one problem. Her BC (behavioral consultant) and I and a few other staff, have talked, worked, explained, cajoled, given consequences and set up budgets for her but she has a few addictions and occasionally, they still get the best of her. NOT illegal addictions, but fast food and 'good deals' are her downfall.

Commercials for certain deals at McDonald's burn themselves into her subconscious and she has a difficult time resisting. Several years ago, the commercial showed a bucket of McNuggets; 50, to be exact, with a marching band taking a break and swarming to the sidelines to devour them. She came home with 50 McNuggets. FIFTY. "But Mom, it was a good deal. They only cost $9.99"

Fast forward to yesterday. Kalisha took enough money with her to buy 2 tickets to a minor league ballgame on the 13th. One for her and one for a friend. So far, so good.

 On the way back home, she decided to stop at a McDonald's because she found 3 five-dollar bills in her purse she didn't know she had (I didn't know it either) and she had been looking at the 'box' they were advertising for $15.

When I arrived home, she asked if I saw the box on the counter. Thinking I had some surprise waiting for me, I quickly went to the kitchen.

Imagine (no, don't really imagine it) my surprise, frustration and total disbelief when I saw this box.

"What the heck were you thinking??????"

"Who exactly is going to eat all this food?"

"Well, I was going to eat one Big Mac for supper and take one with me for my lunch tomorrow at the preschool. And I would share the fries and McNuggets."

"Kalisha, nobody here even likes McNuggets and they certainly aren't good when they're cold."

"I like them and I'll eat them for snacks."

"Please tell me what possessed you to buy this box of food."


"I don't know. I just wanted it. Oh, and I didn't have enough to pay the tax, so the cashier paid it for me."

Now that was the last straw. She has been warned about consequences when she allows someone else to pay the 'rest of the bill.'

The agreed-upon consequences are she has to return whatever it is.


Obviously, she couldn't return food. So now, I had a bit of a dilemma; I could eat it in front of her and not let her have any...no, that wasn't going to work. Her BC suggested she be reminded she wouldn't be able to buy any fast food for 3 weeks, because her budget is $5 per week for that. That seemed too far out in the future to make an impression.

I decided the best thing to do was get rid of it. Yep, you know I did. Right in the garbage can and luckily, trash day was the next morning.

She didn't have a meltdown. She said, "I just knew you were going to do that. When I was standing waiting for the bus, I was feeling badder and badder because I knew I shouldn't have bought it."

Kalisha really wanted those Big Macs out of there. She was googling 'getting food out of the garbage.'

I asked her what it said. "Oh it just keeps telling me how to put food in a garbage disposal."

I laughed. Even Google wasn't helping.

Was it the correct consequence? If you believe the "children in China are starving and you never waste food' that I grew up with, then no, maybe not.
Will she remember it the next time? I hope so, but there are no guarantees.
Was I too hard on her? Nope. I don't think so.
Did she have something else for supper? Of course.

Could a lot of us learn a lesson from this? Probably.
What if the things we buy that we really don't need were put in the trash?
It is something to think about.

*I did ask Kalisha's permission to write about this. Obviously, she agreed.

When Momma ain't happy..........

You all know that phrase: "When Momma ain't happy; ain't nobody happy."   If you were living at my house yesterday, you could have seen that phrase acted out in full living color....with audio. Maybe we should hit 'mute' on the audio portion.
I was one 'pissed pup' or mom or parent or advocate or any of the terms you want to fill in there and I was beyond angry at Kalisha. She knew she was in trouble because the minute she came in the door (before I had a clue what she had been up to) she was talking about how she needed to return items. That's a big clue to the fact that she has just purchased things she knows I will be upset about and she will have to return them.

Kalisha has been in "Tincaps (a minor league baseball team in out town) Mode" for most of the summer. She has been to several games, saves the plastic cup from her drink, washes it and uses it for something at home. She has purchased a head band,

4 t-shirts and a sweatshirt at the team store AND she won the pitcher's team jersey at one game. (You can read about that story here: www.moms.fortwayne.com at the blog titled: Not Different Enough.)
That would seem to be enough of one team's shirts, to me. Not so, Kalisha. She becomes so wrapped up in one thing, so focused, that all common sense and reason go out the window.
She has to make a wish list before the first of each month describing the items she would like to purchase that month. Then we discuss it and which things are the most important to her and which ones she can afford. This month she wanted, among the usual DVDs, a Tincaps jersey; not a t-shirt, but a $69 jersey and a Johnny doll (he's the team mascot). I nixed the jersey, saying it was just too expensive and I vetoed the doll trying to convince her it would just gather dust on a shelf in her room.
I did concede to the red t-shirt.
She got on the bus on Monday to buy the red shirt. Once she is in the store, I have to have it hysteria takes over and she comes home with these.

 

The total for these 4 items was around $75. While I am yelling about that, she tells me they didn't have a jersey in her size at the store, so she ordered it online, PLUS she had the pitcher's # put on it, which only totaled $98. Damned I-phone. You don't have to wait until you get home and become rational again....no, just do it on your phone.

Okay, here's the deal. My rationality went right out the window and the 'you-know-what' hit the fan. She doesn't have that kind of money to spend and even if she had a million, it is still too much and too many shirts and jerseys and etc. etc. etc.

She immediately went back online and cancelled the jersey. Now she is taking everything else except the red shirt back. The deal was when she sold her I-pod, she could use those funds to buy the jersey. She, unfortunately thinks like so many other 'normal' people and is sure she will sell that I-pod, so she will just buy the jersey now. How many people do you know who buy a house or something contingent upon selling something else?? Yes, we are all guilty, so in that respect, she is like everyone else. At the same time, she disobeyed and the consequences are rolling in.
She cannot have her debit card for anything for a long time, she has to cancel her PayPal account, she gets a bit of cash each week; nothing more. I will keep her cash in a safe place and not in her checking account.
This is all a bit humorous today, but I can tell you in no uncertain terms it was not humorous yesterday and if you have any doubt about that, you can ask Kalisha.

Know anyone who wants a perfectly good I-pod? 16 Gigs