Real life..

[Brook]

Hi all,

 

this documentary is on tonight, about a 13yr old boy, who has a complex range of behavioural disorders. (thats what the write up says and not my own words).

 

Has anyone got a TV mag to add further what it is exactly about?

 

Brook

[Amanda32]

The boy they call chucky same boy from this mornings programme, documentary about his life I should imagine.

 

Take care

Amanda

[annie]

Thirteen year old Christian Cunniffe has held a carving knife to his sister's throat, threatened to kill his two brothers and hit his mother with a plank of wood 17 times.

 

He suffers from a complex disorder that makes him erupt into violent rages. Follow Christian's mum on a journey in search of a cure.

 

Annie

[shell]

the tv mag in the sun says

Many parents call there kids but cath cunniffe knows the true meaning of those words. Her 13 year old son Christian has subjected her to years of abuse he's hit her set her on fire and held a knife to his sisters neck

Christian suffers ADHA HYPERKINETIC CONDUCT DISORDER AND mild autism

the show follows then for 6 months trying to control his behaviour seeing diffrent specitists

hope this helps this is only a short version as it is a page long in the mag and i haven't got that long got to go pick steven up

[call me jaded]

23:00 Real Life

Documentary following 13-year-old Christian Cunniffe, who is afflicted with a complex range of behavioural disorders that cause him to fly into uncontrollable rages in a split second. His mother Cath is desperate to help her son rather than putting him into care for the good of her family, and embarks on a nine-month quest to find a cure - a journey that takes her to some of the world's most eminent child psychiatrists

[Amanda32]

http://www.itv.com/page.asp?partid=4329

 

There is a fact sheet on his life too if anyone wants to read about it.

 

Try this

Amanda

Edited September 12, 2005 by Amanda32

[lil_me]

Reminder set on the tele Thanks for the info

[Tylers-mum]

Yep, come across this last week whilst brousing the TV schedule. Thanks for the reminder, would've missed it had I not seen this!

[smallworld]

I missed the first half of this cos we HAD to have Jack Dee on ! Can someone fill me in ?

I switched over as he was being restrained on the living room floor just before they went off to Dundee.

I'll reserve my comments for now,

 

wac

[Kathryn]

Alas - no tv at the moment - it's broken. So I can't help you there Waccoe, sorry.

[Brook]

Did anyone else watch this?

 

I wasn't really sure what to make of it all to be honest

 

Brook

[Tylers-mum]

I held my eyes open with matchsticks to watch this! LOL

 

Well, I did watch all of it and thought it was umm, educational to say the least! At the beginning, you saw a young boy who fought just about everything, including the word 'No'. His behaviour was pretty much EXTREME to say the least and it appeared almost certain that nothing could help him!

THEN, they took a trip to Boston, USA and everything, I dunno, it was portrayed as if there was nothing wrong with the boy medically and it was all down to bad parenting! Just a few simple words would right 13yrs of wrongs and low and behold, it blooming worked!!! No more aggression, violence, etc etc.

 

I honestly don't know what to make of it!!! But maybe someone else here can voice their opinions too!!

 

He's gone from taking 3 meds to 1 med and can control the aggression himself. His Mum said that he must have been listening to the doc in Boston and taken it all in! Now if only that were the case for everyone with a dx of challendging behaviour disorders!!

Edited September 13, 2005 by Tylers-mum

[illy]

I watched it and yes they do seem to go by how the parents were doing things mainly the mum, I must say my eldest who has ADHD gets like him alot, violent outbursts at the drop of a hat!

Also the emotional crying side. which can also happen anytime.

The trouble is the younger one is getting the same, he is 5 and i say has Aspergers, and just trying him to get to read his book i get attacked!

But oabout the programme last night, they looked at how violent the boy was towards his family and the onyl way to calm him down was to hold him down on the floor! which we have had to do .

However they didnt show his interests and the things he was good at, he did say he didnt like being violent so whether there is somethign like a volcano that just causes him to errupt i dont know

illy

[baddad]

I perhaps shouldn't be commenting just yet, 'cos I recorded it to watch tonight, but flicking through channels last night I did see about two or three minutes, and found it quite worrying...

First thing I saw was the boy sitting with his mother while she sat and spoke about how depressed she was and that she felt suicidal because of his behaviour. I can't imagine what this would do to his self esteem, but perhaps that was something she shouldn't be sharing with him?

As her depression improved (not really comfortable with the way they used the term 'depression' either. May actually be completely apt, with the mother suffering from long term depressive illness, but if so that wasn't apparant from the short piece i have watched) she verbalised her fear that 'something was going to erupt', and it did, when he walked out of school.

Now, I can understand the need for tact and diplomacy, but what they filmed happening when he got home was the mother sitting and comforting him, giving him lots of positive attention and, again, making emotional declarations about how much the effects of his behaviour hurt her... While I'll freely admit I might have seen this bit out of context, it did look very much like reinforcement...

 

As i say, should really reserve my opinion until I've seen more, and - in any event - it's easy to see how years and years of a situation like this could undermine even the best of intentions, so I'm certainly not trying to 'judge' the parents... With that said, the bits I have seen left me feeling very, very uncomfortable, and it may be that this programme might have added fuel to some of those nasty fires that are going up around the issue of ADHD at the moment.

 

Best

BD

[smallworld]

don't need to post reply to this now !

But just have to add, the mother didn't seem to be able to walk away from a confrontation ?

I know this feeling....

wac

[baddad]

don't need to post reply to this now !

But just have to add, the mother didn't seem to be able to walk away from a confrontation ?

I know this feeling....

wac

Sheesh, wac -

Ain't just the record collection we're sharing then...

Ia(i)n Banks wrote a riddle about 'immovable object meets unstoppable force'. No ###### help whatsoever! Any workable solutions massively appreciated.

BD

[smallworld]

It's great isn't it to sit in front of the TV saying 'silly woman, can't she just step back.....'

Not really, makes me realise how I am when I step outside of myself !

P&L

wac

Ooh, just remembered, not in the right thread but it's late, forget that possible Schrodinger's cat, get Pavlov's dog, it's far more reliable !

Please don't tell me you're a Robert Anton Wilson fan ?

Edited September 13, 2005 by waccoe

[oracle]

Just watched this and yes the Mum did not appear to be able to walk away from confrontation. BIG ISSUE in our house at the moment, which is becoming confrontational between better half and myself. I realised a few weeks ago that we are feeding Matthew's need for confrontation by rising to his bait - so although it is crippling me - I will not be a party to, or victim of this now. Well most of the time if I can manage it Hubby sadly can't walk away. Not even in Asda, when I wanted to physically drag him away from the confrontation over a pizza. It's not easy is it guys. It's never easy

 

Carole

[smallworld]

We're going through the same thing with both boys, although it's a new thing with our five year old, he seems to have suddenly acquired the idea of free will !!!

The other thing I took in from this doc was that the father seemed to sit on the settee(sorry, sofa !) and just watch the proceedings much of the time. But then he was called for as the heavy mob when things got really bad.

I try not to do this cos other half is not always there to call as a last resort.

I know in the past Carole, you've said that you feel you have to stand up for what's acceptable in your house. I think this makes a huge amount of difference. Mine are not of an age where they physically frighten me, but I know that will come, and I just hope that I can retain some feeling of not being scared by their sheer physical size.

When I need some tips on physical presence I know who to ask

wac

P.S. my other half is very good at dishing out the advice on how to handle things, he just needs less theory and more practical ! I wonder if he reads this !!!!!

[baddad]

Have watched it, and sadly my initial concerns weren't lessened whatsoever. I'd agree with the consultant half-way through, who said she felt that the ADHD and the Rages weren't necessarilly directly connected...

Like Waccoe, I noticed too the dad's response, and thought 'There's a problem waiting to happen'... The whole family was setting up the next phase: "What's going to happen when he can beat the cr*p out of dad?". They don't need to throw down the gauntlet, it's already down there waiting to be picked up.

Another thing was that there seemed a tendancy for melodrama within the family as a whole... One thing I found really troubling was the sister saying "I have spoken to mum... She told me the only way she can handle me moving out is to think of me as dead, and she doesn't want to see me any more." Gulp.

Also, a good half of the time aggressive 'play' was seen as just that, with all of the family involved and encouraging it. By the time things got out of hand it was too late. All for burning off excess energy, but there are many non-confrontational ways of doing it, where boundaries are more obvious. Play fighting is not something i encourage with Ben, 'cos the boundaries are 'social'/'conceptual' rather than concrete, which is an area he's not too good in.

The changes at the end seemed to come about for several reasons: Firstly the boy was included as part of the solution (rather than identified as the problem), and asked to take some degree of responsibility for the behaviours rather than accept it as a 'fact' of his condition. The mother was asked to identify that compromise was a better solution than confrontation, given that the latter tended to lead to an escalation rather than a diminishment of the problems. I'm fairly sure there are plenty of child psychologists or even self help books available in the UK that could have offered the same advice, without the need for a consulation in Denver, which in itself would have provided all sorts of reinforcement about the 'special' nature of the boys condition...

Now, having got all that off my chest, I've got to say how unfair (and easy) it is for me to pick holes from outside of the situation, and that the 'snapshots' we did see may have owed more to the filmaker's editing bias than to the reality of their lives.

As I've freely admitted above, the BD household is not without it's own degree of locked horns and confrontation; and somebody filming us for days on end could come up with a film that portrayed either one (or both) of us as monsters or angels, or any combination that they fancied.

For the record, I reckon I'm a 'good' parent about 80% of the time and a totally cr*p one around 20%, though I'm sure there are plenty of saints and sinners alike who'd have their own take own my parenting skills that made mincemeat of those figures...

L&P

BD

[Kazzen161]

I watched it too. My opinion was much the same, the parents obviously needed some advice about how to deal with him, and should have been able to get that in the UK. There were also lots of incidents where prevention would have worked better than confrontation.

 

It did bring back memories of T when he was at his worst.

 

From what people have said on other boards - they seem to think this was a one-off extreme case, when there in reality there are lots of us coping with behaviour like this.

 

Karen

[lil_me]

Looking from the outside, I was shocked at his mothers behaviour.

 

She pushed him by the head when he started being slightly 'worky' as I would call it

 

She laughed when he gave his Dad the V sign on the train

 

They swore more than any family I have ever known

 

Encouraging him to be violent then tears start when he goes too far

 

The way she used to describe her daughter leaving etc

 

 

Yes what we seen may have been the editors cut but I think it will make peoples opinions worse of children with problems who would rightly say look she was given parenting advice and she didn't really have a naughty little boy after all, just someone faced with constant confrontation and was the only way he knew to deal with it.

[elaine1]

Oh wow i saw this, i dont know how his mom coped, although i must say i didnt like the families reaction to him, their language etc. Nor the fact that they ostracised? their daughter for leaving home. Her father said he needed her suppourt, hello who is the parent here?