One of the books I read with my fifth graders is Sal and Gabi Break the Universe–and I can’t recommend it highly enough. There’s a quote in the book that I ask my students to think and write about:
Gabi, I was noticing, was a very forgiving person. I’ve noticed sometimes smart people aren’t. They’re more interested in being right, being on top, and they think that means crushing the competition with their huge brains. But Gabi didn’t need to put others down to raise herself up.
It’s definitely a trap that folks can fall into (and I’m definitely writing this from the bottom of the trap myself). Helping neurospicy kids engage with ambiguity and humility is one of the most important bits of my job, IMO.
No…I don’t suppose I could use a hammer to fix my kids…
“Big crushing rock” is about the most accurate description I’ve heard describing parenting.
It’s not really even about “fixing” the kids. A lot of it is concern about the world they will grow up in or whether we are providing them a decent life.
Heya Spice Weasel, I never know how to jump into these conversations but I wanted to say: with my Audhd daughter I often despaired of her impulsiveness but it did actually get much better as she got older. Like a few years later I found myself thinking “I thought she would never learn this, but she did”. Maybe that is not that encouraging, idk, but I hope it is.
With the rationalising, my interpretation of that is that they are looking for a way to not feel as bad, as ashamed. Because they know they did the wrong thing, and are kind of a bad person now. With my pre-schoolers that do that, I repeat the rule calmly back to them (or ask them to) and then say something like “it can be hard” or “I can see you were excited and got carried away”. Then reset the interaction. (Like, maybe they need to apologise, or help fix the thing they broke, or restart the game with some added precautions.) That look of frustration and despair on their face when they hit their friend, and now their friend is crying and this is not actually what they wanted at all, it breaks my heart a little. They can’t change what they did and they don’t know how to move forward. And of course, acknowledgement for when they did manage to control an impulse, if I see it, or if they just generally played ‘nicely’. Your kid may have restrained himself 20 times that day, but got no credit for it (seriously even only 5 times, but he was trying). I don’t know how that works when it happens at school and you are not there. Maybe they cover this in his social skills class.
Oh, it totally helps. I want to know there’s a light at the end of this seemingly long tunnel.
Well, the teacher introduced a new reward system this morning which was immediately deep-sixed because my son became hyper-fixated on the reward system. They had to bring in the social worker, who then called to talk to my husband.
He had a bad morning getting out the door because he wanted his Dad to drive him to school and not me (so his Dad can talk to him about the Marvel Universe. It’s their thing right now.) He lost his absolute shit throwing himself against my husband’s home office door and banging on it and crying and refusing to leave with me. It’s hard to know how to deal with this when we are pressed for time. We’ve been practicing breathing so I told him to take deep breaths and he said he didn’t want to, but then he immediately calmed down.
So I’m not surprised he had some trouble in school this morning.
That’s not even getting into what happened at Halloween. In the end he did not go trick or treating.
I had a conversation with my husband this weekend and I told him, look, we need to let some stuff go, pick our battles you know, and we also need to avoid this constant back and forth argument dynamic which keeps him feeding on our attention. From now on the plan when he starts pushing back is just to withdraw attention. We know the difference between an autistic meltdown and a tantrum, and it’s been more tantrums than anything else lately. And I think they should just be ignored.
It’s going to take some unlearning. I should have just walked away this morning and sat down on the couch and have been willing to be late, so that he could see, this behavior is not a ticket to adult engagement.
Yes, we have to be careful with our language because he’s started to internalize this idea of bad behavior, so we are working on different ways of describing his struggles.
At any rate, I don’t think any of this stuff can be solved by becoming a SAHM. That was wishful thinking, I think.
Oof. I have noticed that rewards and punishments don’t tend to work on my ASD child the way they work on most kids (though – I think? – not in the same way they didn’t work for your son – she just would melt down because it could be seen as more evidence she was Not Right about whatever it was).
It’s good that you can tell the difference between a meltdown and a tantrum, and you have a way forward. I know that doesn’t seem like a victory right now, but it is. It just has to be baby steps by the nature of the thing.
Oh cool! I will have to find that, thanks!
Thanks for this. I know that my kid was always trying to feel “not wrong.” (Still is, I guess, but it’s less hard for her now.) It’s such a balance between not making them feel worse about the thing they did but still making sure they accept responsibility and move forward in ways that will make them feel better in the long term (whereas rationalizing makes one feel better in the short term).
I think there is, but the tunnel is long. We’ve not had a single call from the school so far in 7th grade. (A technicality, in that the vice-principal called the day before school started to check in, but not about any particular incident.) With the expected regressions as new adults learned how to handle my kid each year, things did get easier over time. Or at a minimum, the tantrums and breakdowns moved on to new topics.
Halloween is very hard for my kid, too. Dressing up and candy are probably 3 of my kid’s top 5 things, so the expectations and tension around it are cranked up so high that something is going to give. This year it was a FOMO meltdown because two friends posted a video of them singing a song to the group chat, and my kid wasn’t there, because my kid went out with another friend. In the past it has just been general frustration with being too tired to go on, yet knowing there are still houses giving away candy.
Ignoring tantrums is our policy. I don’t know that it works, but I like to believe that at least it doesn’t reinforce tantruming, and it also gives me permission to switch my earbuds to noise cancelling without feeling guilty.
This is so hard for me. I usually fail at it. I know my kid will recover in 20 minutes, andthen we can go, but we need to leave now or we’ll be late!
Just wait for it. At some point your kid is going to accuse you of “making him feel uncomfortable” (in the harassment training kind of way), that your are being a bully for insisting he wear shoes, or that a plate of pasta is creating a threatening environment.
This is all so hard, and you and your husband sound like you’re really doing a great job. That can be very hard to see when you’re exhausted over the latest 45 minute fight over a toothbrush.
After two good weeks, Wee Weasel had a pretty rough day at school yesterday, and I received a call from the principal, who had removed him from class. I was kinda floundering. I realized I’m not dealing great with the stress so I reached out to an old therapist. She helped me the year he was diagnosed and she had a fantastic grasp on parenting autism and had a lot of resources. So I’m going to start talking to her again.
I was kinda spiraling. Like visions of visiting my future son in prison, spiraling. And then my husband talked tonight for about two hours to our BCBA, who has been working with Miles for years (the one we have access to now through the social skills group.) He is also a former teacher. He thought it was overkill to involve the principal.
I asked him if he thought the school was overreacting. Or if we were overreacting.
He dialed the temperature down quite a bit. He pointed out most of the boy’s days are good days, that he is being held to neurotypical standards at school, which is understandable but not realistic, and that most of this is probably some combination of attention seeking/impulsivity rather than true aggression. He gave us a number of suggestions and will be reaching out to the school social worker, but it was helpful just to hear, “Overall, he’s doing well.” He told us we were the ideal parents not just for Miles but for him to work with as a BCBA.
We’re working on the attention seeking behaviors at home by just not reacting so much. This morning he pitched a fit over not getting attention when he wanted it, and we just ignored it. I did have to remind my husband to stop engaging in the back and forth, but he did stop. My son wouldn’t answer me about breakfast so I said, “Let me know when you’re ready to eat” and walked away to get my own breakfast. About two minutes later he was over it and ready to eat, and he asked me to make waffles so we could cuddle on the couch while they toasted.
I think a piece of this is my social anxiety. What are people going to think about me as a parent? etc. My anxiety makes every moment like this seem like a crisis or a harbinger of future disaster.
I’m going to try treating this as less of a big deal and see how it goes.
Agreed with @needscoffee. You and your husband really are amazing parents!! And yes, I was thinking the same thing that the BCBA said as I was reading – most of his days have been good days. If you think about even the progress since you started this thread and he was melting down much more frequently, it’s substantial progress, and that was only a couple of months ago.
I love that you’re working on the attention seeking behaviors and that it’s working <3 And that he himself is able to figure out better ways to get what he’s looking for! What a smart kid he is. (Seriously, I know a bunch of NT kids, including my own, who would not have been able to get there at his age.)
I’m also glad you’re talking to a therapist. Even after my kiddo stopped seeing her therapist I continued talking to her for a year and it was really super helpful.
This makes a lot of sense, especially if it’s attention seeking.
I get this so much. I worried a lot about whether people would think I was an awful parent because surely my kid wouldn’t be melting down so much unless I was an awful parent. (I still worry about it, because my kid still doesn’t have some social things down that other kids do.) And, like… yeah, some people are going to be judgmental. That’s just life. But I’ve found that there are people who get me and my child, people who will be compassionate and understanding. And aren’t those the people we want to surround ourselves with anyway? (And I also have been trying to be that person too, to other families.) I think as long as you’re responsive and working on it, which you absolutely incontrovertibly are, the people you really care about and who care about you will see that.
Since we’re talking about Vorkosigan in the other thread, I’m just going to drop here: “Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself… Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.” (Haha, I mean, it doesn’t map over 100%, but still: you’ll outlive any judgments people make about you.)
I felt the same way with my very challenging kids. Much later on I found out that several of the kids in their classes, and a couple of them on our block, were even more challenging, though not so much at school. The parents described behavior at home that I never even imagined.
When other parents see you dealing with a difficult incident, they’re probably marveling at how you do it, and how ill-equipped they’d be in the same situation.
The boy will be evaluated for ADHD on December 29th. They want to do a raft of neuropsych testing and another IQ test which seems like overkill to me, but that’s how they do it. Anyone in doubt can spend a morning in our household and see how he is all over the place and requires constant redirection.
Teacher has already filled out her piece. My husband and I will do our paperwork tonight.
I’m hopeful. I already know the kid has ADHD, but it’s expertise I need right now. The owner of the clinic is a sleep specialist and they have a CBT program for ADHDers of all ages - I might have to check that one out for myself. The doctor already told us she thinks he needs more sleep. So that’s something to figure out.
I will resume my own therapy on January 7 with the woman who helped me when my son was first diagnosed as autistic. She is a wealth of parenting resources and very evidence-based. Sometimes you just have to admit when you’re in over your head.
My job is really stressful right now. We have a massive hole in our budget because of nationwide funding cuts and it’s all falling on my team’s shoulders. And at home, we’re putting together a will for the first time, which includes figuring out what the boy will need if we die. There’s a lot going on.
But I’m taking two weeks off for the holiday. I’ve never done that before and I think it was a really good idea.
He’s really doing okay, you know? He has bad days every couple weeks but most of the time he is sweet and cuddly and smart as a whip, always questioning, trying to understand, trying to relate. He’s got a friend at school. At least one that he talks about. I feel like things are not perfect but still moving in the direction of okay.
Yay! So glad the trend is going well, you and your husband are awesome. And glad he is getting evaluated for ADHD! I know it seems like overkill, but it’s really valuable to have the full neuropsych testing just to get a full picture of how complicated the picture is (and since we already know he’s also ASD and profoundly gifted, that’s already somewhat complicated).
I just filled out all the surveys (two hours, ugh) and read through the teacher’s surveys. Oof. It sounds like we’re hearing about the worst of it periodically, but she’s having problems with him every day. At home we see a lot of the innatention but not as much of the defiance.
I think it’s gonna be severe ADHD and I’ll bet they’re gonna steer things toward Oppositional Defiant Disorder, too. I don’t know how I feel about the latter. I think his problems are really a difficult combination of mental rigidity, low social awareness and impulsivity. Yes he acts out, yes he argues, yes he disobeys, but I don’t think it’s just coming out of nowhere. And those problems aren’t as severe at home. This may sound naive but I don’t think that kid has a mean bone in his body. He’s just really frustrated.
Our son was diagnosed with high functioning autism at age 5. He never had behavioral issues in school, but that’s probably because he tends to be more on the shy and withdrawn side. He did tend to have meltdowns when we went someplace like a new restaurant or some major change like buying a new TV or installing overhead lights in the living room.
I remember my wife having to fill out all that paperwork.
Now that he’s 11 he actually does really well. We opted to send him to a private middle school rather than the public school because the environment was better suited to his temperament (smaller classes, calmer students, STEM focus, etc). But he still had to go through a whole application and interview process to get selected.
The point is that there’s a high likelihood things will get easier with your child as he matures.
He got a “grow note” today from the teacher which is how we’re sort of tracking undesirable behavior at school, and he showed up without his tennis shoes (in snow boots) at the evening childcare program, but the principal got them and drove them over. Good guy.
I feel like we had a lot of good talking today. I told him he’s going to talk to a doctor on the 22nd (it’s been moved back) to see if the doctor can help him learn how do good listening more often. He said he wasn’t sure if anything could help him, but I explained that I have problems with good listening sometimes too, and I’ve found some stuff to help me. We talked while we cuddled.
He wanted to start tracking on a calendar how many days he can go without grow notes. He has the desire, you know.
In other, I think positive news, I mentioned earlier in this thread how damned tired I am all the time. Well I was diagnosed with sleep apnea and I’ve had a CPAP for ten days. It causes some disruption at night as I’m trying to figure it out, and I’ve been so stressed it’s taking me two hours to fall asleep… You think I’d be exhausted, but I feel more clear-headed and alert than I have in years, and my afternoon crashes have gone from moderate to mild already. I actually require way less sleep then I thought I did, apparently… As long as I can breathe properly.
First, my kid melted down every single day in junior kindergarten (she had just turned 5). That was by far the worst year for her. Does he have an IEP? Is there any way you can get an aide for him? My kid had a, I think, half-time aide for a year which was super helpful.
Second: Many, many years and several therapists (and at least one friend who is not a therapist but is kind of a lay expert in psychology) later, I feel like I started to understand the major role that anxiety was playing (and still plays) in my kid’s life, which was something that none of her diagnoses or neuropsych evalulations had talked about at all. Interestingly, it was the therapists who had a lot of experience with 2E kids who zeroed in on it, while it didn’t seem to be on the radar of the therapists that were either more used to typical kids or strictly ASD kids. But basically, she is a really good kid who really wants to please authority figures, but she also has a lot of anxiety about doing the “right” thing, so, especially when she was younger, she was always on high alert and if you said something even mildly critical, or something mildly negative happened, like the milk spilling (and I promise we were always totally matter-of-fact when stuff like that happened!), it would tip her over into a meltdown. She was on medication for a couple of years which helped a lot, and now we’re experimenting with her being off it again, but it seems like her system has matured (and she also has more coping strategies now) so that generally she’s not as on edge as she was earlier in her life. (Although I can still tell when she’s sick or hasn’t been getting enough sleep, because she starts hitting that anxious pitch again.)
This is not to say that your kid has anxiety (though maybe he does), but just to say that in my experience the experts can still be focused on the effects and not necessarily so much on the causes. I think mental rigidity can be very frustrating for the person who’s living it, as not just human culture but also the physical universe itself isn’t really set up to accommodate that. (Like my kid’s rigidity over the milk. Sometimes milk spills, that’s the nature of liquids!)
I’m not quite sure what to expect from this therapy place we found. There was a brief call with my husband before they scheduled the appointment for his evaluation. They told us they were going to do a full neuropsych evaluation and we would get the results in February. Then we filled out the surveys and also passed along the teacher surveys, and - surprise! - we’re getting our results the immediate next day after the evaluation.
I’m guessing they looked at the surveys and thought, “Whelp. This one’s a no-brainer.”
It’s very odd to me, however, that the results meeting is not in person. They are local to us. They want to do a 70 minute meeting over the phone.
I don’t think Miles has anxiety, but I guess I could be wrong. During his self-report survey he reported no problems whatsoever. I very much think he answered what sounded best vs. the truth, but I also don’t perceive him as very anxious.
My CEO is currently going insane over funding cuts and I anticipate a mandatory 5-day return to work policy soon. I’m meeting with my boss tomorrow to discuss what this looks like in terms of expectations with my schedule being what it is. I don’t want to leave this job but I may have to depending how unreasonable they get with this. Either way I am under an enormous amount of pressure to deliver miracles at a time I feel I most need flexibility and the ability to focus on my child.
