challenging behaviour: when to engage when to dis-engage

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elsapelsa
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08 Jan 2018, 5:09 am

Finally, if you are not absolutely sick of me by now I will pm you some questions about school as I feel that is my greatest hurdle and we have a big change on the horizon I would love to get some perspectives on.


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08 Jan 2018, 8:36 am

If it happens around the same time of day, I wonder if that can help you some way because it is predictable. It may be that is when the weight of all the stressors of the day sets in, or it may be b/c you are busy she needs a stim and her brain is not helping her enough to give her one that does not require input from you. I wonder if you could start her on an independent activity before you start dinner, and maybe agree to look at her progress at "stopping points" in your dinner prep, letting her know specifically what stages those will be. (You know, steps, where you have something in the oven and you can chill and wait for awhile -- just make sure you set timers for yourself so you redirect to dinner on time not to burn things. LOL) Reducing general stress may help to, if the issue is being generally wound up from her day.

Natural consequences will depend on your lifestyle. i can give you a couple of examples of how they fit into our day. In my case I home school, and some of the issues we have are with starting on time and with transitions between subjects. (I will talk more about transitions and specific prep you can do for that in another post to keep this one shorter.) My son tends to stay up late. His bio clock has always been off, and it is not just his stage of physical developmental. I need my sleep and can't actually force him to be asleep. He will go to his room, but he is awake and sometimes he is having fun reading etc. and I would have to go back to sleeping in his room which I am not going to do.

So sometimes he wakes up late. No problem. Whenever he wakes up, we go right to his first subject math. I have tons of filler time for fun subjects in his day. He refuses to do school past end time b/c he does not like his after school fun time cut down. Also fine.

No matter when he wakes up or how much silly stuff he does that makes us delayed, we have to get through his core subjects and those do not get cut unless a stopping point is naturally a little early like we get to the end of a chapter with 10 minutes left in the class or something. We also have to get through the daily work because he does not want an extension to his school year. (He gets summer off just like anyone else) Our school day is almost as long as a public school kid, which is atypical for home schooling b/c it is much more efficient, generally. The length is on is on purpose.

He understands this and accepts it as fair--which is key to making this work. So all his extra time comes out of basically art or music or the tail end of the school day which is really flexible. Does he love that? No. But he accepts that this is the natural consequence of him being off schedule and will grumble only minimally about it. So sometimes this will help reduce the late night fun and the off-topic silliness. Sometimes he chooses the off-topic silliness and the consequences. Both are OK with me (while not equally optimal) -- so no one is very unhappy no matter what happens.



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08 Jan 2018, 9:41 am

elsapelsa wrote:
Finally, if you are not absolutely sick of me by now I will pm you some questions about school as I feel that is my greatest hurdle and we have a big change on the horizon I would love to get some perspectives on.


Yes, feel free, seriously. I would not have offered if I were not sincere. :)



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08 Jan 2018, 9:52 am

elsapelsa wrote:
Once we were in the passport line and she decided to ask me something just when the immigration person went "next" you can imagine who she thought should wait for the other person to finish their line of questioning first!



I find it helpful when we are in line to give reminders that when we get to the front of the line I am going to have to engage with the cashier, and I also recommend we stick to short topics so he won't be so annoyed at having to do the thing we came to do, that interrupts his talk. :) Offline, I talk about how the faster we can get through the shopping/purchasing, the sooner we can get home. He much prefers home to being out, even when we are not too far from home, and so he understands it is in his interest to help move the process along. It works especially well with things like food shopping b/c he knows if wants his favorite food items we have to shop and pay for them:)



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08 Jan 2018, 1:57 pm

elsapelsa wrote:

-------

Oh demand avoidance is the bane of my existence. It is crippling. It doesn't matter how much time she has it is all about getting her or letting her get herself into the right head-space to just do it. It is about knowing how and when to push and when to go easy and it is the most exhausting aspect of my life. The worst part of it is mornings before school. I can sometimes break things down and get her to complete one stage of the morning by putting a new end-goal in place. For example, get dressed and she can watch something whilst she eats her breakfast on the sofa. However, it is so complicated I can't even really say "get dressed" it has to all come from her or be an indirect demand or with comic effect or some other layer. At one point I just bought her an alarm clock and put all the breakfast type food on the table and said nothing at all. That worked well for about a week. PDA just shifts and changes and there is no predictability to it.

So the biggest demand avoidance patterns we have is around dressing (in particular for school) and getting ready for bed. Dressing can be challenging other times too even if there is a super fun end-goal but with school there is an obvious timeframe and she also has to contend with her separation anxiety.

Again, as the task is to get her to get into the right head space what I really need are clues as how to do that. Often she will invent self-soothing games. Dressing with her sister under the covers with me coming in to check on them and finding them dressed sometimes works. This morning we had to play an extremely complicated game of dressing where she was a baby owl and I had to fly her around the house. It gets to the point though where I am unsure if my involvement is really beneficial. Perhaps I should just sit downstairs with my coffee and wait it out rather than play a complicated game that wins us half an hour, an hour. I just don't know. I feel at this junction it is all about looking at the end-game, it is preferable if she can get off to school without us feeling upset or stressed with each other even if she is a little late. It is preferable to keep and maintain trust and keep any threats (from me) because of lack of compliance (from her) at a minimum.

However, I saw your post elsewhere about breaking things down into stages so I have started to do that with other things that are not as hard going for her. I will just make her a list with the stages often with some small reward at the end and she will get it done in no time. This is genius and I can see how I can utilise this further - I could make treasure maps with instructions, we play words with friends together online so could send her messages there with things to get done etc. Think this will help me lots. Just can't see how I can apply it to something that is laden with so much anxiety - like getting ready for school.


Morning was a rush for us too when we were doing the public school thing. Have you tried a visual schedule? They are great for helping with transitions. Even if your child does not normally need PECS cards, they can be useful for certain purposes. There are tons of places online with clip art and you can make your own. https://www.pictoselector.eu/

You can put them all into a document numbering the steps, and putting a caption describing the steps and laminate it, and post it somewhere for her to easily reference, like the back of her bedroom door. Alternately you can have it where you have them velcroed or affixed with magnets (depending on the surface you use for your board) to something that looks like a Kanban board, with a "To Do" column and a "Done" column and you can have her move each one as she completes the task. Here is a picture with 3 columns using the traditional post-it note method (You only need 2 columns and I would use velcro on cloth or magnets and a magnetic white board.)
https://leankit.com/learn/kanban/what-is-kanban/ (scroll down to the illustration: Don't worry about the technical applications for this)

You can also write her a customized illustrated social story about transitioning in the morning. https://carolgraysocialstories.com/social-stories/ (For info on social stories) Social stories did not work past Kindergarten b/c he correctly, recognized the propaganda aspect of this. If you see that is a problem, you know this will not work for you. My son is still OK with pro-social creations from TV and books, but if Mommy writes it he figures I am trying to persuade him and takes umbrage. :)



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08 Jan 2018, 2:09 pm

elsapelsa wrote:
This is a great idea. She has a calm bag but doesn't use it so it will require some rethinking. The problem I have is that she is so particular about objects that they take on layers of anxiety for her. She will spend ages counting the objects in her calm bag to check they are all still there for example rather than use the objects. Either the bag needs to be mine and passed to her when she needs it or maybe a list of things she can go and do might work to just trigger moving on from the current behaviour. Sometimes this phase is all about scooping her up and doing something silly and just changing the trajectory. It is just in a busy life when someone starts annoying behaviour that is distracting you from what you are doing, it is hard to see the bigger picture that they might need physical contact and some sort of stimulation right then and there even thought it is inconvenient. I think behaviour two is when she is under stimulated or when underwhelmed. So it is kind of the opposite of behaviour one. It will be good for me to see it like that. I also think she is far more intelligent than we have seen yet and her brain needs more stimulation. I will think about how I can best provide that without getting into trouble with the demand avoidant behaviour.


OCD tendencies add a wrench into this. "What to do when your brain gets stuck" was a book recommended quite a bit on this forum back in the day. We found it helpful, although I made sure I read it with him the first time so I could make some clarifications. I let him know the book is designed for kids with full-blown OCD, and he does not have this. I told him, though, that some times his brain does get stuck and he can get a little "O" and a little "C". (He is hyperlexic and loves letters--so this was worded like that on purpose) I would point out what parts applied to him, and what didn't and then left him the book for his own perusal. Even now, he will occasionally reference it. I think there is a Look Inside on Amazon, so if you want, check it out, and see if you think it will help you.

The demand avoidance stuff is hard. The thing that I found best worked was when I pulled my son from PS, and could scaffold the day appropriately for him. Once the stress was reduced and stayed that way for a good amount of time, the rest fell into place. He complies when he can although maybe not right away. I often have to redirect him and get him to refocus and stay on task (ADD tendencies) but it is not demand avoidance very often.

The most frequent times we see anything like that now is if we are on the road (which he hates) and we need to find a suitable restaurant (and he is hungry) but does not find anything we suggest tolerable or he cannot decide. Then he will shut down and refuse to try for awhile. We try our best to plan meal breaks, in advance of trips. but sometimes things happen.



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08 Jan 2018, 2:22 pm

elsapelsa wrote:

BEHAVIOUR 1:
This is the least frequent of the behaviours. And the full fledged panic attacks are not a weekly or even a monthly thing. They are infrequent and epic. It will often be due to external stimulus. It might be at the public library, a public bathroom (she is terrified and hates self-flushing toilets with a vengeance). If they do happen at home it would be due to a (generally unavoidable) disappointment or sense of injustice. The head-butting and kicking will only occur if I try to restrain her (for her own safety) in which case the thrashing about it an attempt to free herself. Usually I will just try to sit calmly near her and wait and then go to her when she is calm enough to move on. Usually a small pick me up snack. Some reassurance and indication that it is fine to move on is enough once she calms down.

I would say if there are any specific triggers they are a sense of being rushed or a sense of having to hold many things in her mind (or hands) at one particular time. Generally just a sense of being overwhelmed. Also tiredness or hunger play a part. We are an international family and go on international trips 4-5 times a year. She is a veteran traveller but these epic meltdowns can often happen as a response to exhaustion during a journey.

Whilst I am all pro trying to look for triggers it is often the shear force of the unpredictable nature of these panic attacks that is their defining feature. So I will keep a record and try and find triggers but I am not sure there are any specific ones more than just total overload. It might be more important to have things constantly on me to help with the pick-up process.


The bathroom was a huge issue for us. The sound from the faucets and the flushing.... At school, there were only some boys' rooms he could use b/c for whatever reason, they were quieter than the others. There is not much you can do about loud self-flushing toilets when she has to go. Maybe bring sound cancelling headphones?

The infrequent epic things are hard to get a line on. I would just as you say keep track and see what you can discern. If it is mainly hunger and fatigue, try to make everything happy, happy joy joy for your trips and bring extra snack food. I used my diaper bag way after we needed to, for things like bananas and dry cereal. I know you can't bring endless things when you travel, but I would make sure I had room for extra food.



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09 Jan 2018, 9:33 am

Thank you so much for all your helpful replies ASDMommyASDKid, I am ordering the book and going to think about the visual velcro board. I have done lists for her before but maybe she would respond better to something more substantial.

We had the perfect meltdown yesterday (if there is such a thing). I kept reminding myself to not close the loop (might have even muttered it aloud to myself at one point!!) and she retreated and didn't thrash out at all although she came and tore up some paper and shouted. There was also natural consequences that occurred as we were no longer able to do the thing we were planning and had to move on without the thing she had been looking forward to. When she came to apologise (unprompted) she was calm and very remorseful and she said she was so very sorry for hurting us. It gave me the opportunity to correct her and say that no, despite being very angry she had done a great job at not thrashing out or being aggressive towards us and we talked about the different levels of how anger might come out and what is acceptable and what isn't. We discussed the most important thing - not hurting others. Then we brainstormed ways in which the situation could have gone different and how we could have not missed out on the thing we had all been looking forward to and working towards and we decided to try again tomorrow. Rather than ending up a tired, hot mess I felt like I had been to a yoga class the whole thing was without emotion and fire on my behalf and I really felt it was a huge milestone. All thanks to a lot of help from across the pond - THANK YOU!


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09 Jan 2018, 10:16 am

elsapelsa wrote:
Thank you so much for all your helpful replies ASDMommyASDKid, I am ordering the book and going to think about the visual velcro board. I have done lists for her before but maybe she would respond better to something more substantial.

We had the perfect meltdown yesterday (if there is such a thing). I kept reminding myself to not close the loop (might have even muttered it aloud to myself at one point!!) and she retreated and didn't thrash out at all although she came and tore up some paper and shouted. There was also natural consequences that occurred as we were no longer able to do the thing we were planning and had to move on without the thing she had been looking forward to. When she came to apologise (unprompted) she was calm and very remorseful and she said she was so very sorry for hurting us. It gave me the opportunity to correct her and say that no, despite being very angry she had done a great job at not thrashing out or being aggressive towards us and we talked about the different levels of how anger might come out and what is acceptable and what isn't. We discussed the most important thing - not hurting others. Then we brainstormed ways in which the situation could have gone different and how we could have not missed out on the thing we had all been looking forward to and working towards and we decided to try again tomorrow. Rather than ending up a tired, hot mess I felt like I had been to a yoga class the whole thing was without emotion and fire on my behalf and I really felt it was a huge milestone. All thanks to a lot of help from across the pond - THANK YOU!


That is really wonderful! I am glad things worked.

You actually reminded me, we went through a stage with paper ripping. I was trying to get my son an alternative way of expressing his strong negative feelings and my son didn't want to punch pillows or any of the other things I tried to get him to do instead of thrashing about and one day he saw paper (trash stuff, luckily) and began ripping it. After that, I started saving junk mail to have on hand for that purpose. He has not needed to do it in a long time, but it was really useful at that point in time. Whenever you try to extinguish a behavior that is destructive or dangerous, it really is important that they find the replacement behavior to actually be a satisfying replacement or it won't work. (I forget a lot of the stuff we had to do as interim baby steps)



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10 Jan 2018, 3:58 pm

elsapelsa wrote:
Our daughter displays a range of fairly challenging behaviour. I am after some sage advice as how to best handle it as everything we have tried, and we have tried a lot, might succeed for a while but ultimately fails. Perhaps this is not the most useful categorisation but I see the behaviour falling into 5 main categories.

Behaviour 1. She might have a meltdown / panic attack in response to a trigger or some processing issue where she becomes frustrated by an outside event or something happens that increases her anxiety. This appears entirely involuntary and is the most distressing and intense.

Behaviour 2. She also often appears to have lots of restless energy which she doesn't know what to do with and appears to semi-consciously choose to antagonise or provoke a response. This might initially be just low-level disruptive behaviour, very close personal contact or not listening when asked to stop something but might quickly escalate to touching and moving objects she is not meant to touch (her sister's things or her dad's things) or low level violence or aggression.

Behaviour 3. When she is in demand- avoidance mode she can become very hyper and might again look to antagonise as a deliberate attempt to avoid doing the thing she is meant to be doing. This is very similar to 2 but is behaviour with the underlying purpose of avoiding a perceived demand or delaying a future event.

Behaviour 4. In response to a disappointment, annoyance or small injury she might use threatening language or thrash out towards whoever is closest.

Behaviour 5. Finally, there are times when she is engaged in concentrated ritualised behaviour (OCD like rituals) and she feels she is interrupted and will become verbally rude or aggressive. Usually this settles down fairly fast but is still undesirable. This is similar to 5 but is specifically a response to perceived interruptions. Recently, as this has become an issue she will say "I'm busy, please don't interrupt me" or something similar before starting her checks so it is becoming less of an issue.

Behaviour 1 is not antagonising it is like panic and it is not directed at anyone and she will usually look to isolate herself and then once she has calmed down allow me to come and comfort her. If I try to comfort her during the panic she will sometimes let me but it is never intentionally violent or directed at me (although she might kick or try to head-butt if I have to restrain her for her own safety). After behaviour 1 she will be physically exhausted and need a fair bit of help to re-compose herself.

In behaviour 2 it is usually directed outwards - specifically at us, her family.

In behaviour 3,4,5 we appear the accidental recipients of the behaviour, it is not specifically directed at us. I have seen her do her OCD checks with a random man walking past and his mobile rang and it might equally have been him that was the recipient of her frustration. However, she is never verbally aggressive or violent to anyone but her most immediate family.

In cases when there is any degree of aggression she is asked to leave, go and calm down and return when she can apologise and not engage in that behaviour anymore. She might then leave, take a few minutes, return to apologise and we move on. She might refuse to leave, then she will start running round, chasing away from us and try to escalate the behaviour, we will again ask her to leave to go to calm down but if she refuses and continues to escalate we will escort her to her bedroom, I will point out that the open door threshold is a boundary and I expect her to keep to that boundary. At this juncture she will either stay or she will run out again, I can put her back reinforce the boundary but it usually just continues. It is this behaviour that I feel I need the most help with. What should I do at this juncture. My options are very limited. I have a younger child too so I need to keep her safe. We have one space in our house which I could lock, a conservatory with a glass door to the living room, so she can still see me. Sometimes when she is hell bent on antagonising I will put her there if my husband is home he might lock himself in there with her and say she can leave once she calms down but otherwise I will just stay the other side and tell her to knock as soon as she is willing to go to her 'safe space' and stay there. That might just take a minute and she will then go to her room and start calming down. The alternative is to put me and her younger sister in a particular room and close the door and enforce that boundary by refusing to let her come in.

I would very much like to break this cycle. It is exhausting and doesn't do much for her self-confidence and is also a major barrier to us having a nice time as a family.

However, I am unsure how I can let this behaviour just run its course without engaging or doing something as she will literally hound us and not let us be. Eventually, usually when I can achieve the point in the cycle where she can remove herself and calm herself down, she will do so and either come and apologise or just get stuck into an activity she finds calming - drawing, writing a story in her bedroom or playing calmly. She might even write us a letter of apology. Either way, she apologises and life goes on.

In behaviour 2 if I can intervene early and explain to her that her brain needs stimulation and get her to do something constructive - play with kinetic sand, or do something physical together or draw or have a snack or shift the energy then this can be settled down. Behaviour 3 would be the same but I can't often do that as the demand she is avoiding is something that needs to get done. The only way to succeed with behaviour 3 appears to withdraw ourselves from her and dis-engage and then she reaches a point where she realises she is ready to go through with the demand she will come and find us if it is something we need to help her with or just get on and do it and then come back calm and ready with the demand executed.

Apart from this rather challenging behaviour she is an absolutely delightful person and we can have an absolutely lovely time together! She is a fantastic big sister and can play for hours with her little sister with few issues if she is in the right head-space.

Any words of advice will be much appreciated.


Without reading all the responses, I belief is this:

Behaviors 2, 3, 4 and 5 are all likely warning signs that she is experiencing stress that could eventually end up in Behavior 1.

Therefore, the best response is likely to be to direct her into self calming activities like pacing, swinging or other movement. Sometimes simply dropping your demands or leaving the current location will work.

I realize this is an oversimplified response, but your primary goal should be to identify what causes her stress and help her learn to mitigate it so that she no longer has meltdowns or the violence that can precede or accompany them.

I recently had a conversation with my now-adult son that really brought home how intense and difficult meltdowns are. Every human life emotion you and I can experience pales in comparison to the depth of emotion he experiences in a meltdown situation. He just went through a break up with his first love and categorizes that pain as a blip on the radar compared to a meltdown. His number 1 goal in life is not to have meltdowns (he hasn't had one in 10 years, but he remembers them intensely).

So realizing that all these behaviors are likely to be clues that something is starting to go wrong inside her head will help you solve the biggest puzzle: how to stop the meltdowns.

When she runs out of her room it may be a signal that she needs something more than quiet to de-stress. It sounds to me like she is further gone down the escalation to a meltdown, and almost begging for a relief to the stress. See if focusing on ACTIVE self-calming behaviors (those that involve purposeful movement) can help here. My son was a pacer: acting out a whole other life while walking, talking, climbing over things, squishing manipulables, etc.


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Last edited by DW_a_mom on 10 Jan 2018, 4:21 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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10 Jan 2018, 4:16 pm

elsapelsa wrote:
Then we brainstormed ways in which the situation could have gone different and how we could have not missed out on the thing we had all been looking forward to and working towards and we decided to try again tomorrow. Rather than ending up a tired, hot mess I felt like I had been to a yoga class the whole thing was without emotion and fire on my behalf and I really felt it was a huge milestone. All thanks to a lot of help from across the pond - THANK YOU!


This is excellent. Situational autopsies are a huge help.

Your child doesn't want to be difficult anymore than you want her to be, but she has needs and feelings she doesn't know how to verbalize or deal with. She can and should be part of the solution.

You are in really good hands with ASDMommyASDKid!


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11 Jan 2018, 3:02 am

DW_a_mom

Thank you so much for your replies and comments.

I am in agreement with you on motion and movement to help calm and reduce anxiety. She is needing something for that and I am not sure what. It reminds me that over the summer in Maine when she got into that way she would volunteer to go and run round the house a few times. It is easier in the summer. Now with cold and rain and sleet she is not so keen to go out to run off steam. I am looking at a rebounder for inside the house for her. She might like the repetitive movement of that. Work in progress.

I totally get the importance of 'avoiding meltdowns at all costs' and I am so sorry to hear how horrible your son found them. I also had meltdowns - one in particular (out of the blue on holiday in Istanbul when I was 14 or so) is etched in my memory and now that I am an adult I keep thinking "how the hell did i survive that" but with my big epic meltdowns they would just come out of the blue.... the timeframe between something being a little bit wrong or a little bit off to the whole world being wrong and a lot off was so fast. For me it was always those moments when I felt I saw right through the farce of things that made me most vulnerable.

Whilst it is perhaps unwise to compare meltdowns in intensity I believe my daughter's meltdowns are still not as intense or soul-wrenching and some of that is clearly how we can respond and recover together and the trust we have between us regarding her anger - I don't think I ever had that with another person. For example, she will have a huge screaming rage and then when we do our after anger autopsy she will refer to it as "our little disagreement."


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12 Jan 2018, 3:49 pm

elsapelsa wrote:
DW_a_mom

Thank you so much for your replies and comments.

I am in agreement with you on motion and movement to help calm and reduce anxiety. She is needing something for that and I am not sure what. It reminds me that over the summer in Maine when she got into that way she would volunteer to go and run round the house a few times. It is easier in the summer. Now with cold and rain and sleet she is not so keen to go out to run off steam. I am looking at a rebounder for inside the house for her. She might like the repetitive movement of that. Work in progress.

I totally get the importance of 'avoiding meltdowns at all costs' and I am so sorry to hear how horrible your son found them. I also had meltdowns - one in particular (out of the blue on holiday in Istanbul when I was 14 or so) is etched in my memory and now that I am an adult I keep thinking "how the hell did i survive that" but with my big epic meltdowns they would just come out of the blue.... the timeframe between something being a little bit wrong or a little bit off to the whole world being wrong and a lot off was so fast. For me it was always those moments when I felt I saw right through the farce of things that made me most vulnerable.

Whilst it is perhaps unwise to compare meltdowns in intensity I believe my daughter's meltdowns are still not as intense or soul-wrenching and some of that is clearly how we can respond and recover together and the trust we have between us regarding her anger - I don't think I ever had that with another person. For example, she will have a huge screaming rage and then when we do our after anger autopsy she will refer to it as "our little disagreement."


I do believe you will figure this out with her. You seem to be down in the weeds far enough with her.

One thing I will note is that while meltdowns sometimes seem to come out of the blue, in my observation there has usually been a sustained state of increased stress preceding them. It isn't always a straight line. You can have triggers on a day, a child who appears to have handled them well, apparent calm for a week, and then some tiny trigger that suddenly bursts the dam because the underlying stress level never fully dissipated. That is why all signs of stress need to be taken seriously, and exposure to known stress factors carefully considered.

We are fortunate to live without severe weather, but my son did do most of his movement inside. As I noted, my son's go-to activity was pacing. We basically gave up our house to this activity. He literally went up and over furniture, bounced into walls, picked up and moved nearly everything. Once I realized how essential this was to his ability to manage his stress, I removed everything I didn't want damaged and stop trying to control any of it. Home was his safe place. I also remember taking him on many walks during middle school when he needed to clear his head, even late at night (it seemed safe enough as long as we were together). As an adult, he schedules a lot of physical activity like bike riding into his day and that seems to handle much of his need. He's been commuting on bike for 30 minutes each way through rain and sometimes even light snow while living overseas this year, and is living in a walk up attic. Sometimes he goes for a run regardless of the weather. Not in running shoes and the like; he isn't normally a runner; he just GOES at the needed moment to pound out the stress. Hopefully your daughter will eventually find methods that will work for her.

Good luck. It sounds like you have the tools, so its on to mostly trial and error.


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eikonabridge
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13 Jan 2018, 8:32 am

ASDMommyASDKid wrote:
You actually reminded me, we went through a stage with paper ripping. I was trying to get my son an alternative way of expressing his strong negative feelings and my son didn't want to punch pillows or any of the other things I tried to get him to do instead of thrashing about and one day he saw paper (trash stuff, luckily) and began ripping it. After that, I started saving junk mail to have on hand for that purpose. He has not needed to do it in a long time, but it was really useful at that point in time. Whenever you try to extinguish a behavior that is destructive or dangerous, it really is important that they find the replacement behavior to actually be a satisfying replacement or it won't work. (I forget a lot of the stuff we had to do as interim baby steps)

DW_a_mom wrote:
... Therefore, the best response is likely to be to direct her into self calming activities like pacing, swinging or other movement...

... but your primary goal should be to identify what causes her stress and help her learn to mitigate it so that she no longer has meltdowns or the violence that can precede or accompany them.

... So realizing that all these behaviors are likely to be clues that something is starting to go wrong inside her head will help you solve the biggest puzzle: how to stop the meltdowns.

... See if focusing on ACTIVE self-calming behaviors (those that involve purposeful movement) can help here. My son was a pacer: acting out a whole other life while walking, talking, climbing over things, squishing manipulables, etc.

All those are ABA approaches. All those ideas came from neurotypical people. All those approaches view autism as a defect that needs to be corrected. All those approaches assume that the children are incapable of figuring out solutions on their own and must be taught the right/alternative behaviors. All those approaches presume parents are at a higher authority level than the children. All those approaches are uni-directional: from parents to children. All those approaches don't treat children as equal-rights human beings. All those approaches teach autistic children that they should be ashamed of their behaviors. All those approaches aim at manipulating autistic children so to change their behaviors.

I should remind people about this: I don't teach my children to be social, yet they are more social than most autistic children out there. I let my children throw tantrums freely, yet they are the happiest and easiest children around.

You won't find me using neurotypical ABA terms like "behavior replacement", "redirection", "to extinguish" on my children. Why? Because, first of all, I treat my children as equal-rights fellow human beings. The way I treat them is exactly the way I want them to treat me. We are equals. I surely don't want my children to lecture me about "behavior replacement," "redirection," "to extinguish," when I am upset. I take expressing frustration as a basic human right, as a soverign expression: everyone is entitled to it. But I surely appreciate it when my children come to me and tell me: "Dad, sometimes life if tough, sometimes life is fun. Why don't we look at the positive side of life?" Secondly, those ABA methods are highly harmful. Once upon a time, one of my children was being applied those neurotypical behavioral management techniques, without my knowledge. I did not know it was happening, but I did observe my child was becoming less and less happy, and more and more withdrawn, by the day. When I discovered what was going on, I had a talk with the adults applying those techniques and told them there is an alternative way of handling children's frustrations/tantrums. After they stopped applying those behavioral management techniques, the effect was immediate: my child bounced back to be happy and outgoing again. I prevented the harm from becoming permanent.

When autistic children are not treated as equal-rights human beings, what can happen? Why don't we look at what Aspie1 has already told us before, from a different thread? http://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=356823&p=7739653
Aspie1 wrote:
... Teaching social hierarchies can backfire too. My family was very good at it, actually. To the point of instilling in my mind that I was the lowest of the low, when it came to the chain of command. Talking back, let alone not doing what I'm told, was simply not an option! Which made me an "easy" child for my parents and teachers, and I viewed at par for the course. After all, I was just a lowly child, and they were all-powerful adults.

It all had a detrimental effect on my life until age 29. It made me a class weakling at school. It made me a submissive yes-man at work. It made me a schmuck among most friends I once hung with. It made me a approval-seeking beta male with women. None of which made me happy, except for "punishment averted!" feelings of relief, when I was able to appease other people at the expense of my own happiness.

Fortunately, I was able to cast off those negative teachings, for the most part. School is all but forgotten. I learned to push back against sociopathic posses, with some degree of success. I kicked bad friends out of my life, and found new good ones. And dating? I heavily embraced MGTOW, and will not allow a woman to come within 10 feet of me in a romantic sense. (I have women friends, though.)

Children will only regain confidence and self-esteem when they fight back. But why should we go down that path in the first place?

Let me give an example how tantrums actually solve everything. Once upon a time, my son slammed the laptop when my wife asked him to do something else. That was a red line for me. I threw a gigantic tantrum back at my son. The next morning when I was walking my son to his school, guess what? He asked me: "Dad, what happened to you yesterday?" (Talking about empathy, ha!) I explained to him that because he slammed the laptop's cover, I got mad. I let him know that it was my problem. I asked him: "Next time when your daddy gets mad, what should you do?" He then told me he will remind me that: "Sometimes life is tough, sometimes life is fun." And we went on to talk about other fun things as usual. When my son came back home from school, we had fun playing like any other day, and he was happy and giggling as usual. He then never slammed the laptop again. Arguably not because he was intimidated by me... but because he had pitty on me.

Sure, my neurotypical wife found all this to be... extremely surreal. She just couldn't understand how after I threw such a gigantic tantrum, my son was still happy the very next day and played with me, as if nothing happened. No resentment. No damage to his self-esteem whatsoever.

Because I let my children throw tantrums freely, they also understand that it was within my rights to throw tantrums. We take each other's behavior as sovereign expressions of our feelings. There was no resentment, no lecturing. And surprisingly, things get resolved, on their own. Nobody tells anybody that they need to replace their behavior. Nobody tells anybody that they need to calm themselves down. Nobody tells anybody that they need to stop their meltdowns.

My son changed his behavior not because he believed that slamming laptop is a wrong behavior per se. I did not tell him that it is a universal truth that people shouldn't slam laptops. I did not set up rules. I told him that I have a problem and that I get mad when he slams the laptop. I told him it was my problem. He understood it. He further understood that whenever I got mad, he should remind me that "sometimes life is tough, sometimes life is fun" and try to get me to look at the positive side of life. If you think about it, that is the truth. It is not true slamming laptops is wrong, universally. If there is no people around, say, my son were to slam *his* laptop in a forest, it won't bother anybody else. People think that throwing tantrum is wrong, simply because there are other people around that are bothered by the tantrum. So, it's a relative thing. It is not wrong that children slam laptops, per se. It is wrong because it bothers *some* other people. The problem is not with the slamming of a laptop. The problem is with the other people that get bothered by that action. When I pointed out this truth to my son, guess what? He understood it. He developed empathy, and changed his behavior from a position of strength, conviction and caring. All which is what the neurotypical people are seeking after, but that don't know how to achieve.

See, I have achieved all the goals that the ABA people would love to achieve, by throwing tantrums and by allowing my children to throw tantrums, freely. I achieved all those goals better and faster. Most importantly, throughout the whole process, I treated my children (and vice-versa, my children treated me) as equal-rights fellow human beings. Nobody is above anybody. I never lectured my children that they should be ashamed of their behavior. The most important thing is: my children's self-esteem remained intact.

All this is surreal to neurotypical people. Neurotypical people assume that tantrums are a bad thing. They can never imagine that tantrums actually get problems solved much more efficiently, without damages to children's self-esteem. They can never imagine that by allowing my children (and myself) to throw tantrums freely, my children actually become so much nicer, easier, and happier. And they can never imagine that the bonding between parents and children not only stays strong, but becomes stronger.

I see throwing tantrums as a right. I'll never ask my children or anybody else to surrender this right. Rather, I'll ask them to be proud about themselves. I respect their sovereign expressions, even if I don't agree with their opinions. Strangely, by going down this route, I achieve everything that the neurotypical people want to achieve, and more, in autistic children.

Finally, I think all autistic people should take a look at this passage from the "1776" musical, where Benjamin Franklin said, regarding the American self-identity: "We've spawned a new race here, Mr. Dikinson. Rougher, simpler; more violent, more enterprising; less refined. We're a new nationality. We require a new nation." Yeap, similarly, autistic people are a new race, and that's the right way of looking at it. It's no wonder that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin have all been speculated to be autistic (plus Abraham Lincoln: see https://www.disabled-world.com/disability/awareness/famous/asp.php). It's only autistic people that can stay true to the concept of: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..."



Isn't it interesting, that with all my rougher, simpler, and less-refined approaches, schools choose to cooperate and work with me? How do I manage to make changes happen within the system, not only for the benefit of my children, but for other children as well? How come so many teachers fall in love with my children? Mind you, my children are in public schools, now. I don't pay the teachers (at least not directly), yet people listen to me and follow what I tell them to do. How come I succeed at places where other parents fail?

All autistic issues have autistic solutions. Applying neurotypical approaches only causes harm to autistic children. These children need to be proud about who they are. These children are not defective. They need no changes. They are perfectly fine the way they are. It's our society the one that is defective. You develop these children properly in the autistic way, and they will become verbal, social, smart, happy, easy, nice to hang around with, darlings to everyone around them. I know that, because that's what I have achieved with my children. It's only when people insist on applying neurotypical approaches to these children that all hell breaks loose.


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ASDMommyASDKid
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13 Jan 2018, 11:30 am

Sigh. Eikonabridge, I have never used an ABA practitioner for my son, and I don't do ABA. You are the one who hired an ABA person for your child. I don't know how you can be so sure that person doesn't do any ABA, unless you personally observe all interactions when that is what the person is trained to do.

Technically, I suppose analyzing what is going on can be construed as ABA but what I do is as child-centered as possible. Expose the child to alternatives to destructiveness and see what they pick. I don't shove solutions down his throat. Not everyone has the same temperament as your children, and your techniques don't work for everyone. I don't sit there and make my son do rote repetition and give him M&Ms or whatever the usual ABA protocol is -- and I don't make rules I don't need.

You may not like my terminology, but it is the clearest terminology to use for me to explain it. Regardless of the neurology of the child, if that child acts in destructive or violent ways, they need alternatives for what they are doing. If your kid in stuck in a rigid school system, you also have to do this for disrupting behaviors b/c what they will do at school is worse. Not every school will give your kid a personal aide so they can take your kid for elevator rides.

My son has much better self-control of his emotions but I don't censor them and we are in that sweet spot where he is still expressive and also not out of control. Meltdowns are not just inconvenient for the adults, they are bad for the child.

You talk all the time about how happy your kid is. Well my kid is happy too. It may have been a longer trip, but we're there and my son's temperament is different than your kids' and your techniques are not the kind of thing that work for mine. He perseverates on the bad stuff, and the last thing you want to do is remind him of the bad stuff, when you are having fun. You do what works for your kids and I will continue to do what works for mine. I am incredibly happy with how we are doing.



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13 Jan 2018, 1:34 pm

ASDMommyASDKid wrote:
You talk all the time about how happy your kid is. Well my kid is happy too. ... I am incredibly happy with how we are doing.

Good, as long as children and parents are happy, it's all good. I just get sick and tired of people whining about autism, and then turn around and tell people how to raise kids.

There is so much more to parenting autistic children. I'd rather be talking about how to use GIMP and Inkscape to darken the outlines of comic drawings, whether there are alternative deep-learning tools to these tasks, where to find on-line comic book publishers to print out my children's comic books so that they can share with their friends. I'd rather be talking about Arduino and Raspberry Pi projects for young children. I'd rather be talking about how I can get to talk to autistic children in Japan for video conferencing with my daughter, so that my daughter can have fun and talk to Japanese children. I'd like to talk about how to introduce complex numbers via geometric algebra to young children. I'd like to find out whether other children are learning to do Artificial Intelligence / Deep Learning using Google's TensorFlow library. See, autism is and should be fun. There is bound to be autistic children out there in the world that share your children's interests. Life is so much more beyond schools. However, if I start to talk about these things, people would look at me as if I am from a different planet... when all they talk about is how to handle their children's behaviors!


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