Is this the right place to ask questions about my son? I'm n

Post Reply New Topic

Hi. I've known for quite a while that my 5yr old is on the spectrum somewhere but things take time to diagnose. Now that he's older it's becoming way more apparent.

The things I'm struggling with at the moment are... Getting him to sleep and getting him to sleep past 5am. He's in a routine but still does all the behaviors he knows that will take away his rewards, then seems surprised when I don't give them.

When I ask him to do something, anything, it has to be done his way, which is usually slow and involves play i.e. please go up stairs and get your shoes results in him doing it but crawling upstairs slowly and saying he's a cat. If I say do it on your feet and quickly, we're in a hurry, he stands up and runs on the spot moving his arms quickly and then goes up the stairs while making exaggerated movements with his head and arms which ends up making him slower. Another example is.. I'll ask him.. Please empty the dishwasher and he'll grab a truck and take the pieces one at a time driving from the dishwasher to the cupboard or something similar and then when asked to do it without playing, he does things like putting all the cups away first but decides that everything has to be changed around to make a different pattern... Again slow. The only thing that works is giving him a race but I can't race or time everything.

The other big thing which I'm letting go right now for my sanity, is his eating. Only some foods, hardly any nutrition except for all the fruit he eats and they have to be prepared a certain way.

Can anyone please offer suggestions?

Thanks

My son did stuff like this. We nicknamed him "the negotiator."

What I remember doing with everything in life is being so extremely specific. If there was a loophole to be found, he would find it.

Usually, we would let him have his fun briefly, then tell him to stop. In situations like you describe, we would say something like "The truck can bring three more items to the cabinet, and then it needs to let you take over and put them away normally" or something like that. Or in the case of the stairs, we might say, "the cat is getting chased by a dog! It better hurry up the stairs quick!"

I never realized until now that we talked so much in third person. I don't know if that made a difference.

He often pretended to be an animal. He always had a vivid imagination, and we played along as much as possible.

Part of our parenting philosophy is to say "yes" whenever we could, so that when we say "no", it really counts and means something. But, yes comes with limits. We used timers with everything. When ending a bath, "in 5 minutes when the timer goes off, it's time to get out of the tub." Set the timer. "In five minutes, it's time to stop that activity" then set the timer. "In five minutes, we are leaving to go to the store", set the timer.

We used lots and lots of limits and parameters. So many. We also tried to anticipate what he might do (not always easy) and put limits/parameters ahead of time preventing a behavior we didn't want. It was easier to try and prevent a behavior than stop it while it was happening.

In the situations like you describe, if we didn't have time to deal with the play, we'd say something like, "You need to put things from the dishwasher away, but the truck can't help this time because it takes too long and this needs to be done quickly right now." Or "We don't have time for you to be a cat while going up the stairs."

Hope this helps.

Excellent advice!

I think it's great when a kid could use his imagination. But...sometimes, things must be done directly and quickly. and the kid has to learn this.

Good advice from nerdygirl.

This from the OP made me laugh:

Sleep issues - this may not be a problem that can be "fixed". A lot of kids and adults on the spectrum have trouble getting to sleep, staying asleep, and getting up at a desired time. My 10 yr. old has always stayed up really late. He mostly plays with Legos, watches DVDs, or reads. On school nights we have a rule that he must stay in his room after 9, he must turn off his overhead light (he has a desk lamp that is much dimmer), and he must not do anything noisy. That's as close as we come to a bedtime for him. Forcing him to lie in bed with the lights out does NOT help him sleep; it just makes him miserable.

Thanks everyone. I hope it's ok to ask lots of questions. I'm going to write another post asking about computer time.

You've found the right place. Great questions, keep them coming!

I think something I've seen across this board that many find is a good rule of thumb: one "battle" at a time. You've identified several things here - pick one to work on and accommodate the other ones.

The slowness is probably a bunch of stuff together: difficulty transitioning, rigidity, and there are possibly alternate things (my son used to drive me crazy by walking slooooowly on the way to school no matter what I did or said - took years for me to figure out that he could NOT step on cracks due to an OCD-like quirk; it was actively painful for him, and the sidewalks were covered with them. We solved the problem by having him walk on the grass.) You have to be a detective and really figure out what is behind a problem when you try to solve it, and creating an atmosphere of problem-solving is the best way to help your child figure out how to problem-solve for himself.

There are lots of good threads stickied at the top of this forum, including a list of suggested reading and a list of some posts by subject - you might find some good information there (which is not to say don't ask questions, of course!)

One thing about the food issue. Research has shown that only the most extreme picky eaters (whose acceptable foods can be counted in single digits) are at risk of nutritional issues. The thing is that our bodies know if we're running low on a nutrient long before we show any symptoms of nutritional deficiency, and our tastes tend to shift to craving things containing that nutrient. Even though picky eaters refuse many foods, this taste-shifting in response to nutritional need happens with them too. So generally if you let a picky eater eat only foods they like, they'll end up eating something that's at least balanced enough to keep them reasonably healthy.

Avoiding high cholesterol, high salt, high sugar etc is harder, because those things were scarce when humans were evolving and so we evolved to crave them all the time regardless of actual need. So if you can offer things he accepts that are low on those three things, that would be a good idea.