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Hazelwudi...These are terrible solutions for a kid on the spectrum.

I have no internal clock and as an adult, I have clocks on 3 walls in each room, a watch on my wrist, visual reminders and calendars EVERYWHERE!

I am 27. I am on the President's List and the Dean's List at the University that I attend.

I am married.

I have a child.

I am an aspie.

Being shamed in the way that you are describing NEVER taught me ANYTHING.

Being beaten and abused (which is similiar to your "school of hard knocks") never taught me ANYTHING OTHER THAN HATE.

I hope that you treat your children (if you have any) with more compassion and understanding than you have expressed here.

Hazelwudi wrote

I sitting here in shock after reading all of this. Absolutely shocked. I can tell you for a fact that I don't have to send my child to the school of hard knocks to make him a productive part of society.

eta: I tried to come back to fix the quotes but it didn't work.

Why is knocking someone down the way to build them up? That doesn't make sense. My son is starting to excel now and it certainly wasn't due to the people who tried to show him tough love. That's when he was at his worst. It's when people took the time to see the world through his eyes and change their approach (at my insistance) that he is excelling.

so, can someone tell me how the picture schedule differs from a regular scheduling chart?

This is what we have at the moment and though it seemed exciting to make, add personal touches to and blends quite nicely with the bedroom decor...that is exactly what it has done...the excitement wore thin, and it has blended into the walls, as if it doesn't exist at all



Thanks again,

Melissa

Our schedule is next to the front door...That way we will see it and stick to it.

The pictures are because my son is moderately autistic and has a difficult time connecting words to himself in a meaningful way.

It is CRUCIAL to make her check off each item every time that she does it...Not wait until she's done them all. It kind of reinforces the concept of getting each item done.

Try adding some small dry erase boards to your chart and move it's location to somewhere prominent to her.

Also, you may need to cut down on the number of check marks that she'll need...Just a thought!

Good luck!

When I make picture schedules, I use velcro so I can move them around, change the order, my son can take them on and off etc.

What if you wrote the action and made a picture to go along with it so as your daughter does each activity, she takes the corresponding picture and puts it in place.

I would make separate picture boards.

1. What she has to do when she's in her room and first wakes up.
2. Bathroom routine.
3. Kitchen routine
4. Front Door routine (getting ready for school)

Each picture board should be kept in the room that requires the activity.

Maybe if it's broken up by rooms and it's smaller, it won't be so overwhelming. Plus, it's easier for her to digest if it's in smaller chunks. If my son is daunted by too much at once, he shuts down.

The last couple posters have made great suggestions And just to emphaze something they both mentioned: I've been told by the therapists who work with my son and helped us set up our picture boards that it's critical the system be set up so that the child is able to physically manipulate it in some way. Hence a velcro or paperclip system like CelticGoddess mentioned, which allows them to remove the pictures when each step is finished (we use a "done" container); or a check system like agent79 mentioned where they have to mark something off themselves. We also use a reward system where my son gets a sticker for every completed picture board, then after 10 stickers he gets to choose a reward (it's only 10 because we're only using one picture board at the moment). The stickers and rewards were a big draw at the beginning, but they never completely eliminated my need to prompt him. It's gotten to the point where he isn't insisting on the stickers and rewards, but is comforted by the system itself. Even though I still have to prompt him to move a little faster, the board takes care of the routine - I don't have to tell him what to do, and there's something to be said for that. If he can follow a schedule, but just not keep track of the time, I can deal with that because so far my telling him to speed up hasn't caused any meltdowns

When I was a child, I recall having serious problems estimating the passage of time. Rather than plastering my room with clocks, you know what the solution was?

"You remember watching Sesame Street today? How many hours ago do you think that was?"

"We're going to the store in about half an hour." <twenty minutes later> "How long a time do you think we've got left? Here, put your shoes on. Nah... ten minutes, not fifteen. You were close, though!"

From a great deal of experience with little games like this, my estimation of time eventually became accurate enough to pass for the inborn "internal clock" I didn't have. I am not entirely certain what mechanism in my brain substitutes for this, but it does. There's only two exceptions to this...

1) If I completely focus my attention on an extended task that I am heavily engaged in, the pseudoclock will start to shut down. In that case, my mental resources are so invested in the task that there's apparently not enough left to run the pseudoclock, and my estimation of the passage of time grows badly skewed.

2) If I went to sleep when absolutely exhausted, and wake up with the grey half-light in the sky which precedes dawn (but can also herald the coming of night), I won't know whether it is AM or PM until I either check the computer's clock, discern which direction the sun is in (if relatively clear outside), or notice a significant darkening or brightening of the sky (if overcast). This sometimes happens to me on weekends, and from this I can deduce that the pseudoclock shuts down when I am asleep.



Congratulations on your successes. However, a lot of the people on this site are nowhere near as successful as you have been. You know it, and so do I. I am an inveterate systemizer, cognitively speaking... and from the huge numbers of personal stories I've read here, I've started to notice a pattern. Granted, there are exceptions to the rule on both sides, but a disproportionate number of them seem to either...

1) Get along fine with their parents, who never pushed them to grow as a person and develop an appropriate array of life skills, instead preferring to coddle their weaknesses. They tend to be well past the age when they should have struck out on their own, but still live under the familial roof. They're either chronically unemployed or chronically underemployed, have few (if any) social skills, and just can't seem to understand why they're having such a hard time finding a romantic partner.

2) Dislike their parents, who actively pushed them to develop life skills and encouraged them towards adulthood. These individuals tend to enjoy at least moderate success in the adult world (friends, romantic partner, schooling, employment, etc.) but still believe their parents "pushed them too hard".

Count me as someone who fit pretty solidly into the second category... until I realized that if it hadn't been for the pushing, I'd be in the first category instead. If anything, I wish my parents had relied even more on the "School of Hard Knocks"... in terms of personal responsibility, it was the only way I ever learned anything. As matters stood, I still ended up taking the first couple years of my college career getting myself fully up to speed in that area.



So four years of being chronically late is ok?

No, no it isn't.

It doesn't teach hate, and doesn't necessitate "being beaten and abused". Rather, it teaches the natural consequences of one's actions... and from these, the child learns what is appropriate, and what is inappropriate. It teaches the child that their fate is ultimately in their own hands, and empowers the child to make intelligent, productive changes in his/her own behavior. It allows the child to learn vital facts about the world and the humans living in it, rather than remaining a social cripple.

Look at the world around you. Where does hate come from? First and foremost, hatred is the grandchild of ignorance. People (aspies included) fear that which they do not understand, and hate that which they fear. Allowing the child to develop an accurate understanding of the world, the people in it, and what is expected of him/her is the ANTIDOTE to ignorance, and the fear and hatred spawned by ignorance.

Is it better that children learn those lessons now, or later from an endless list of prospective employers who won't hire them, colleges which won't admit them (or admit them but expel them soon afterwards for behavioral problems and/or insufficient self-discipline to succeed in the coursework), potential romantic partners who recoil in horror at their overtures and refuse to date them, and being ignored (or snubbed) by virtually everyone they come into contact with socially? Which causes more psychological pain... sixty years spent lonely, bitter, feeling like a complete loser, having no self-esteem whatsoever, and sulking in your mother's basement as you wait for God to get around to it, or learning in the short years of childhood what you need to know in order to avoid that fate?



The more experience they have with a wide variety of situations, the more probable it is that a particular situation they find themselves in will roughly match one they've already seen before. They can then generalize from that similar past experience, and know what to do. Sheltering them from every experience that might teach them anything does not help them, it only cripples them further.



It's actually kind of sad that empowering children to learn about the world and the people in it, and teaching them to appropriately manage their own behavior is considered "shocking". It wouldn't have been considered shocking at all, years ago.

You know, back during the days that childhood psychopathology was actually a fairly rare phenomenon in the general population... back when people actually raised their children, rather than taking the easy way out by drugging and/or enabling them, then trying to justify it with psychobabble to their friends?

One cannot help but wonder if there's a correlation there, eh?

My mother did not "push me" in a figurative sense...She "pushed me" in a literal sense.

That was how she dealt with my aspie traits.

I happen to be high functioning because that was my lot in life.

I also married a weirdo like myself.

I did not have a successful relationship until him.

I turned down full scholarships to colleges after high school, because when it came down to it, I knew that I was COMPLETELY unprepared for that world.

Each of my successes has been hard won on my part after MUCH work by ME.

My siblings and I were taken away from our mother because she was SO very interested in your "School of Hard Knocks" and some of those very tactics that you suggest to bring "personal accountability" to this young child were my mother's tactics. The state calls it ABUSE. Teachers NOTICE these things and are usually compelled to report it.

Oh yeah, and I HATED my mother. I didn't hate "ignorance"---I hated HER. She didn't push me to an empowered state that allowed me to adjust in society. She nearly pushed me to kill myself.

But thanks for your completely uninformed post!

Good luck to you in your future. I hope that you develop a different attitude before you have children or they might wind up wards of the state---much the same way that my sibs and I did.

I don't disagree with them experiencing a wide variety of situations. I think that is key. I don't shelter my son. I put him in age appropriate situations that he can handle and also ones that push his boundaries when I feel he's ready to tackle them. If it's done before he has the tools he needs to deal, it backfires greatly. But if I follow his lead and we work towards goals, the benefits are long lasting.



Empowering children does not involve breaking them down. That is my point. As a parent, it is our job to be proactive, involved, and vigilant. With regards to the comments of medication, yes it can be over used. But there are also cases where it IS warranted. When a child has all the tools they could possibly need but their brain needs assistance in ways that environment can't fulfill.

The reason why I was shocked by your previous post is because I don't believe that you have to be hard on kids in order for them to be successful. My son is light years ahead of where he used to be and he's making incredible breakthroughs in his abilities. He is reaching those goals and going beyond his own boundaries because of the SUPPORT he's getting at home/school/therapies etc and not because I cracked down on him.

ok, folks...back to the scheduling questions..... something portable with velcro would be wonderful....at work ( an SED school), some students use boards made of foamcore with velcro on it...we've made up pictures of the actual activity & put velcro on the back so that the schedule can be changed . We've found that sometimes, an actual photo of the student doing the specific activity helps the student to transition better ( ie; take a photo of your kid eating, and use that for the "time to eat" photo).....sometimes, it helps to get an actual photo of the other person involved in your child's schedule ( ie; a picture of his teacher or aide wihch you could use for the "time to go to school" photo ).............letting the child help take the photos & make the schedule are also great ways to get them involved & "more responsible & cognizant" of their control over their schedule. Giving the child a little bit of control can help~even if it's just choosing what color the schedule is....

My parents did try the written schedules for me.I dont recall them being very effective.I have memory issues which may have interfered?I love the concept of Pictures......many of us are very visual and my visual memory is much better then my word/number/lists memory.It really helps me if things are broken down into catagories,ie,"bathroom tasks","kitchen tasks".
.


As far as the "reality treatment"....gotta say there should be a balance and EVERY aspie has their own strengths and weaknesses but many of the things that Hazulwudi mentioned are counter to some understanding of AS.....We are not supposed to be good "generalizers",applying one learned skill or rule to all similar following situations.We are less likely to be motivated by peer/authority figure "shaming".When I was in grade school,I wasnt really that interested in what my peers thought about my clothes and probably would have loved going to school in PJ's.Anything would have been better then the dresses my mom made me wear.If I was be punished for something I didnt do on purpose(Such as breaking a glass while washing dishes,it was slippery and slipped out of my hands,I was to short to be using the sink,anyway.)<I would just hate the "punisher" and it reinforced a belief that parents could be "illogical" and there for not to be trusted and respected.I remember,clearly in the third grade being punished for this and thinking...."I didnt do it on purpose,I will clean it up and you can deduct the money from my allowance but dont stand there and yell at me and then keep bringing up how clummsy I am
to shame me.

My parents were very "old school".They were never physically abusive,they didnt have to be.I really wanted to be good.I really wanted their respect and for them to like me.All I ever got was criticism and advice....both of which felt like a slap in the face to me.If I had gotten more positive feed back ,I think it might have balanced out.I wanted to learn and be the best person I could be....who doesnt.But there were things I couldnt do.....that I can do know,.Isnt AS considered a "developmental disability"?Some things will get better with practice but you are not going to "potty train" a 1 month old.The "milestones" of development for some aspies maybe be slower in some areas and far out reach their peers, in others.

It looks like some "tough love" can result in some aspies having no empathy for anyone who doesnt measure up to "their" standards and self-righteous judgements.For me it created a suicidal person with low self worth and self-abuse from failing no matter how hard I tried.(cutting,drinking,sexual promiscousness).I dont think that was my parents intention.They really wanted to help me.....but tough love didnt help me,it destroyed "me" and it has taken much work and many years to dig "myself" out of that hole.

i think one has to be really careful about motivating anyone....motivation out of fear or anticipatory anxiety really just creates a bigger problem. no one wants to be shamed into doing something. Far better to motivate someone with positive actions.
some things just don't make sense to my aspie~so he fights having to do them. there are things i never thought i'd have to explain why he had to do them. but that's the way it is around here. i try to be patient and give a reasonable explanation as to why he has to do a particular task....i explain, sometimes, that there's no negotiatiating the task~it has to be done. when it's a task that i'd just *like* him to do ( ie; bring all of the laundry up from the basement), i tell myself that i'm not going to push him if he fights the task. after all, shouldn't everyone have the right to have some control over what they'd like to do ? ( i do, however, expect to be told "no" in a polite manner....politeness goes a LONG way in our house............this, btw, has take YEARS to accomplish~and i'm still trying to get hubby to comply )

Again, it doesn't involve hitting the child. Sorry if your mother beat you, that was absolutely inappropriate and she shouldn't have done that.

Honestly though, what does constantly nagging children teach them? Does it teach them life skills? No, it only places them in the painful position of having to choose between their love for you and their own self-worth.

Kids aren't stupid. When you treat children as if they are far less competent than their chronological age would suggest and relentlessly micromanage everything they do... hell, even aspie kids pick up on the underlying message there.

My own mother apparently thinks I'm a blithering ret*d.

This leaves them with a very tough decision to make...

1) Stop caring how you feel about them, in order to protect their own self-esteem. Such children tend to also assert their own worth and self-respect by rebelling against you in any way they can, either passively through procrastination and "forgetting" to do things, or actively through open defiance. Either way, by the time the child is a teenager, the parent-child relationship will have degenerated into little more than an insult contest, and the child will literally be counting the hours until they hit 18 and can leave. By the time the child is an adult, you'll be exceedingly fortunate if you even see him/her around Christmas.

End result - You've driven off your own child with your mouth.

2) Accept your relentlessly negative implications about his/her intelligence, competence, and worth as fact. The child doesn't rebel, but takes no initiative either and becomes a completely passive agent in his/her own life. Needless to say, this is an absolute disaster for the child's own self-worth and self-respect, not to mention the child's later chances of successfully living as an independent adult.

End result - You've created a lifelong emotional cripple.

Stop nagging. Stop reminding constantly. Stop perpetually hovering at the child's elbow. Stop redoing and repositioning everything they touch. (I realize that empathy is hardly the strong suit of most WPers, but ask yourself a question... when someone is perpetually nagging you and riding your ass, how do you feel about it?) Give them some breathing room to learn from the natural consequences of their actions, and empower them to make positive changes in their own lives.

I can't help but wonder what some of you are so afraid of... do you honestly think that anything a kid at school might say is more destructive to their self-esteem than their own mother treating them as if they are ret*d, day in and day out?

Or, are you just worried that the child will eventually become self-sufficient and won't need you so much anymore? Yup, that's the end-goal of raising a child... so what's the problem?

Last edited by Hazelwudi on 13 Feb 2007, 3:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

*nods* Honestly, I think that's the only way Aspies can learn about the world. Books often don't generalize to the real world very well, and we tend to like to see things ourselves with our own two eyes, so we can make our own judgments of it.



I think constant nagging (and its implications regarding what caregivers think of him/her) breaks them down a lot more than anything else.

The medication thing... ugh, I've seen so many active, curious children whose parents turned them into zombies, for no other reason than the fact they found the child inconvenient to their lifestyle. While I agree that it might be necessary for profoundly disturbed children, such children are one hell of a lot rarer than people seem to think.

It seems to me that a lot of people today have completely inappropriate expectations of children. "My four year-old won't sit still more than 20 minutes! I need ritalin!!" And you think to yourself... "Um, he's a four year-old, of course he doesn't want to sit still for long periods of time. This is normal. If you can't deal with it, then maybe you're the one who needs drugged up." I feel sorry for their children.



I think that letting them experience the natural consequences of their actions is a lot less hard on them then constantly poisoning their self-worth by treating them as if they're far less intelligent, competent, and capable than they are. If even your own mother treats you like you're ret*d, what are you supposed to think?