About a year ago, when my little one turned 3, I started noticing some differences between him and the other kids his age. He was more active, the smallest things would send him into a meltdown, he was throwing things and just acting out on a daily basis. I was told that he was just stubborn, that he was doing it for attention, and I believed it.
At first, I chalked it up to being 3 and trying to push boundaries and establish his sense of self. After 6 months of increasingly violent behaviors and realizing that this was more than just a stubborn child, I talked to his pediatrician who recommended that I take him to a therapist.
The therapist set us up for weekly sessions of PCI (Parent Child Interactive) therapy. In these sessions we worked on how to speak to each other and how to treat each other. While this kind of therapy was helping with behaviors at home, the behaviors at daycare were still getting increasingly worse. He wasn’t just hitting his friends now, he was hitting and kicking his teacher, throwing chairs, knocking over bookshelves, and biting people.
I did everything I could think of. I gave the teacher tips and tools from therapy, I took away screen time at home when he had a bad day, I tried sticker charts to encourage good behaviors, I tried time outs, spanking, ANYTHING. However the violent behaviors and endless meltdowns continued.
The further we got into the PCI, the less it seemed to work. Even the behaviors at home returned. I talked to his therapist who was just as confused as I was. She referred him to a specialist to be tested for ADHD, Bipolar, and Autism, but the wait time for the testing was months away and my son was about to be removed from daycare.
I had meeting after meeting after meeting with his teacher and the director of the daycare, just trying to keep the peace long enough for him to see the specialist and get some answers. We struggled with the behaviors, I was signing incident reports on the daily, and I was very quickly becoming defeated trying to cope with having a literal Tasmanian Devil living in my house. There were days where I lost my temper, where I was so tired of dealing with his behaviors that I had no energy left to tend to his little sister. I was spending most of my time trying to keep him from hurting himself or her that her routine became supper, bath, and bed after we got home. There were no bedtime stories, no singing or playing. I was at the end of my rope. I loved my kids, but it was killing me that I couldn’t do the things that I wanted to do with my daughter because I was so focused on dealing with the behaviors from my son.
For months that was our routine. Until one day when I got the call from the specialist. I explained to them what was going on in my life at that point and they set up an appointment for the next Monday. We go to the appointment and my son, in his true fashion, was acting up. The therapist played with him, asked him a series of questions, got some history from me, and two hours later gave us the answers that I had been longing for for almost a year. He was not ADHD, he was not Bipolar, he was not just being difficult.
In fact, my son is Autistic. His behaviors are not in his control. He is a high functioning autistic. We didn’t notice it when he was a baby because his motor skills and speech were right on track. He can talk, he can do everything a typical 4 year old can do, but emotionally and socially, he is on a toddlers level. He cannot comprehend action vs consequences, which is why discipline hasn’t worked. Why he cannot handle being in larger groups, and why he cannot sit and do the things that other kids his age can do well, like color or draw.
This is where our journey begins. I’ll be taking you on this journey with us. As I learn tips and tricks on how to manage his behaviors and meltdowns, so will you. So if you have a “difficult child” at home, or are just interested to see where this road brings us, I’ll post daily with what we’re trying and if it works or not. Help and suggestions are always accepted, but just remember that every child is different and what works for one won’t work for all. Thank you for reading and remember to embrace your chaos.
Embrace Your Chaos 