Embrace Your Chaos

Parenting “Difficult” Behaviors

Because my son struggle with communication, a lot of his behaviors may seem like he’s doing them on purpose, when actually he is trying to communicate a need or an emotion that he can’t describe with words. In my previous posts, I told you about some of the behaviors that we struggle with on a daily basis such as whining, hitting, kicking, biting, throwing things, and destroying objects. Today I want to talk about how some changes in the way we parent has helped with some of these behaviors and how some have made him act out more. Today we are talking about his whining and what I have found helps him communicate with actual words.

My sons communication skills are on the level as an 18 month old. So whining is his way of trying to tell us what he needs or what he is feeling. It may get annoying, and sometimes it’s down right frustrating, but with the help of his therapist I have learned that getting snappy with him or dismissing the whining sets him off more. It takes a lot more patience to get him to communicate using his words instead.

This morning in the car, we stopped by the store and his dad went in to get our morning drinks. We could see into the store and when his dad was in line to pay, my son immediately started crying. I asked him what was wrong and he just pointed, still crying and screaming. Usually I would try to guess what was wrong through the whining, or tell him to use his words, but I remembered that because in his mind what he was upset about was very clear, and he WAS telling me in his own way, if I guessed wrong, it would send him into a meltdown. So instead I calmly asked my son to SHOW me what he was crying for. He whined some more and I repeated myself more times than I would normally do, still in a calm tone of voice. After a few minutes of the whining and me repeating that he SHOW me, finally he stopped and put his hands on his tummy. It clicked. He wasn’t whining because he didn’t want the drink that his dad had picked out, he wasn’t crying because he wanted to go into the store with his dad. Now that he showed me what was wrong, I asked him calmly to TELL me what that meant. He stopped crying, put his hands on his tummy again and this time he said, “I’m hungry”.

By the time I had gotten him to communicate in a way that I could understand, his dad had already paid for the drinks and was back in the car. I thanked him for telling me what was making him upset and went into the store myself to get him something to eat. When I got back in the car I told him that using words or actions can help people understand him better than crying. And that sometimes people don’t always understand and that’s okay. I sent a message to his teacher and told her that asking him to show her what was bothering him helps him connect the meaning of the action and put words to his needs and feelings.

It took a lot of patience and more time than we would normally take to actually handle the situation. What I learned through this, is that sometimes whining isn’t always just whining because he didn’t get what he wanted or expected. We’re teaching him that if he has trouble finding the right words, actions are also acceptable. This has happened in the past too, but I before I did not realize that he was having trouble finding words. Before he went to daycare I reminded him that if he can’t use his words, then showing people what’s bothering him can help.

If your little one struggles for words or seems to whine about every little thing, then maybe you can try this too. Let me know if it worked for your little and I’ll be posting some other things that we are doing to help improve his communication with others who don’t understand. As always remember to embrace your chaos and thank you for reading!

The Diagnosis

High functioning autism is a form of autism that doesn’t effect a persons ability to be independent or learn, but it severely impacts their ability to socialize and communicate. They struggle with making eye contact and often tend to miss social cues. They have a hard time making friends, tend to focus intently on one thing, have repetitive behaviors, sensory problems, and struggle with change.

After my son was diagnosed and I talked with the therapist about the connection between his behaviors and the diagnosis, I realized that the symptoms had been showing a lot longer than I had noticed. At 4 years old my son doesn’t have any friends that he wants to play with outside of daycare and in the daycare he doesn’t know how to interact with them, his knowledge of bugs is astounding and he gets so excited when he talks about them, and will have a meltdown if we stray from our evening routine. He also has trouble with being in public places and wearing shoes and socks. These small behaviors that I thought were just him being him, started when he was 2.

However, because high functioning autism only effects the person socially, you typically can’t tell the difference until the child is preschool age, and some people aren’t diagnosed until they are much older.

Most of the challenges we are facing with my son tend to focus around sensory processing. If there are too many kids in his classroom or we take him into a crowded place he gets overwhelmed. His sisters crying can send him into a meltdown and keeping shoes and socks on his feet is close to impossible. Sometimes, even the taste or smell of certain foods can send him spiraling.

Talking with his teacher, we started noticing that most of his behaviors typically started around 9 in the morning, when drop off was the highest. Because I work an early shift, my kids are usually dropped off at 7:15, and he has really good mornings until that point. In public places, like a grocery store or a restaurant, he very quickly becomes irritated or starts running around. These are typical signs of being over stimulated. He would cover his ears, or progressively make loud noises that I now know are part of how he copes. We have introduced headphones for public places and I am having a meeting with his teacher and daycare director about letting him wear them during the day.

Shoes and socks on the other hand is a bit more of a challenge. He HAS to wear close toed shoes at daycare because of some of the activities and field trips they do, but it’s hard for him. As soon as he gets in the car after daycare he is kicking them off, but he wants to go in places that require shoes to be worn. This is an issue that does not have an easy fix, but hopefully his therapist can give us some tricks to make him more comfortable wearing shoes.

Meal time is also a big struggle in our house. He either refuses to eat completely or will only eat certain food on his plate. I do give him daily vitamins to make up for what he doesn’t eat in meals, but surviving off of chicken nuggets and pizza doesn’t fly in my house. We are currently offering new and brightly colored foods, as well as letting him help pick the weekly meals. I also let him help me prepare our food and it has helped as far as vegetables, but meat is still a struggle.

Suggestions are always welcome on this page and I will try to incorporate some of them into our lives and let you know if they worked for us or not, but remember that just because some of them didn’t work for us doesn’t mean they don’t work for others. Remember to embrace your chaos and thank you for reading!

From the Beginning

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.