So, we went this weekend to go visit my family for a change, as part of a trip to hit Surfers Healing in Belmar, New Jersey. We don’t see my family often – there’s a great bit of distance between us, physically – and so this was the first time in a while that they’ve seen R and the Monster.
Because it was lovely weather, we decided to get out a sprinkler and let the kids go splashing in it. Continue reading
With only two more weeks of camp, and then a week off before school, the order of the school year can’t come soon enough.
The Monster, like many children, does better when there’s an established rhythm to his week. He does better with the clearer order of the school year than he does with camp, and it’s showing as we’re trying to at least make a good-faith effort as school prep stuff. Continue reading
Since today’s a national holiday, all of us are at home today.
My office is closed, so I didn’t have to get up early this morning. The Monster’s camp is likewise closed, so there was no real reason to get him going at a “decent” hour. Continue reading
The Monster this morning put up a massive fight about attire.
Now, personally, I don’t generally care what he wears as long as it’s seasonally appropriate and clean. He wants to go to camp in the same shirt for two days – if it’s not dirty, why not. Continue reading
Chalk this up as one of those things that you only really notice as a signpost of how far someone’s come.
The Monster’s been a picky eater for a while now – when he was a baby, he’d eat just about anything that was put in front of him. Today, his diet’s far more limited, and it’s usually a guessing game as to what he’ll eat (though, at least, we know he’ll almost universally accept chicken fingers when we go out to eat…) Continue reading
I grew up going to sporting events.
I was very, very fortunate as a child – between my father’s season tickets to the New Jersey Nets and New York Jets (and what fabulous seats those were), and the ocasional tickets that we were given by neighbors to go see the Yankees, we kids frequently got to go see sporting events. I always assumed, as I was growing up, that I’d be doing the same someday with my kids. Continue reading
While 1-2-3 Magic’s worked wonders at times for the Monster’s behavior, there are times – especially as he’s becoming a more willful five year old – that the system isn’t doing much to curb the excesses of his behavior.
We’re finding that he’s getting sent to his room more often these days for not listening when we’re asking him not to do things as much as he’s getting sent for actual misbehaving. The shrieking has gotten out of hand, even with a suggestion from his OT to try to substitute something else to keep his mouth occupied like a party noisemaker, and yesterday he went so far as to actually hit the wife. Continue reading
So, we switched up things around the house to try to deal with the meltdowns a bit.
For starters, on the theory that it could be the pajamas, we swapped into a different (read: larger) set of PJs to see if he keeps those on. (That, and made the decision that if he wants to sleep on the futon in his room instead of his bed, he’s welcome to sleep on it…) Continue reading
Over the weekend, we had to deal with the Monster’s meltdowns.
As any parent of a child with Autism knows, you can’t predict when a meltdown is going to come, or even necessarily what’s going to bring on the state, so you can’t even really prepare for it in advance, and stopping it is… well.
In our case, we still aren’t quite sure what brought on the Monster’s major meltdown last night, save that it happened.
The meltdown started shortly after we tried to get him to have dinner. As is often the case, he’s more communicative about what he doesn’t want – and displaying all the ways he can say no – rather than answering an affirmative to a choice that’s presented to him. In the fullness of time, it became apparent that the Monster had made a choice – he either wanted Pepperidge Farms Goldfish or apple sauce, neither of which were acceptable choices to us. When we informed him that this wasn’t an acceptable choice, he started to shriek and yell, and got sent to time-out after getting to his three-count.
When I went up to retrieve him… he was naked.
This is a new behavior, his stripping down. Because, though, it had been a long day, this was the point where we informed him that he could a) have dinner or b) go to bed. When he continued to shriek, we decided that translated to choice B, dressed him for bed, and then walked away. He was in his room, where he really has few enough things he can hurt himself with.
This was, though, the tone of the night. I checked up on him after a while, to find that he was, of course, again naked in his room and had now dumped all of the bagged, too-small clothing all over his floor. The wife re-dressed him and put him back into his pajamas while I tended to other things (I have the more explosive temper), and we gave it more time for him to cool down.
So, parents of other children with Autism can probably relate when we just basically waited for it to burn out. This meant, of course, that we came upstairs around 10:30 to find that he’d fallen asleep on the futon in his room… naked. (I don’t know what’s with the naked time, for the record. As I’m typing this, he’s quite content to be fully dressed and playing with his toys.) I used my long-neglected babysitter skills to at least get him back into his pull-up and put a blanket over him so he wouldn’t be cold (or pee on the futon overnight) without waking him up, and we left him be.
Today he’s fine… but who knows when the next meltdown will happen…
The post I was going to write tonight’s just going to have to wait for some time tomorrow, I fear.
1-2-3 Magic is great sometimes for discipline, but I think there’s points where applying it with the Monster hits a brick wall – mostly where it comes to immediate infractions and sending him straight to time-out. Continue reading