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I'm at my wit's end... I need some advice!!!
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<blockquote data-quote="Marguerite" data-source="post: 393972" data-attributes="member: 1991"><p>Thanks for the background references. I hadn't heard of this specific syndrome but I have heard of primordial dwarfism and I have also had my own experience (of course) with autism and learning difficulties. So some of my own experience, reinforced by what I have learned from other parents here, may help you.</p><p></p><p>First - I think you are still thinking of her in terms of her being your eldest child 9and therefore should be more responsible, more capable of compliance etc) when I suspect she may have a lot more going on (or not going on) in her head than you realise. One important lesson we learned, is to not assume you understand why the child is so prickly or reactive, or fails to comply. Too often we assume this is something that can be disciplined out of them, ten when discipline only produces a sullen attitude response, we get frustrated with them. But think about it this way - put yourself in the child's shoes. You have big people around you punishing you for having brown hair. Every so often they notice your hair colour and you get another punishment. Sometimes you can slide by for a while, then you get a spate of punishment again. Your response, especially after this has happened for a while, would be a tendency to really resent the people punishing you. Initially you might argue that it's not fair, but eventually you will be saying, "Whatever..." or even throwing things.</p><p></p><p>A lot of what you describe in her behaviour sounds similar to Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) in some form. Bearing in mind, Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) often manifests differently in girls. I note that this can also happen in this syndrome, so it is something to consider. having some Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) traits would be understandable. But from my own experience, you MUST handle these issues differently to how you would in a 'normal' child. This isn't fair, but it IS what works. or at least, works better. There is no cure, just management.</p><p></p><p>Now to your issues more specifically - I think there is a lot of anxiety happening in there. Schoolwork/homework - the "attitude" you notice could well be a panic reaction and her feeling inside, "I can't do it." when the mere thought of the work sends the inner anxiety levels so high, that the only fast way to reduce it is avoidance. Anxiety actually teaches this avoidance, because the anxious feelings and the sense of panic is such a negative feeling, and when the child is asked to do the work and the panic hits, it actually trains them to find ways to avoid the work, because they instantly feel a little better. Never completely better, because that work is always hanging over their heads, like Damocles sword. </p><p>I posted on an other thread a couple of days ago, on how to reduce this homework panic reaction and the resultant procrastination (with the inevitable "OMG! It's due today!" result). But basically, you need to encourage her to spend five minutes or ten minutes only, doing some of it. It has to be a concentrated effort for that five minutes, then you immediately reward her with something totally different - a walk together (perhaps to buy ice cream) or a game. I would avoid food rewards primarily, but you know what your child needs and in tis case a small chocolate bar might be a useful reward for five minutes' genuine effort. We have bags of mini chocolate bars, difficult child 3 earns one if he puts in solid effort for half an hour. But tat's my difficult child 3 and where we are at. you're just starting out.</p><p></p><p>Other issues - they relate to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) which is also a facet of Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD). Again, anxiety is often a factor, in that once anxiety can be reduced, the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) behaviours often reduce. But there are other factors to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). You need to assume that she cannot fully control her actions, and instead use prevention techniques - lock up stuff she is not permitted to have.</p><p></p><p>We colour-coded things for our kids as part of the training of "This is hers, this is mine". easy child's colour was red (her cup, her toothbrush, her towel, her washcloth, her dot labels in her clothes, any items we bought). difficult child 1 was blue. easy child 2/difficult child 2 was yellow, difficult child 3 was green (I'd run out of primary colours!). Even now, difficult child 3 says his favourite colour is green, but it became his favourite colour because it was HIS colour! Having this rule for everything, including only using your own colour cup, has also kept these kids from catching one another's colds. I originally brought it in to avoid arguments, but the lack of disease transmission was a surprising fringe benefit.</p><p>We bought coloured tape and we labelled things. You can label with the kid's name, plus you can colour-code. And colour is picked up fast. There can be no excuse (other than colour-blindness!) if you're caught using the wrong colour-coded item. Pencils, notebooks - colour them. Wrap tape around each pencil, stick tape across the front of the book, or down the spine. Write names on everything prominently.</p><p></p><p>Next - if this doesn't solve it (and I'm betting it might help, but not solve it) you need to dig into her head a bit more to think about why she might do this. Lack of impulse control sounds like a strong possibility, in which case - revert back to prevention (which means you have to block her access to other people's stuff). Assume she cannot help herself (although she IS helping herself, and pretty freely too). Punishing someone for what they cannot help, is futile, wastes your time and effort and only teaches the offender that they deserve punishment purely for being who they are. It does not stop the problem behaviour because you cannot make that connection if you cannot help what you do.</p><p></p><p>That doesn't mean you give up and let her draw/carve all over everything. It will get better, but her brain is just not ready yet, in this small area. Just because she can do the same level Maths as her classmates, doesn't mean she can stop herself from grabbing a felt pen and writing oon the wall. You could ask her, "Yo do know it is the wrong thing to do?" and she will hang her head and say yes (because she has learned that is the response you require to demonstrate contrition - it reduces the yelling) but it doesn't mean she really does get it, or can stop herself. So for now - do your best to block it, but otherwise treat tis as you would toilet training. Accidents get cleaned up. Not a punishment, but a natural consequence. If/when any of my kids had an accident, they had to clean up. Of course I would help, but the child had a responsibility to come tell me (if I didn't find out for myself - and sometimes I had a child in soiled pants who hadn't realised) and then there was a routine - strip the bed (if it was a wet bed) and take the sheets to the laundry. Load the washing machine (that's where I come in - it might not be convenient to wash the sheets right then). Wash the child (we used a telephone shower to hose the child down - again, Mummy was needed to get the temperature right). Put on clean clothes.</p><p></p><p>difficult child 3 didn't draw on the walls, but he would chew the furniture. We had a tiger-striped lounge suite where he scraped off the varnish and stain with his teeth. I also had problems with difficult child 1 swatting mosquitoes on the ceiling and walls of his bedroom and not cleaning off the bloodied corpses. I had to work hard to make him clean it up - he said he wanted the bodies to be a deterrent; I said mosquitoes don't think that way because they haven;t got enough of a brain to reason. That all the bloodied corpses would do is attract more mosquitoes.</p><p>I had problems with several of my kids wiping their hands ont he wall of the toilet, when they were not as careful with the toilet paper as they should have been. Instead of wiping their soiled fingers on the toilet paper (and then washing their hands VERY thoroughly!) I would find poo streaks on the walls of our toilet. Often embarrassingly, it was a friend or visitor using our loo who told me about it. I would then get a scrubbing brush and one of the three likely offenders and make them clean it off. In vain did the child protest, "It wasn't me, it was X!". I was fair and made them clean in turns, so they knew that X would eventually have to clean the walls. As we cleaned, I kept saying, "If you get poo on your fingers, use more toilet paper to clean them off. It comes off better on the paper anyway, than on the walls. Then go wash, with soap."</p><p></p><p>Eventually the poo streaks stopped happening. Mozzie corpses on the toilet walls - yep, difficult child 1. He had to go scrub. Again - not punishment, but natural consequences. Someone has to clean it off, and I sure as heck didn't do it. If I have to take the time to clean the walls, then it takes away my time and tires me out, so I am too tired and too short of time to make biscuits or cake. I need the kids to help me, so I can do nice things for them.</p><p></p><p>My kids also tried the "I'm too tired to do it now..." routine. Then everything would stop. I would be too tired to fix dinner. For anybody. Or I would be unable to proceed until the cup was picked up. Or just leave it there to get stepped on and broken - then "you want a drink? Where is your cup?" My kids were responsible for returning their cup to the sink draining board and rinsing it clean. We re-use the same cup, we don't get a fresh one out. We finish our drink, we don't leave it sitting there to get manky. We don't pour it away if we decide we don't want all we got for ourselves. "Take all you want, but use all you take," is a strict rule for us. Eating/drinking is only permitted in the eating/drinking places, and when the kids have broken that rule, the ants come and they have to deal with the plague (usually in their bedroom, usually discovered as they're going to bed). I remember easy child had a large stash of jellybeans once, and the ants got in and nested in the jellybean jar she had hidden in her bed. She was NOT a happy camper!</p><p></p><p>Natural consequences teach a great deal, and YOU are not the ogre. Life is. Or their own actions.</p><p></p><p>Read "The Explosive Child" by Ross Greene. We use tis book a lot. There are also other good books which can help you. But that one is a good start, because it helps you step back from what is working, and evaluate and refine what is. It also gives you a few added tools. </p><p></p><p>One last point - we found that problems were worse, until difficult child 3 was better able to communicate. His frustration at communication issues led to much worse behaviour, much worse anxiety and more tantrums. Punishment for anything he couldn't help also pushed his anxiety levels up which also made Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) issues worse. Punishment for those Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) issues then meant we were in a negative feedback loop. But once you begin to turn around that negative feedback loop, you should see fast improvement. To the point where she is in control of her actions, then no further. Once she cottons on that your main task is to support her and help her overcome difficulties, she will stop being so obstructive and begin to ask for more help without trying to take it for herself.</p><p></p><p>Good speech therapy can make a big difference. Bad speech therapy can still help, but falls short. This is a communication issue, not just a speech issue. Good speech therapy should deal with all aspects of communication. Maybe her communication techniques need some re-thinking and she needs to be permitted to write down what she is trying to say, as well as making the effort to speak. </p><p></p><p>Marg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marguerite, post: 393972, member: 1991"] Thanks for the background references. I hadn't heard of this specific syndrome but I have heard of primordial dwarfism and I have also had my own experience (of course) with autism and learning difficulties. So some of my own experience, reinforced by what I have learned from other parents here, may help you. First - I think you are still thinking of her in terms of her being your eldest child 9and therefore should be more responsible, more capable of compliance etc) when I suspect she may have a lot more going on (or not going on) in her head than you realise. One important lesson we learned, is to not assume you understand why the child is so prickly or reactive, or fails to comply. Too often we assume this is something that can be disciplined out of them, ten when discipline only produces a sullen attitude response, we get frustrated with them. But think about it this way - put yourself in the child's shoes. You have big people around you punishing you for having brown hair. Every so often they notice your hair colour and you get another punishment. Sometimes you can slide by for a while, then you get a spate of punishment again. Your response, especially after this has happened for a while, would be a tendency to really resent the people punishing you. Initially you might argue that it's not fair, but eventually you will be saying, "Whatever..." or even throwing things. A lot of what you describe in her behaviour sounds similar to Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) in some form. Bearing in mind, Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) often manifests differently in girls. I note that this can also happen in this syndrome, so it is something to consider. having some Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) traits would be understandable. But from my own experience, you MUST handle these issues differently to how you would in a 'normal' child. This isn't fair, but it IS what works. or at least, works better. There is no cure, just management. Now to your issues more specifically - I think there is a lot of anxiety happening in there. Schoolwork/homework - the "attitude" you notice could well be a panic reaction and her feeling inside, "I can't do it." when the mere thought of the work sends the inner anxiety levels so high, that the only fast way to reduce it is avoidance. Anxiety actually teaches this avoidance, because the anxious feelings and the sense of panic is such a negative feeling, and when the child is asked to do the work and the panic hits, it actually trains them to find ways to avoid the work, because they instantly feel a little better. Never completely better, because that work is always hanging over their heads, like Damocles sword. I posted on an other thread a couple of days ago, on how to reduce this homework panic reaction and the resultant procrastination (with the inevitable "OMG! It's due today!" result). But basically, you need to encourage her to spend five minutes or ten minutes only, doing some of it. It has to be a concentrated effort for that five minutes, then you immediately reward her with something totally different - a walk together (perhaps to buy ice cream) or a game. I would avoid food rewards primarily, but you know what your child needs and in tis case a small chocolate bar might be a useful reward for five minutes' genuine effort. We have bags of mini chocolate bars, difficult child 3 earns one if he puts in solid effort for half an hour. But tat's my difficult child 3 and where we are at. you're just starting out. Other issues - they relate to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) which is also a facet of Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD). Again, anxiety is often a factor, in that once anxiety can be reduced, the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) behaviours often reduce. But there are other factors to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). You need to assume that she cannot fully control her actions, and instead use prevention techniques - lock up stuff she is not permitted to have. We colour-coded things for our kids as part of the training of "This is hers, this is mine". easy child's colour was red (her cup, her toothbrush, her towel, her washcloth, her dot labels in her clothes, any items we bought). difficult child 1 was blue. easy child 2/difficult child 2 was yellow, difficult child 3 was green (I'd run out of primary colours!). Even now, difficult child 3 says his favourite colour is green, but it became his favourite colour because it was HIS colour! Having this rule for everything, including only using your own colour cup, has also kept these kids from catching one another's colds. I originally brought it in to avoid arguments, but the lack of disease transmission was a surprising fringe benefit. We bought coloured tape and we labelled things. You can label with the kid's name, plus you can colour-code. And colour is picked up fast. There can be no excuse (other than colour-blindness!) if you're caught using the wrong colour-coded item. Pencils, notebooks - colour them. Wrap tape around each pencil, stick tape across the front of the book, or down the spine. Write names on everything prominently. Next - if this doesn't solve it (and I'm betting it might help, but not solve it) you need to dig into her head a bit more to think about why she might do this. Lack of impulse control sounds like a strong possibility, in which case - revert back to prevention (which means you have to block her access to other people's stuff). Assume she cannot help herself (although she IS helping herself, and pretty freely too). Punishing someone for what they cannot help, is futile, wastes your time and effort and only teaches the offender that they deserve punishment purely for being who they are. It does not stop the problem behaviour because you cannot make that connection if you cannot help what you do. That doesn't mean you give up and let her draw/carve all over everything. It will get better, but her brain is just not ready yet, in this small area. Just because she can do the same level Maths as her classmates, doesn't mean she can stop herself from grabbing a felt pen and writing oon the wall. You could ask her, "Yo do know it is the wrong thing to do?" and she will hang her head and say yes (because she has learned that is the response you require to demonstrate contrition - it reduces the yelling) but it doesn't mean she really does get it, or can stop herself. So for now - do your best to block it, but otherwise treat tis as you would toilet training. Accidents get cleaned up. Not a punishment, but a natural consequence. If/when any of my kids had an accident, they had to clean up. Of course I would help, but the child had a responsibility to come tell me (if I didn't find out for myself - and sometimes I had a child in soiled pants who hadn't realised) and then there was a routine - strip the bed (if it was a wet bed) and take the sheets to the laundry. Load the washing machine (that's where I come in - it might not be convenient to wash the sheets right then). Wash the child (we used a telephone shower to hose the child down - again, Mummy was needed to get the temperature right). Put on clean clothes. difficult child 3 didn't draw on the walls, but he would chew the furniture. We had a tiger-striped lounge suite where he scraped off the varnish and stain with his teeth. I also had problems with difficult child 1 swatting mosquitoes on the ceiling and walls of his bedroom and not cleaning off the bloodied corpses. I had to work hard to make him clean it up - he said he wanted the bodies to be a deterrent; I said mosquitoes don't think that way because they haven;t got enough of a brain to reason. That all the bloodied corpses would do is attract more mosquitoes. I had problems with several of my kids wiping their hands ont he wall of the toilet, when they were not as careful with the toilet paper as they should have been. Instead of wiping their soiled fingers on the toilet paper (and then washing their hands VERY thoroughly!) I would find poo streaks on the walls of our toilet. Often embarrassingly, it was a friend or visitor using our loo who told me about it. I would then get a scrubbing brush and one of the three likely offenders and make them clean it off. In vain did the child protest, "It wasn't me, it was X!". I was fair and made them clean in turns, so they knew that X would eventually have to clean the walls. As we cleaned, I kept saying, "If you get poo on your fingers, use more toilet paper to clean them off. It comes off better on the paper anyway, than on the walls. Then go wash, with soap." Eventually the poo streaks stopped happening. Mozzie corpses on the toilet walls - yep, difficult child 1. He had to go scrub. Again - not punishment, but natural consequences. Someone has to clean it off, and I sure as heck didn't do it. If I have to take the time to clean the walls, then it takes away my time and tires me out, so I am too tired and too short of time to make biscuits or cake. I need the kids to help me, so I can do nice things for them. My kids also tried the "I'm too tired to do it now..." routine. Then everything would stop. I would be too tired to fix dinner. For anybody. Or I would be unable to proceed until the cup was picked up. Or just leave it there to get stepped on and broken - then "you want a drink? Where is your cup?" My kids were responsible for returning their cup to the sink draining board and rinsing it clean. We re-use the same cup, we don't get a fresh one out. We finish our drink, we don't leave it sitting there to get manky. We don't pour it away if we decide we don't want all we got for ourselves. "Take all you want, but use all you take," is a strict rule for us. Eating/drinking is only permitted in the eating/drinking places, and when the kids have broken that rule, the ants come and they have to deal with the plague (usually in their bedroom, usually discovered as they're going to bed). I remember easy child had a large stash of jellybeans once, and the ants got in and nested in the jellybean jar she had hidden in her bed. She was NOT a happy camper! Natural consequences teach a great deal, and YOU are not the ogre. Life is. Or their own actions. Read "The Explosive Child" by Ross Greene. We use tis book a lot. There are also other good books which can help you. But that one is a good start, because it helps you step back from what is working, and evaluate and refine what is. It also gives you a few added tools. One last point - we found that problems were worse, until difficult child 3 was better able to communicate. His frustration at communication issues led to much worse behaviour, much worse anxiety and more tantrums. Punishment for anything he couldn't help also pushed his anxiety levels up which also made Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) issues worse. Punishment for those Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) issues then meant we were in a negative feedback loop. But once you begin to turn around that negative feedback loop, you should see fast improvement. To the point where she is in control of her actions, then no further. Once she cottons on that your main task is to support her and help her overcome difficulties, she will stop being so obstructive and begin to ask for more help without trying to take it for herself. Good speech therapy can make a big difference. Bad speech therapy can still help, but falls short. This is a communication issue, not just a speech issue. Good speech therapy should deal with all aspects of communication. Maybe her communication techniques need some re-thinking and she needs to be permitted to write down what she is trying to say, as well as making the effort to speak. Marg [/QUOTE]
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