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<blockquote data-quote="Marguerite" data-source="post: 103478" data-attributes="member: 1991"><p>Trsturself, you said, "In this case since she said she did the act on purpose, she was grounded from TV for the week."</p><p></p><p>When I said, "Don't punish, you really don't need to in a lot of cases anyway," I really did mean that this is very important. If she has accepted the punishment you have now given her, then keep going as you are. But do you realise - you have just punished her for being honest with you?</p><p>By admitting it to you, she did a really brave thing. An honest thing. And it was also a free admission that she did the wrong thing and knew it. THIS DOES NOT NEED TO BE PUNISHED. Instead, reward with praise for the honesty, but sit with her and talk it through - how SHOULD she have behaved? What does SHE think she needs to do?</p><p>This will put the ownership back onto her, not only of the problem she herself caused, but also of the solution.</p><p></p><p>I know this is a radical idea, but this really does work. You have to get back to the aim of the punishment - it is to help them learn the right way to behave, and to help them learn self-control. When the lack of self-control is at least partly NOT under control, then punishment not only doesn't work, it eventually teaches the child "I can't be good no matter how hard I try, so I might as well accept that my life is going to be one long punishment. And why try? I might as well enjoy myself if I'm going to end up being punished no matter what I do."</p><p></p><p>Think - why did she confess? Your husband did a wonderful thing, when he said to her, "Come talk to me when you are ready." That is EXACTLY what she needed and it worked. She came and told you because she was feeling so bad inside herself, knowing she had done the wrong thing. And as you said yourself, this was a 'wrong thing' which she had been trained to do! Can we really punish our children for doing what they have been taught to do? Instead, we need to find more effective ways to teach the RIGHT way.</p><p></p><p>You said yourself, she is bright. She will learn fast, where she is capable of understanding. Where she is not capable of understanding or performing, no amount of punishment can change that. But if you have her cooperation (and it sounds like you do), then SUPPORT and respect shown to her will teach her to MIRROR this and give support and respect back, in turn.</p><p></p><p>As I said before, this seems counter-intuitive. But this is what we have done, and it works, brilliantly. </p><p></p><p>Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) kids (and your daughter seems very similar to this so I admit I am working on this premise) are VERY law-abiding. But the laws they abide by are the laws they assess for themselves, winnowed from their observations of people around them. If you show them respect they learn that it is best. If they instead are exposed to dog eat dog, that is how they will behave. When they experience 'because I said so," they interpret this as someone else exerting control over them purely for control's sake, and resent it. But they then will adopt this behaviour for themselves and it is often interpreted as insolence, rudeness - and what do we do? We punish them. All this does, in that scenario, is reinforce the problem.</p><p></p><p>If, instead, you teach the child to be their own moral barometer, you can take a step back from the bossy parent role that so many of us assume is the right way to raise a child. It seems scary and I'm not advocating walking away from parental responsibilities and ignoring what your children do - but what you then do, instead of chivvying your children to do this or that, is you stand back with your hands outstretched at the ready, to support them if they stumble. You help them get their balance back and let them try again, with you as the safety net.</p><p></p><p>We didn't start doing this until difficult child 3 was 11 (nearly 12). Two years ago. We saw improvements within a week, but it has taken two years to get us to where we are now. Still problems (especially as viewed from the outside) because we have recognised that he doesn't distinguish between adults and children, parents and child (he can't, I don't think - part of the inappropriate social stuff in his autism) and so we don't punish what seems to be rudeness, although we do correct. Instead of guiding him with punishment/reward, we view his communications/interactions as rehearsal, and just as you handle a rehearsal of a music piece (make a mistake? Then stop, practice that little bit, then try again) that is how we view his interactions with others. He said something tactless? We stop him, point out gently that what he said was inappropriate and try to prompt the correct response, then have him say it again.</p><p>Any malice is tromped on and corrected - reminding him that he doesn't like to be receiving malice is generally enough (these days) but may be too advanced a concept for a five year old.</p><p>Example - in difficult child 3's drama class (for Special Education kids) is a boy who is VERY difficult. Yesterday he was being inappropriate and touching everybody else, apparently trying to provoke a reaction. He is unhappy in the class, I think he knows the other kids don't like him. And they don't like him because he is socially inappropriate - vicious circle. The teacher sent him out, much to the relief of difficult child 3. But another boy, also autistic, was singing a made-up song about how glad he was that the difficult boy had gone.</p><p>As we were leaving I talked to difficult child 3 about it. "Poor boy," I said. "How mush he feel, knowing you all dislike him and want him gone? No wonder he didn't want to ask if he could go back into class! How have you felt, when other kids were like this? How would you feel if you heard someone singing a song about how they were glad you had been thrown out of the class?"</p><p>It's difficult to get this across when they are so thoroughly egocentric, difficult child 3 still isn't good with theory of mind, he will be looking at the computer screen which is facing away from me, and say, "Doesn't this picture look great?" It has been very hard to teach difficult child 3 that this boy is naughty because he is unhappy and he doesn't know how to handle it in a more acceptable way. His life is unhappy because of his particular disability. Yesterday he was being taunted, it even seemed to him that other parents were taunting him too. So he began to be even more disobedient, but in subtle ways that most people didn't notice. I suspect his mother had a hard time with him when they went home, he seemed to have the attitude of, "I give up!"</p><p></p><p>Sorry to go on for so long, but I do feel this is a really critical issue, where so many of us go wrong.</p><p></p><p>And before I get jumped on, there are times when punishment CAN be appropriate. It's just that too often it's our knee-jerk reaction and it's far less necessary than we think.</p><p></p><p>Older kids who have different issues with behaviours they can clearly control, kids who deliberately invent complex lies and fantasies purely to get other people into trouble, kids who have learned to be manipulative, kids who have got involved in drugs, theft, vandalism - this won't work. They have learned to manipulate on principle and they will manipulate this as well.</p><p>But if you can begin early enough, you can change a great deal, and without wearing yourself out in the process.</p><p></p><p>Avoid blame. Avoid fault. Instead, focus on helping the child do better next time. Sometimes no fault is involved, sometimes bad things happen which maybe with hindsight we could have avoided, but it's not a matter of blame and punishment, it's a matter for talking out, "how can I do better?"</p><p></p><p>You also said, "It's as though she thinks we can see her thoughts and when we act opposite them it puts her into an emotional frenzy."</p><p>I think you've hit the nail on the head. (As I said before, I think you and your husband are doing a lot of things just right).</p><p>This again comes back to theory of mind. And autism. To a certain extent you get this also in very young children.</p><p>To test theory of mind, I give you an example:</p><p>The child being tested is in a room with the tester and her mother. It is a standard room - chair with cushion, toybox, couch, table. While mother is in the room, the therapist takes a doll from the toybox and hides the doll behind the couch. Mother then leaves the room.</p><p>With mother gone, the therapist takes the doll from behind the couch and hides the doll under the cushion on the chair. The doll is completely hidden. The child saw it all.</p><p>Then the therapist asks, "Where is the doll?"</p><p>The child answers, "Under the cushion on the chair."</p><p>The therapist asks, "Where does your mother think the doll is?"</p><p>A child with good theory of mind will say, "She still thinks it's under the couch, where she saw us hide it."</p><p>A child with poor theory of mind will assume that her mother sees and knows exactly what she does, and will answer, "My mother thinks the doll is under the cushion on the chair."</p><p></p><p>If your child has poor theory of mind (as I said, common in very young children anyway) then they will get frustrated when you ask what seem to be dumb questions. Or when you ask them to do something that they're not ready to do. And if you get 'heavy' with them, it WILL provoke a tantrum, because to their mind - why are you being so obstructive? And as I said before, these kids will give back what they observe, and so they will become obstructive in return, modelling what they perceive your behaviour to be.</p><p></p><p>You need to find a way of asking the question, that will not have her feeling 'got at'. It's like the coats again. I can't help you there, all I can suggest is maybe ask her to help you choose what meals to prepare FOR LATER. If you don't react to her tantrum but instead simply wait and reassure her calmly that you're NOT about to make her eat, you just want to know how she is feeling, she might settle down. I used to say calmly, "Why are you shouting at me? I'm not shouting at you, am I?" Her behaviour is coming from anxiety - fear that you are about to exert control over her and her body in a way she can't handle. She needs to know this will not happen, and it takes a lot of reasoning to overcome blind panic. difficult child 3 still panics and I still have to use MY calm voice to help him regain control of himself. Getting her to use words is really good - it's what we do also. It DOES take time. And you're right, her problems with foods are probably part of the problem, a big part of Sensory Integration Disorder (SID) for a lot of kids involves foods - tastes and textures. </p><p>Giving her one chance to say it more nicely - if it's working for you then that's great. But with some kids, knowing they only have one chance can make them more flustered and more frustrated (with themselves as much as with you for not reading their minds!)</p><p></p><p>About getting your husband on the same page - he already sounds like he's making great progress. But I do understand, my husband (Marg's Man) is dealing with the same issues himself. Brought up to be a bit of a martinet. He's been lurking here since I first joined and finding he understands the problems better now. Not tat I was keeping my feelings and thoughts from him, but sometimes there just aren't enough hours in the day to remember the tiny, fiddly details. This way we have taken what was already very good communication and cooperation, and taken it to great heights. He's now a member here also.</p><p></p><p>And last night - he had been asked to address a forum of other fathers of autistic children, talking about how they are coping, answering questions about what to expect as they get older. He was flattered to be asked and somewhat terrified, I think. But he did great. We talked things through beforehand, which was useful for me, too, to try to crystallise all these years of radical parenting!</p><p></p><p>Marg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marguerite, post: 103478, member: 1991"] Trsturself, you said, "In this case since she said she did the act on purpose, she was grounded from TV for the week." When I said, "Don't punish, you really don't need to in a lot of cases anyway," I really did mean that this is very important. If she has accepted the punishment you have now given her, then keep going as you are. But do you realise - you have just punished her for being honest with you? By admitting it to you, she did a really brave thing. An honest thing. And it was also a free admission that she did the wrong thing and knew it. THIS DOES NOT NEED TO BE PUNISHED. Instead, reward with praise for the honesty, but sit with her and talk it through - how SHOULD she have behaved? What does SHE think she needs to do? This will put the ownership back onto her, not only of the problem she herself caused, but also of the solution. I know this is a radical idea, but this really does work. You have to get back to the aim of the punishment - it is to help them learn the right way to behave, and to help them learn self-control. When the lack of self-control is at least partly NOT under control, then punishment not only doesn't work, it eventually teaches the child "I can't be good no matter how hard I try, so I might as well accept that my life is going to be one long punishment. And why try? I might as well enjoy myself if I'm going to end up being punished no matter what I do." Think - why did she confess? Your husband did a wonderful thing, when he said to her, "Come talk to me when you are ready." That is EXACTLY what she needed and it worked. She came and told you because she was feeling so bad inside herself, knowing she had done the wrong thing. And as you said yourself, this was a 'wrong thing' which she had been trained to do! Can we really punish our children for doing what they have been taught to do? Instead, we need to find more effective ways to teach the RIGHT way. You said yourself, she is bright. She will learn fast, where she is capable of understanding. Where she is not capable of understanding or performing, no amount of punishment can change that. But if you have her cooperation (and it sounds like you do), then SUPPORT and respect shown to her will teach her to MIRROR this and give support and respect back, in turn. As I said before, this seems counter-intuitive. But this is what we have done, and it works, brilliantly. Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) kids (and your daughter seems very similar to this so I admit I am working on this premise) are VERY law-abiding. But the laws they abide by are the laws they assess for themselves, winnowed from their observations of people around them. If you show them respect they learn that it is best. If they instead are exposed to dog eat dog, that is how they will behave. When they experience 'because I said so," they interpret this as someone else exerting control over them purely for control's sake, and resent it. But they then will adopt this behaviour for themselves and it is often interpreted as insolence, rudeness - and what do we do? We punish them. All this does, in that scenario, is reinforce the problem. If, instead, you teach the child to be their own moral barometer, you can take a step back from the bossy parent role that so many of us assume is the right way to raise a child. It seems scary and I'm not advocating walking away from parental responsibilities and ignoring what your children do - but what you then do, instead of chivvying your children to do this or that, is you stand back with your hands outstretched at the ready, to support them if they stumble. You help them get their balance back and let them try again, with you as the safety net. We didn't start doing this until difficult child 3 was 11 (nearly 12). Two years ago. We saw improvements within a week, but it has taken two years to get us to where we are now. Still problems (especially as viewed from the outside) because we have recognised that he doesn't distinguish between adults and children, parents and child (he can't, I don't think - part of the inappropriate social stuff in his autism) and so we don't punish what seems to be rudeness, although we do correct. Instead of guiding him with punishment/reward, we view his communications/interactions as rehearsal, and just as you handle a rehearsal of a music piece (make a mistake? Then stop, practice that little bit, then try again) that is how we view his interactions with others. He said something tactless? We stop him, point out gently that what he said was inappropriate and try to prompt the correct response, then have him say it again. Any malice is tromped on and corrected - reminding him that he doesn't like to be receiving malice is generally enough (these days) but may be too advanced a concept for a five year old. Example - in difficult child 3's drama class (for Special Education kids) is a boy who is VERY difficult. Yesterday he was being inappropriate and touching everybody else, apparently trying to provoke a reaction. He is unhappy in the class, I think he knows the other kids don't like him. And they don't like him because he is socially inappropriate - vicious circle. The teacher sent him out, much to the relief of difficult child 3. But another boy, also autistic, was singing a made-up song about how glad he was that the difficult boy had gone. As we were leaving I talked to difficult child 3 about it. "Poor boy," I said. "How mush he feel, knowing you all dislike him and want him gone? No wonder he didn't want to ask if he could go back into class! How have you felt, when other kids were like this? How would you feel if you heard someone singing a song about how they were glad you had been thrown out of the class?" It's difficult to get this across when they are so thoroughly egocentric, difficult child 3 still isn't good with theory of mind, he will be looking at the computer screen which is facing away from me, and say, "Doesn't this picture look great?" It has been very hard to teach difficult child 3 that this boy is naughty because he is unhappy and he doesn't know how to handle it in a more acceptable way. His life is unhappy because of his particular disability. Yesterday he was being taunted, it even seemed to him that other parents were taunting him too. So he began to be even more disobedient, but in subtle ways that most people didn't notice. I suspect his mother had a hard time with him when they went home, he seemed to have the attitude of, "I give up!" Sorry to go on for so long, but I do feel this is a really critical issue, where so many of us go wrong. And before I get jumped on, there are times when punishment CAN be appropriate. It's just that too often it's our knee-jerk reaction and it's far less necessary than we think. Older kids who have different issues with behaviours they can clearly control, kids who deliberately invent complex lies and fantasies purely to get other people into trouble, kids who have learned to be manipulative, kids who have got involved in drugs, theft, vandalism - this won't work. They have learned to manipulate on principle and they will manipulate this as well. But if you can begin early enough, you can change a great deal, and without wearing yourself out in the process. Avoid blame. Avoid fault. Instead, focus on helping the child do better next time. Sometimes no fault is involved, sometimes bad things happen which maybe with hindsight we could have avoided, but it's not a matter of blame and punishment, it's a matter for talking out, "how can I do better?" You also said, "It's as though she thinks we can see her thoughts and when we act opposite them it puts her into an emotional frenzy." I think you've hit the nail on the head. (As I said before, I think you and your husband are doing a lot of things just right). This again comes back to theory of mind. And autism. To a certain extent you get this also in very young children. To test theory of mind, I give you an example: The child being tested is in a room with the tester and her mother. It is a standard room - chair with cushion, toybox, couch, table. While mother is in the room, the therapist takes a doll from the toybox and hides the doll behind the couch. Mother then leaves the room. With mother gone, the therapist takes the doll from behind the couch and hides the doll under the cushion on the chair. The doll is completely hidden. The child saw it all. Then the therapist asks, "Where is the doll?" The child answers, "Under the cushion on the chair." The therapist asks, "Where does your mother think the doll is?" A child with good theory of mind will say, "She still thinks it's under the couch, where she saw us hide it." A child with poor theory of mind will assume that her mother sees and knows exactly what she does, and will answer, "My mother thinks the doll is under the cushion on the chair." If your child has poor theory of mind (as I said, common in very young children anyway) then they will get frustrated when you ask what seem to be dumb questions. Or when you ask them to do something that they're not ready to do. And if you get 'heavy' with them, it WILL provoke a tantrum, because to their mind - why are you being so obstructive? And as I said before, these kids will give back what they observe, and so they will become obstructive in return, modelling what they perceive your behaviour to be. You need to find a way of asking the question, that will not have her feeling 'got at'. It's like the coats again. I can't help you there, all I can suggest is maybe ask her to help you choose what meals to prepare FOR LATER. If you don't react to her tantrum but instead simply wait and reassure her calmly that you're NOT about to make her eat, you just want to know how she is feeling, she might settle down. I used to say calmly, "Why are you shouting at me? I'm not shouting at you, am I?" Her behaviour is coming from anxiety - fear that you are about to exert control over her and her body in a way she can't handle. She needs to know this will not happen, and it takes a lot of reasoning to overcome blind panic. difficult child 3 still panics and I still have to use MY calm voice to help him regain control of himself. Getting her to use words is really good - it's what we do also. It DOES take time. And you're right, her problems with foods are probably part of the problem, a big part of Sensory Integration Disorder (SID) for a lot of kids involves foods - tastes and textures. Giving her one chance to say it more nicely - if it's working for you then that's great. But with some kids, knowing they only have one chance can make them more flustered and more frustrated (with themselves as much as with you for not reading their minds!) About getting your husband on the same page - he already sounds like he's making great progress. But I do understand, my husband (Marg's Man) is dealing with the same issues himself. Brought up to be a bit of a martinet. He's been lurking here since I first joined and finding he understands the problems better now. Not tat I was keeping my feelings and thoughts from him, but sometimes there just aren't enough hours in the day to remember the tiny, fiddly details. This way we have taken what was already very good communication and cooperation, and taken it to great heights. He's now a member here also. And last night - he had been asked to address a forum of other fathers of autistic children, talking about how they are coping, answering questions about what to expect as they get older. He was flattered to be asked and somewhat terrified, I think. But he did great. We talked things through beforehand, which was useful for me, too, to try to crystallise all these years of radical parenting! Marg [/QUOTE]
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