shoes!

[Dixies_fire]

This morning tk decided she was wearing tap shoes to school. And one of them is broken and covered with green tape.

I said no and she went looking for her silver sparkly shoes and she couldn't find them and preceded to yell at the top of her lungs at boyo to find her shoes. She was told over and over again to stop screaming at her brother and find some shoes. Finally I just told her to put some shoes on and leave for school, she proceeded to yell I told her to get out of the house and go to school. And then she decided to cry.
Sigh

We talked last night for 20 minutes about the fact she is mean all the time to others. Mean to her one friend who leaves every time she gets yelled at. Mean to boyo, mean to hubs. About the only person she isn't mean to is me.

We are getting ready to go across town for surgery and now I'm worried about my kid.

And if one more person tells me it's normal for an 8 year old to scream yell and smart off to god and country for no **** reason at all I will scream. I'm not concerned with it being normal or not. I'm just worried about my kid and feeling like I screwed it up again.

 

[BusynMember]

Well, I think the people you are talking to are thinking maybe once in a while. If she can't keep any friends because she is always yelling at people who try to befriend her and if she constantly picks on her brother and mouths off to others, it's over the top. She seems to know it is costing her friends, yet she can't seem to stop herself. She seems sorry after the fact. I am thinking this is not 100% her fault and that she is wired differently. She seems to get fixated on an idea then gets very frustrated if she can't do it and lashes out. These traits are very common in kids whose brains are not quite the same as most people.


I forgot...does she have any plans to be evaluated? Does she at least see a therapist who can help her and you too? I really don't think this has much to do with your parenting. I think it's just her.

 

[Dixies_fire]

We go to the behaviorist this Friday and we meet with the psychiatric who is doing her evaluation on the 27th. The behaviorist is a quack, The one who spent 15 minutes with tk and announced she was ADHD and needed to play a sport. Well that would be lovely if she could get along with team mates long enough to learn a sport. As soon as I plop down that money she will have a confrontation with some new kid and won't want to do it anymore. We have upped her activity level though. No major issues here lately just a lot of mouth. Been upset a few times at school wandered off coming home from her friend's house, normal "I'm not eating that" behavior even though its stuff she likes. Just day in day out tk.

It's more important to her to "be right" then to have friends or parental approval or whatever.

And I agree with everything you said about being repentant and not really being able to help it. It's just draining, and hurts me to send her to her dad who one second is on board and the next minute is in denial about the situation and honestly might be too busy to notice. At a absolute minimum she's spending the summer with him and honestly I'm nervous for her and ex and ex's girlfriend.

 

[SuZir]

I honestly think, that a lot of her current issues are about your situation. Your life situation is just so stressful right now that it will be difficult to see which of your daughters issues are internal and which are situational. And I'm afraid that when your family's situation gets calmer, first she will get worst before getting better. And only then you can reliably see what issues she does have.

For me for example her being mean to everyone but you is a big give away that part of her issues are about sensitive kid reacting to stressful life situation.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not in any way implying you would be screwing it up. Sometimes life throws us curve balls and we just have to try to survive. But yeah, especially our more sensitive kids tend to react badly to challenging family situations. Not much you could do to that right now, except try to pinpoint and reinforce things that make her feel safe. And when you get her evaluated and get diagnosis, do remember, that they are what she displays just now. When situation calms down, she may display something else.

 

[Dixies_fire]

True suzir thank you

 

[Dixies_fire]

Behaviorist today;

"She's acting out because she wants your attention, you aren't engaging her"

Umm so she finish 9 chapter books in a month
We bake cookies, brownies a cake, lemonade stand park visits twice a week, homework and chores and dinner every day, we are teaching her how to play softball, I have to dissect her room and bathroom daily. What would you suggest? because she gets more attention ten the 6 month old and the 3 year old .

She shrugged her shoulders at me, mentioned that the hair washing issues are a texture issue and so are the food issues which are red flags of course. Said she wanted to see us again, I said I would call her after the evaluation was done. And she said she wanted ex to come in and have a talk.

 

[InsaneCdn]

OK, lets play "good cop bad cop"...
What if the behaviorist is right?

"She's acting out because she wants your attention, you aren't engaging her"


Read more: http://www.conductdisorders.com/forum/f6/shoes-53829/#ixzz2TcYLETNf

It isn't about the TIME you spend with her. But I read your list, and I'm wondering... how much of that list is YOUR list, rather than HER list? If she had a choice, which activities would drop and what would get added?
Baking... might be fun, or might be a chore.
Homework time... is NOT attention, it's homework.
Dissecting her room and bathroom is definitely not positive attention.
Whose idea is softball... hers? or yours?

For us, difficult child was definitely taking the lion's share of our time... and for quite a while, was NOT getting what he needed because we didn't know what was really needed.

I totally agree with waiting until after the evaluation is done... because the results of the evaluation are going to be key.

 

[1905]

What would have happened if you had let her wear the tap shoes? I'm thinking you could pick your battles and give her more leeway, not everything has to be a constant fight....even though you may not allow another child to do this, maybe lower your expectations for her.

From my own experience, I work with learning disabled children, one 10 year old always acts out, yelling, saying inappropriate things on the way to lunch. It's not so much in the class, it's like he needs to let out steam after being cooped up until 1pm. I let him. I will redirect, he talks back, but he is not punished in any way because I understand this and don't want to make things worse for him. He has enough issues and I don't want him to miss recess, he needs to be successful. If he is too loud in the hallway, oh well, he is the only one I allow to get away with this. Maybe I'm wrong for doing this, but things could go so much MORE wrong if I did not choose to overlook this. I know other teachers, not Special Education, think I'm just not doing anything about his behavior, not doing my job, and maybe think I'm lame, but they don't know my method for dealing with this child and it's none of their business!

With your difficult child, maybe take this approach more often and see if things are better.

 

[Dixies_fire]

What would of happened if she wore the tap shoes probably nothing but her getting picked on because they are broken and have tape on them.

Soft ball initially was just a family activity which she asked for more of but she's actually really good at it.

She asks to help cook and if she isn't being cruel to others I let her, I don't even get upset with her when she drifts in and out of the kitchen while we are cooking.

The crafting is totally her and what she wants to do I just put a little structure in it so my house doesn't get destroyed. We spent time picking out her outfit for field day so she could wear her tye dyed shirt we made for Mother's Day.

If her room looks good I tell her so. When she does a good job on anything I tell her.

I try to cut her some slack for tk behavior but she isn't going to hurt people and she isn't going to treat people like ****, adults or children if I can help it. I'm trying to teach her how to be an adult and how to make friends I firmly believe if I let her scream at people all her life an then se wonders why she can't keep a job or make friends she would be right if she said it was my fault.

While my kid may not be neurotypical she is high functioning and I fully expect her to one day move out have a job have a house maybe get married have kids.

There are many children here on this board who may not have that future ahead of them and I can understand why you may treat your difficult child a certain way just to make it through the day. And I'm all for that, sometimes this mom thing is hard and corners must be cut to preserve your sanity and I'm trying to integrate that into my life. But I want her to have successful relationships. I really want that for her. It hurts to see her isolated, it hurts me to not know how to deal with someone who doesn't have a clue most days on how to be a pleasant human being except for when she is completely ignoring all the humans in the room.

 

[InsaneCdn]

I know you don't have dxes, so just doing a "what if" here, but...
If she is Aspie, then... the things she has experienced and witnessed in her past, will be the behavior she mimics now. In that case she needs to have major social re-training, and it's not easy and it's not fun. With an Aspie, it's 100x easier to prevent learning it wrong, than it is to undo something you wish they hadn't learned. Often can be done, but it's a long road. If you look at it from that perspective, maybe she's behaving this way because it's become ingrained...???

 

[SuZir]

I try to cut her some slack for tk behavior but she isn't going to hurt people and she isn't going to treat people like ****, adults or children if I can help it. I'm trying to teach her how to be an adult and how to make friends I firmly believe if I let her scream at people all her life an then se wonders why she can't keep a job or make friends she would be right if she said it was my fault.

While my kid may not be neurotypical she is high functioning and I fully expect her to one day move out have a job have a house maybe get married have kids.

I understand very well how you feel. My kid was also just a little bit different when growing up. He never actually qualified any formal diagnosis then. And he turned out to be an adult who does have a job that feeds him, he lives together with his girlfriend in the flat they rent and he does have some friends. I sincerely hope he will not have babies in next ten years or so, but I do believe that some day he likely will. We were always unsure how much to demand from him, how much to cut slack, how much to push. But he ended up an independent adult. Unfortunately he also ended up with PTSD and some very hurtful issues. Those are not our making and we probably only could had protected him from them if we had stuffed him into a box full of cotton, nailed it close and hide it onto the attic. Then again, had we done that, he wouldn't be independent adult with also some very exciting experiences. So I get how hard line that is to balance on.

But do remember that no one can learn if they are totally overwhelmed and stressed out. If there are just too much stuff coming from every direction, you can not concentrate to anything enough to learn. And soon you stop trying. So sometimes it is wiser to really think what is important and that can get slide just now and work with important. And when the new skill is learned, you can pick other thing that you had to let slide and add that to your work list. Sometimes when you do that, you get much farther in for example two years than if you try to teach too many things same time.

I of course don't know your daughter or you, but my advice would be, that try to keep in your mind the possibility that she may be overwhelmed. And if in some point it seems she is not making progress and doesn't have motivation to learn new skills, it could be worth the try to think, what you want to concentrate first and try to let something else go temporarily. To concentrate to basics first and leave the polishing for later.

 

[Dixies_fire]

Both good points. Thank you.

 

[BusynMember]

Autistic spectrums do not learn their behavior from mimicking. Their biggest problem is that they do not mimic well, it is an early sign of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) that the child does not mimic behavior. They are good at echoing rote speech, but that's not the same as understanding human interaction. They don't know how to behave because they are unable to figure out the world of socializing. That's why they usually need some sort of social skills training. At this point, we don't know what is going on with her.

On the other hand, the point that chaos at home makes any child more stressed out is true. And our extra sensitive kids tend to pick up on every little change and most of them don't like change. Some do better with time. Certainly this is true, in our case, with Sonic and Julie. 35 is still struggling.