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<blockquote data-quote="hexemaus2" data-source="post: 392945" data-attributes="member: 4560"><p>Welcome to the boards (officially.)</p><p> </p><p>Your difficult child sounds a lot like mine back before we got our "label." We've had several over the years. I don't put too much stock in them, but at least it narrows the playing field down enough to start trying focused efforts to fix the problems. Not to mention, those "labels" meant the school HAD to work with us to schedule IEP meetings, work on alternative ideas to help him get through the day intact, etc. It also helped with daycare workers...or I should say, the daycare owners. I met with them often to discuss difficult child's latest diagnosis, treatment plans, etc. They stepped in on our behalf with the folks in charge of him in the afternoons. In fact, one daycare even hired her own adult son to work in the afternoons so there would be a "guy" there to act as difficult child's buddy if he needed help with a particularly frustrating situation. (Her son and difficult child seemed to click moreso than anyone else there. He could often diffuse difficult child better than anyone...even me sometimes.)</p><p> </p><p>In terms of dealing with his aggression, I can share what we found worked with my difficult child. Although, it certainly was no overnight success. difficult child 2 took years to get his aggressive/violent behaviors under control. I often wonder now if I had known what I know now back then, could we have intervened sooner for better results? But that's really neither here nor there now.</p><p> </p><p>My first suggestion would be to document his day to day activities, general mood & demeanor, and any outbursts. They often recommend mood journals for people with mood disorders, but I found them very useful with difficult child 2. Not only did it help me pick up on patterns in his behaviors which later helped determine triggers, but it also helped me with psychiatrists, tdocs, and other professionals. I had a record of when, how often, and under what circumstances he displayed aggressive behaviors. You may find yourself walking around with a notebook all day, jotting notes every hour or so, but you'd be surprised what you'll find in terms of things you never noticed before. You may not find definitive triggers, but you'll eventually start to see a pattern...even if its just things like waking up too early or too late leads to rougher days than normal. It was the mood journaling process that helped us see that difficult child 2's aggression always got worse in the colder months as his clothing became heavier and scratchier. (He has sensory dysfunction, a common comorbid issue with autism spectrum kids.)</p><p> </p><p>Redirection BEFORE difficult child 2 got too frustrated was also a key to minimizing his outbursts. Sometimes that meant HOURS before a meltdown actually happened. In our case, providing him a safe, quiet, low sensory input environment when his frustration tolerance hit a certain level was the best bet. That meant he would come in my office and draw, read, play his DS, whatever...so long as it was away from other people, a lot of noise, and a lot of activity. We had to prepare ahead of time for anything that involved him being around a lot of people. My Mom, for example, would set up her craft room as difficult child 2's safe haven when we'd go home for the holidays. He didn't have to say anything to anyone if he started getting overwhelmed. He could just leave the room...even in mid sentence or when an adult was talking to him, if need be...and just go chill in his quiet place. </p><p> </p><p>Like I said, redirection sometimes had to start hours before he even got close to meltdown mode. If I waited until I realized a meltdown was coming soon, it was usually already too late. I had to back up even further and look for signs of mild frustration and start redirecting/guiding then in order to avoid meltdowns later in the day. It was almost like difficult child 2 would absorb so much frustration until he just burst like an overfilled balloon. He didn't understand how to remove himself from a situation to avoid frustration, even at moderate levels. It would just keep building and building all day until he exploded. </p><p> </p><p>If you don't already have an IEP in place for him at school, talk to the administrators...or better yet, the Special Education teachers directly. You can ask for a meeting with the Special Education department and school administrators, even without an IEP in place. I did that with difficult child 2 before I pulled him out of public school. He had no IEP of any kind at the time. However, we were in the process of having him evaluated privately. The school didn't see a need for an IEP for academics or behavior because there were no problems at school, but they did work with me to develope a plan IN CASE he needed an IEP. In short, they kept him under observation under the understanding that information they provided would help the docs understand the differences in his behaviors at school versus at home. I forget now the term they used for it, but basically it was a "pending" kind of deal. They were preparing for a possible IEP, pending the outcome of doctor recommendations. It helped open the doors of communication, gave the school a head's up, and did get him some minor modifications during the "pending" phase of things. (For example, he was able to leave class 5 minutes before the bell rang so he could get to his next class without crowds...which helped with his frustration levels by the time he got home from school.) It also meant the school was formally notified of difficult child's current diagnosis, which meant if something DID happen at school in terms of violent outburts, they couldn't just suspend him without taking his diagnosis into consideration - because he was in the evaluation process to determine "eligibility" for an IEP. (It helped that the doctor gave us a letter to give the school, with recommendations for temporary modifications based on information gathered to date. It was a letter I typed up, then gave to the psychiatrist for his approval and signature...otherwise he probably would have never gotten around to doing it.)</p><p> </p><p>Like many others have mentioned, normal parenting techniques are not very effective for difficult children like ours. For my difficult child 2, punishment for violent or aggressive outbursts was (in his mind) telling him he was a bad kid, which just added to his anxiety and frustration. We had to take a different, less psyche-damaging approach with him. We had to treat his behaviors much like symptoms of a physical illness. You wouldn't punish a diabetic child for having high blood sugar. You wouldn't punish a child with a bladder condition for wetting the bed. I couldn't "punish" difficult child 2 for violent outbursts he was not equipped to control yet. </p><p> </p><p>Now, don't misunderstand that. That does not mean there were no consequences for his aggression. It just meant my approach had to change. Just like a parent of a diabetic child has to control their diet until they are old enough to understand their disease and manage it themselves, I had to control difficult child 2's environment and stimuli as much as possible until he could learn to cope with things out of his control. He was responsible for certain aspects of his behaviors (like communicating when he felt overwhelmed, asking for help when he got confused, etc.) and consequences came when he did not live up to his responsibilities. However, we had to control his environment enough to give him the time he needed to learn how to handle more responsibility for his behaviors. I hope that makes sense. In short, we controlled his environment enough to help him learn to deal with the real world in smaller, bite-sized chunks that he could digest and cope with at his own pace. </p><p> </p><p>For us, that meant pulling him out of public school and home schooling him and his siblings. The constant shifting gears from one class to another, then school to daycare, then transitioning back to home was just more than he could manage on his own. To succeed in that environment, we would have had to have a one-to-one aid from the time he woke up until the time he went to bed, including transporting him to and from school, daycare, and home, while at school, while at daycare...it just wasn't practical. He simply could not handle all those transitions every day, on top of so many people, so much noise, and so much activity around him. </p><p> </p><p>We also had him evaluated by an occupational therapist. She did more for him than any talk therapist, behavior mod therapist, psychiatrist, or any other professional. Our psychiatrist gave us a referral after a neuro evaluation, but I could have gotten one from our regular pediatrician as well. Our Occupational Therapist (OT) helped him learn to cope with his sensory problems, balance issues, and a host of other physical/tactile issues that further contributed to his frustration levels. We used weighted vests to give him more tactile stimuli and make him more aware of where he was in space. On the recommendation of the Occupational Therapist (OT), I bought clothes, bedding, socks, and anything else that came in contact with his skin based on what he could tolerate in terms of texture. In terms of working with her, he did a lot of balance/coordination work to increase his balance AND give him more physical stimuli. She even had him participate in some group Occupational Therapist (OT) work to help provide social skills training. I would have never thought that his need for more physical stimuli would be a factor in his aggressive behaviors. Even now, at 17, he'll tell you sometimes he picks fights with difficult child 3, hoping to get a physical response of some sort. (Although now the "fights" are more like normal brother testosterone-induced rough housing/wrestling than actual "fights.")</p><p> </p><p>If I learned nothing else dealing with difficult child 2's aggression, I learned that a head on approach to correcting his behaviors just did not work for us. We had to find back doors. We had to play detective and look for things that contributed to the behaviors and emotions behind them...sometimes things I would have never thought could be a contributing factor turned out to have a HUGE impact (like the need for physical stimuli.)</p><p> </p><p>Don't rule ANYTHING out. You know your difficult child better than anyone else on the planet - trust yourself and what you know to be true about him. Listen to the experts, but don't take their word for gospel. Think about what YOU think makes sense for helping difficult child overcome/diffuse/work around his tendancy towards aggression. Learn to gauge his emotional temperature long before he gets to the point of acting out aggressively. Not all of it will make sense. You won't find all, or even a majority of his triggers. Sometimes the meltdowns come and you have absolutely no clue, no hint that it's coming. But if you can find even one trigger, eliminate even ONE thing that contributes to meltdowns, that's one less meltdown you have to endure. It's one less log thrown on the fire. Over time, you'll find more triggers. Over time, he'll gain a little maturity. Over time, the professionals will give you ideas here or there that work, even if just a little. It won't happen overnight. You won't just wake up one day and be free of them. But you can chip away at them a little at a time until one day you realize it's been days, or weeks, or months without a meltdown.</p><p> </p><p>On a funny note, I once presented the challenge to difficult child 2 (when he was 11 or 12) that if he could go an entire month without a single violent outburst, I would give him a $30 shopping spree at GameStop. That challenge sat for over a year, starting again and again, every month. When he asked, I told him that for every month he had no meltdowns, he'd earn that $30 shopping spree. He always tried, but never made it to a full month. Eventually, we moved on to other things. I had lost hope that he'd ever get through a whole month. That challenge gathered dust on a shelf somewhere, completely forgotten for years. Last year, on Christmas Day, when difficult child 3 and I pointed out to him that he had made an ENTIRE YEAR without a meltdown, difficult child 2 (now 16, at the time) responded with informing me I owed him $360 in GameStop money - can we go now? lol. Every month, he jokingly tells me his GameStop shopping balance as of the end of the month. This Christmas, we'll be up to $720. Guess what I'm giving him for Christmas? Yup. $720 worth of GameStop gift cards. He's earned every cent.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="hexemaus2, post: 392945, member: 4560"] Welcome to the boards (officially.) Your difficult child sounds a lot like mine back before we got our "label." We've had several over the years. I don't put too much stock in them, but at least it narrows the playing field down enough to start trying focused efforts to fix the problems. Not to mention, those "labels" meant the school HAD to work with us to schedule IEP meetings, work on alternative ideas to help him get through the day intact, etc. It also helped with daycare workers...or I should say, the daycare owners. I met with them often to discuss difficult child's latest diagnosis, treatment plans, etc. They stepped in on our behalf with the folks in charge of him in the afternoons. In fact, one daycare even hired her own adult son to work in the afternoons so there would be a "guy" there to act as difficult child's buddy if he needed help with a particularly frustrating situation. (Her son and difficult child seemed to click moreso than anyone else there. He could often diffuse difficult child better than anyone...even me sometimes.) In terms of dealing with his aggression, I can share what we found worked with my difficult child. Although, it certainly was no overnight success. difficult child 2 took years to get his aggressive/violent behaviors under control. I often wonder now if I had known what I know now back then, could we have intervened sooner for better results? But that's really neither here nor there now. My first suggestion would be to document his day to day activities, general mood & demeanor, and any outbursts. They often recommend mood journals for people with mood disorders, but I found them very useful with difficult child 2. Not only did it help me pick up on patterns in his behaviors which later helped determine triggers, but it also helped me with psychiatrists, tdocs, and other professionals. I had a record of when, how often, and under what circumstances he displayed aggressive behaviors. You may find yourself walking around with a notebook all day, jotting notes every hour or so, but you'd be surprised what you'll find in terms of things you never noticed before. You may not find definitive triggers, but you'll eventually start to see a pattern...even if its just things like waking up too early or too late leads to rougher days than normal. It was the mood journaling process that helped us see that difficult child 2's aggression always got worse in the colder months as his clothing became heavier and scratchier. (He has sensory dysfunction, a common comorbid issue with autism spectrum kids.) Redirection BEFORE difficult child 2 got too frustrated was also a key to minimizing his outbursts. Sometimes that meant HOURS before a meltdown actually happened. In our case, providing him a safe, quiet, low sensory input environment when his frustration tolerance hit a certain level was the best bet. That meant he would come in my office and draw, read, play his DS, whatever...so long as it was away from other people, a lot of noise, and a lot of activity. We had to prepare ahead of time for anything that involved him being around a lot of people. My Mom, for example, would set up her craft room as difficult child 2's safe haven when we'd go home for the holidays. He didn't have to say anything to anyone if he started getting overwhelmed. He could just leave the room...even in mid sentence or when an adult was talking to him, if need be...and just go chill in his quiet place. Like I said, redirection sometimes had to start hours before he even got close to meltdown mode. If I waited until I realized a meltdown was coming soon, it was usually already too late. I had to back up even further and look for signs of mild frustration and start redirecting/guiding then in order to avoid meltdowns later in the day. It was almost like difficult child 2 would absorb so much frustration until he just burst like an overfilled balloon. He didn't understand how to remove himself from a situation to avoid frustration, even at moderate levels. It would just keep building and building all day until he exploded. If you don't already have an IEP in place for him at school, talk to the administrators...or better yet, the Special Education teachers directly. You can ask for a meeting with the Special Education department and school administrators, even without an IEP in place. I did that with difficult child 2 before I pulled him out of public school. He had no IEP of any kind at the time. However, we were in the process of having him evaluated privately. The school didn't see a need for an IEP for academics or behavior because there were no problems at school, but they did work with me to develope a plan IN CASE he needed an IEP. In short, they kept him under observation under the understanding that information they provided would help the docs understand the differences in his behaviors at school versus at home. I forget now the term they used for it, but basically it was a "pending" kind of deal. They were preparing for a possible IEP, pending the outcome of doctor recommendations. It helped open the doors of communication, gave the school a head's up, and did get him some minor modifications during the "pending" phase of things. (For example, he was able to leave class 5 minutes before the bell rang so he could get to his next class without crowds...which helped with his frustration levels by the time he got home from school.) It also meant the school was formally notified of difficult child's current diagnosis, which meant if something DID happen at school in terms of violent outburts, they couldn't just suspend him without taking his diagnosis into consideration - because he was in the evaluation process to determine "eligibility" for an IEP. (It helped that the doctor gave us a letter to give the school, with recommendations for temporary modifications based on information gathered to date. It was a letter I typed up, then gave to the psychiatrist for his approval and signature...otherwise he probably would have never gotten around to doing it.) Like many others have mentioned, normal parenting techniques are not very effective for difficult children like ours. For my difficult child 2, punishment for violent or aggressive outbursts was (in his mind) telling him he was a bad kid, which just added to his anxiety and frustration. We had to take a different, less psyche-damaging approach with him. We had to treat his behaviors much like symptoms of a physical illness. You wouldn't punish a diabetic child for having high blood sugar. You wouldn't punish a child with a bladder condition for wetting the bed. I couldn't "punish" difficult child 2 for violent outbursts he was not equipped to control yet. Now, don't misunderstand that. That does not mean there were no consequences for his aggression. It just meant my approach had to change. Just like a parent of a diabetic child has to control their diet until they are old enough to understand their disease and manage it themselves, I had to control difficult child 2's environment and stimuli as much as possible until he could learn to cope with things out of his control. He was responsible for certain aspects of his behaviors (like communicating when he felt overwhelmed, asking for help when he got confused, etc.) and consequences came when he did not live up to his responsibilities. However, we had to control his environment enough to give him the time he needed to learn how to handle more responsibility for his behaviors. I hope that makes sense. In short, we controlled his environment enough to help him learn to deal with the real world in smaller, bite-sized chunks that he could digest and cope with at his own pace. For us, that meant pulling him out of public school and home schooling him and his siblings. The constant shifting gears from one class to another, then school to daycare, then transitioning back to home was just more than he could manage on his own. To succeed in that environment, we would have had to have a one-to-one aid from the time he woke up until the time he went to bed, including transporting him to and from school, daycare, and home, while at school, while at daycare...it just wasn't practical. He simply could not handle all those transitions every day, on top of so many people, so much noise, and so much activity around him. We also had him evaluated by an occupational therapist. She did more for him than any talk therapist, behavior mod therapist, psychiatrist, or any other professional. Our psychiatrist gave us a referral after a neuro evaluation, but I could have gotten one from our regular pediatrician as well. Our Occupational Therapist (OT) helped him learn to cope with his sensory problems, balance issues, and a host of other physical/tactile issues that further contributed to his frustration levels. We used weighted vests to give him more tactile stimuli and make him more aware of where he was in space. On the recommendation of the Occupational Therapist (OT), I bought clothes, bedding, socks, and anything else that came in contact with his skin based on what he could tolerate in terms of texture. In terms of working with her, he did a lot of balance/coordination work to increase his balance AND give him more physical stimuli. She even had him participate in some group Occupational Therapist (OT) work to help provide social skills training. I would have never thought that his need for more physical stimuli would be a factor in his aggressive behaviors. Even now, at 17, he'll tell you sometimes he picks fights with difficult child 3, hoping to get a physical response of some sort. (Although now the "fights" are more like normal brother testosterone-induced rough housing/wrestling than actual "fights.") If I learned nothing else dealing with difficult child 2's aggression, I learned that a head on approach to correcting his behaviors just did not work for us. We had to find back doors. We had to play detective and look for things that contributed to the behaviors and emotions behind them...sometimes things I would have never thought could be a contributing factor turned out to have a HUGE impact (like the need for physical stimuli.) Don't rule ANYTHING out. You know your difficult child better than anyone else on the planet - trust yourself and what you know to be true about him. Listen to the experts, but don't take their word for gospel. Think about what YOU think makes sense for helping difficult child overcome/diffuse/work around his tendancy towards aggression. Learn to gauge his emotional temperature long before he gets to the point of acting out aggressively. Not all of it will make sense. You won't find all, or even a majority of his triggers. Sometimes the meltdowns come and you have absolutely no clue, no hint that it's coming. But if you can find even one trigger, eliminate even ONE thing that contributes to meltdowns, that's one less meltdown you have to endure. It's one less log thrown on the fire. Over time, you'll find more triggers. Over time, he'll gain a little maturity. Over time, the professionals will give you ideas here or there that work, even if just a little. It won't happen overnight. You won't just wake up one day and be free of them. But you can chip away at them a little at a time until one day you realize it's been days, or weeks, or months without a meltdown. On a funny note, I once presented the challenge to difficult child 2 (when he was 11 or 12) that if he could go an entire month without a single violent outburst, I would give him a $30 shopping spree at GameStop. That challenge sat for over a year, starting again and again, every month. When he asked, I told him that for every month he had no meltdowns, he'd earn that $30 shopping spree. He always tried, but never made it to a full month. Eventually, we moved on to other things. I had lost hope that he'd ever get through a whole month. That challenge gathered dust on a shelf somewhere, completely forgotten for years. Last year, on Christmas Day, when difficult child 3 and I pointed out to him that he had made an ENTIRE YEAR without a meltdown, difficult child 2 (now 16, at the time) responded with informing me I owed him $360 in GameStop money - can we go now? lol. Every month, he jokingly tells me his GameStop shopping balance as of the end of the month. This Christmas, we'll be up to $720. Guess what I'm giving him for Christmas? Yup. $720 worth of GameStop gift cards. He's earned every cent. [/QUOTE]
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