Some good...and bad...vent

[Autismkids]

DS/difficult child has had quite a few developmental "bursts" this past 12-18 months. He can pedal a bike, swing on his tush, pull on his pants and most shirts, attend to a handful of activities, and has worked really, really hard increasing his hand strength. I'm sure there's more good I'm missing at the moment.

This has also been the hardest time with him so far. About this time last year his behavior crashed and he never recovered. It seems he's starting to crash again. I developed a BIP with the school psychologist after a few weeks of FBAs. We targeted aggressive tantrums, which is a large category but necessary. A few weeks with the BIP in mind, his tantrums did seem to decrease. At the same time, his cursing was increasing. Since we were focused on safety, I left the cursing on the backburner and that was a HUGE mistake.

I tried decreasing the time between rewards, and his behavior started to get worse. I bumped back up the rewards and the behavior slightly decreased again. I tried decreasing again, and there's no motivation. Now, not only does he have major aggressive tantrums but once I get him safely restrained he's still got cursing, and started spitting again.

 

[tiredmommy]

My difficult child often has a behavioral free-fall in early to mid spring and late summer fueled by her allergies/asthma. She also tended to have developmental bursts but sometimes it fueled her frustration because she often had uneven development such as being able to tie her shoelaces before being able to pull on her sneakers independently. Does this sound familiar?

I found, for us, that using The Explosive Child techniques helped keep us on track. I also found I had to keep myself in check after her developmental bursts and remember that she was still a difficult child despite her gains. This usually meant keeping a pretty rigid framework and keeping expectations clear. We always had trouble when I started expecting her to behave as a easy child.