I suppose on some level, I’m not all that surprised that at some point, the Monster’s behavior has shown a few more violent tendencies.

We’ve been dealing for a while now with the fact that he’s inclined to throw himself on the floor and be otherwise difficult if we’re trying to move him to non-preferred activities.  This has moved into flailing about, since that makes it harder to manipulate him into position to do said activities…

And in the last couple of weeks, it’s turned into actual hitting, kicking and scratching.  (Biting – the aforementioned ‘tooth’ – has been limited to the incident this summer with his one-on-one aide at camp.)  We haven’t heard of any incidents thankfully at school, but he’s certainly been sufficiently violent at home.

He’s not really getting the idea of not being rough when he gets a full head of steam going – even using the 1-2-3-Magic approach of immediate time-out for hitting doesn’t seem to really get him to understand that being rough doesn’t work, as he’ll just continue his screaming and yelling for several minutes in his room.  He does, eventually, calm down and is in a mode where he can come out, but it’s often just a calm in the storm.

And, to be fair, it’s distinguished from his meltdowns.  While he does tend to kick and flap his hands at folks during a meltdown if someone tries to hold him. his nails come into play when he’s told no.  (I have some decently deep scratches along my right arm to testify to that.)  I don’t know where he picked up that inflicting pain is a valid strategy for dealing with being unhappy, but it’s certainly not something that I want to see him continuing.

We’re still trying to figure out how to get through his head that the rough behavior doesn’t help his case.  I think it’s time for us to go back to the developmental psychologist to see what her ideas are… we’ve been putting off a visit for far too long…