So, we switched up things around the house to try to deal with the meltdowns a bit.
For starters, on the theory that it could be the pajamas, we swapped into a different (read: larger) set of PJs to see if he keeps those on. (That, and made the decision that if he wants to sleep on the futon in his room instead of his bed, he’s welcome to sleep on it…) Continue reading
Over the weekend, we had to deal with the Monster’s meltdowns.
As any parent of a child with Autism knows, you can’t predict when a meltdown is going to come, or even necessarily what’s going to bring on the state, so you can’t even really prepare for it in advance, and stopping it is… well.
In our case, we still aren’t quite sure what brought on the Monster’s major meltdown last night, save that it happened.
The meltdown started shortly after we tried to get him to have dinner. As is often the case, he’s more communicative about what he doesn’t want – and displaying all the ways he can say no – rather than answering an affirmative to a choice that’s presented to him. In the fullness of time, it became apparent that the Monster had made a choice – he either wanted Pepperidge Farms Goldfish or apple sauce, neither of which were acceptable choices to us. When we informed him that this wasn’t an acceptable choice, he started to shriek and yell, and got sent to time-out after getting to his three-count.
When I went up to retrieve him… he was naked.
This is a new behavior, his stripping down. Because, though, it had been a long day, this was the point where we informed him that he could a) have dinner or b) go to bed. When he continued to shriek, we decided that translated to choice B, dressed him for bed, and then walked away. He was in his room, where he really has few enough things he can hurt himself with.
This was, though, the tone of the night. I checked up on him after a while, to find that he was, of course, again naked in his room and had now dumped all of the bagged, too-small clothing all over his floor. The wife re-dressed him and put him back into his pajamas while I tended to other things (I have the more explosive temper), and we gave it more time for him to cool down.
So, parents of other children with Autism can probably relate when we just basically waited for it to burn out. This meant, of course, that we came upstairs around 10:30 to find that he’d fallen asleep on the futon in his room… naked. (I don’t know what’s with the naked time, for the record. As I’m typing this, he’s quite content to be fully dressed and playing with his toys.) I used my long-neglected babysitter skills to at least get him back into his pull-up and put a blanket over him so he wouldn’t be cold (or pee on the futon overnight) without waking him up, and we left him be.
Today he’s fine… but who knows when the next meltdown will happen…
So for my proud parent moment for the week:
The Monster’s birthday party is next weekend, so we’ve been slowly going through cleaning up the house. We’ve not yet tackled the family room because the Monster and his brother constantly empty out the bins of toys against the back wall. (Well, that’s more R (the baby) than the Monster of late.) Continue reading
Every so often, I work from home during the day to give the wife a break from watching both kids.
Now, I know, obviously I’m a software engineer and I therefore am not “that busy”, since I’m somewhat settled in a single spot while I’m working. And more so since I was recently promoted to being the software development manager for my team. Continue reading
The Monster hates showers.
I don’t know what it is, actually, about showers that he hates, since he does love the water so much. It could be the sound – all that noise that’s reverberating off the tiled surfaces in our bathroom – or it could be the sensation of the water and its pressure on his skin, or the fact that we tend to give him one in the morning before school/synagogue, or it could be something entirely different. Continue reading
So it’s Shavuot.
Normally, Shavuot passes without much going on in our house – yes, it’s a major holiday, but I’m not generally taking time off of work or whatnot. On the other hand, the wife’s in the vocal ensemble at our shul, and this was an occasion where the ensemble was asked to perform. Continue reading
I’ve written in the past – most notably, in reaction to a comment I made elsewhere that seemed to evoke a lot of conflict – about how it irks me when the Monster (and other children with special needs) are excluded from events with other children their own age, including classmates’ birthday parties, seemingly just on the basis of their disabilities.
It’s not just the Monster, though – it’s the parents too. Continue reading
The post I was going to write tonight’s just going to have to wait for some time tomorrow, I fear.
1-2-3 Magic is great sometimes for discipline, but I think there’s points where applying it with the Monster hits a brick wall – mostly where it comes to immediate infractions and sending him straight to time-out. Continue reading
It’s taken a while, but in his own way, the Monster’s found a way to make sure that we understand what he’s trying to convey.
As I’ve tried to explain to a lot of folks lately – the big issue isn’t so much the Monster’s receptive language skills as his expressive language skills. He clearly understands more than he can express, and a lot of the time, he just doesn’t have the words for what he wants to say. Continue reading
Camp is coming up for the Monster in the very near future.
The last few years, we’ve sent the Monster to part-day summer camps – last summer, as I talked about frequently, was a combination of a special needs camp and a JCC day-camp. The year prior, he went a few mornings a week to said day-camp at the JCC. This summer, he’s going full-time to the all-day day camp run by the JCC. Continue reading