Originally posted by ChiefPam:
Although I try not to raise my voice when I *am* angry, I do try to *seem* angry when he is engaged in, or is about to engage in, dangerous behaviours.
And that makes sense, because he's got autism so he's not going to pick up on subtle nuances of expression. It has to be exaggerated for him to even notice. If your child is hard of hearing, you talk louder, enunciate more, etc. Same thing.
Exactly!
When Michael was much younger (3 or 4), we had a terrible time disciplining him, or stopping him from, say, chewing on electrical cords,
Yikes! Chewing on electrical cords makes Andy's behaviours seem downright safe by comparison.
because he totally did not get the whole cause and effect thing.
I hear you there. Andy gets cause and immediate effect now. ("Do X and you will immediately be rewarded/punished with Y.") But he has yet to get the concept of delayed consequences. ("Do X now and there will be no TV tonight.") And unfortunately, there are very few things that are effective (dis)incentives with him. A refrain I have heard from all of his teachers, and I have made myself more than once, is that he seems to be a bright kid, but it is extremely difficult to motivate him to do anything for which he is not self-motivated. And his teachers are hardly newbies to autism. He attends one of the country's leading schools for autistic children.
Yelling to get his attention and prompt re-direction was pretty much our only option.
Sounds familiar, except Andy gets so focused on what he is doing that redirection is extremely difficult. (Again, a common plaint of his educators.) If we could direct his focus into more positive avenues, I think it could be turned into a tremendous strength. I only wish I knew how to do it.
Life got much easier for us when he started to understand that choices have consequences.
I imagine it would have done.
I find that my style of raising Andy is very different than I had envisioned it when I was pregnant. And the vast majority of the differences are due to his special needs. I have also become much more tolerant when I observe other parent-child interactions when I am in public. I realize now that things might not be as they appear to the stranger. Another example of this: My son has had feeding issues all of his life. They became severe enough that he had had surgery to open a stoma to his stomach through which to insert a feeding tube. He gets the bulk of his nourishment through the G-tube. After many years of feeding therapy, he finally overcame his oral aversion, although he still will not eat enough to sustain life. But when he was much younger, his therapists instructed me to insist that he sit for 20 minutes at a meal while I tried to feed him. I was to keep him sitting and continue to attempt to feed him despite his crying, screaming, turning away, and otherwise protesting. I never fed Andy in public if I could help it, because I feared someone would call child protective services on us because they had observed what appeared to be a mother torturing her child by trying to force feed him when he clearly didn't want to eat. I knew that what I was doing really was in Andy's best interest; but to a casual observer, it sure wouldn't have looked like it. There are a myriad of other examples I could give along similar lines of a casual observer having no idea what is really going on. That has taught me not to make snap judgments about other people's interactions with their kids. I guess this is just one of the many lessons that having Andy as my son has taught me.
I realize that I have spent a lot of time in this thread focusing on the challenges which raising Andy faces, so in the interest of balance let me say that my son is an incredibly cute, usually sweet lad who is generally a delight to be around. (Not that I'm biased or anything
cheers,
Lynn
