Today I thought I'd share a little bit more about my home life and the difficulties we, as a family face living with autism and also a few techniques that have worked for us.
My son is on the higher functioning end of the autistic spectrum, but although he has few communication difficulties other than a pronounced dis-jointed speech impediment and a literal understanding of conversations he does struggle massively on the more emotional and social side of things. Today I'm only going to talk about the emotional struggle at home but as time goes on I will also share some of the other struggles I face as a parent of a child with special needs and some of the techniques I have used to help my son cope with his daily struggles.
I'm lucky really as Hayden (my son) is a very caring and compassionate little boy even if he doesn't really understand the emotional feelings he see and feels himself and has difficulty identifying with someone else hurt/upset or anger he's the kind of child who would literally give you the shirt off his back for no other reason than he wants you to like him. I've lost count of the times he has tried to and sometimes managed to give his toys away to someone at school and at every school event we attend (which is every single one since I'm on the PTA lol) I have to make sure I take extra cash as he always ends up spending his 'allowance' on someone else a treat or a ride, because he doesn't understand having that extra cash means that I avoid a melt down when he realises that he has no money for himself. At the Easter bingo event Hayden won 6 easter eggs in total and then went around and gave one to his teacher, one to his teaching assistant, one to another teacher who was sat on the table, one to her daughter and then one to his sister so he ended up only going home with one egg but he was happy simply because he'd made them happy, in fact when he came back to our table he said "I gave one to Mrs Ashton and one to her little girl too because it wouldn't have been fair if I didn't give one to her little girl" My heart just about melted right there and then.
Sorry to go off subject but I just wanted to share that as a lot of people stereotype children on the spectrum and assume that they must not love, or care about people and that they are emotionless and thats just not true, yes some children have difficulty in understanding and showing emotion but that doesn't mean they don't feel it. Obviously I can only speak for my child as each child is different (regardless of whether or not they are on the spectrum) but I can say with absolute certainty that my son loves me and his sister (and everyone else in our family) and all he wants is for everyone to like him, and to be fair all adults who meet Hayden are drawn in by his charm and many of his teachers have a special bond with him.
Anyway back to the subject at hand lol, at home one of the biggest difficulties we face with Hayden is his anger. He really struggles to cope when he gets mad and always becomes aggressive, he shouts at me (we are still working on the way he speaks to me as he is extremely disrespectful and speaks to me as though we are on the same level not a parent and child, so if anyone has any hints on how to handle this one let me know.), throws things and also hits, kicks and pushes me and his sister. We've tried so many different ways of dealing with his anger, we tried timeouts and restraining him because he wouldn't only hurt us but also hurt himself when he was younger, which did work for a time but as he got bigger it became harder and harder to restrain him. We tried positive re-inforcement which works with certain aspects of his behaviour, we currently have a system where when he shows positive behaviour so being kind and helpful etc he earns a piece of a picture and then when he has all the pieces we go and get his reward which can be anything from a toy to a trip to the park, it's really helpful for him as he can see what he is working towards and we decide together what reward he would like, search online for an image and then decide how many pieces we should cut the picture into e.g if he wants to earn a toy that costs £10.00 we would cut that into 10 pieces for a trip to the park it would be 5 pieces and this system really works for some things but it's never going to work 100% of the time. The thing is tips like this can help reduce the number of meltdowns but they're never going to take them away completely, my son is autistic it's just a fact and that means that there are always going to be times where everything becomes too much. Imagine for a moment a time when something has really irritated you to the point where you can't seem to focus on anything else, a noise maybe or a smell, then imagine another time another sound another smell and another time, and another, children on the spectrum face this constant bombardment every single day everything is multiplied and so it gets to the point where something however small triggers an eruption which only gets worse because for us 'normal' people we know that when we get angry if we have time to process the anger it dissipates, for children on the spectrum they struggle to process add to that the sensory issues and what might cause a sigh or a moment of anger in one child can cause a huge meltdown with no end in sight for our child.
As a way for Hayden to take that time away from negative sensory input I decided the other day that it was time to create Hayden a calm down zone of sorts. Now bare in mind that Haydens bedroom is actually the 'box' room and so the smallest room in the house (less for him to break lol) so space was going to be a huge issue as I didn't want to take away any of his play space. So after a whole lot of contemplating and moving around of things I had a light bulb moment, what about the space under his bed?, Hayden has a mid sleeper in his bedroom as a way to create extra space and storage so all I really needed to do was move his drawers out and create his calm zone underneath his bed. After finally finding space in his room for his drawers and sorting through his toy boxes so that they would take up less space I finally had a nice clear and tidy space to make his own. Now don't get me wrong this was a lot harder than I had first anticipated in fact there were several times where I questioned my sanity in deciding to start such a mammoth job alone (I had no idea he had been stuffing mess behind his drawers when I had told him to tidy his room, something I'm pretty sure his sister taught him lol), but when I was finally finished I was so proud of myself. I added colour changing fairy lights (£3.00 from primark), a big fluffy blanket (he loves the way it feels against his skin and as he doesn't wear clothes other than underwear at home I needed a big one lol), some of his favourite books and lots of comfy pillows and cushions. To say he loved it would be an understatement, he actually slept in there for the first week lol, but now he has a space that is just for him where he can go when everything becomes too much, and where I can send him if I see his anger starting to build. Giving him a safe place to calm down and process the way he feels in his own way and his own time. Let me just say though the pictures don't even come close to doing it justice, for some reason it just wouldn't come across right in the pics but I've added them anyway :p.
Anyway with all that said I hope this helps someone else even if it is just to help you see that you aren't alone and that there are ways to help your child make sense of the world around them. I'd definitely recommend making an area for your child to go where they feel safe and away from things that stress them out especially if like Hayden your child struggles with anger issues.
Thank you for stopping by and taking the time to read my post and I hope you come back again soon
Alice xoxo
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