DS6 is hard work. Between hyperactivity, explosive temper, tantrums, attention seeking, blaming everyone else for anything that goes wrong, negativity, and distractibility, I am at my wits end. I often find myself at a loss for how to respond to him these days. We have just started him at a new school, and I think it will be good for him. They have experience with giftedness and difficult temperaments. But its only been two weeks, and I already have had to sign a report sent home for problem behaviour.
What plan (IEP, 504) do you have in place at school? If none, I would want to put something into place.
I am feeling like a failure at the moment. I have been short with him because I am exhausted.
That happens, and it's not your fault. (According to my mom, losing your temper is a valid method of teaching the child where the line is, if used sparingly and nonviolently.)
Get some help. I have found it really good to have a college student for a few afternoons a week to act as homework tutor/ABA therapy aide/respite. It is very tiring to keep teaching 100% of the time. ABA works best if you have multiple people doing the teaching/reinforcing.
We have had outside support. Originally he was diagnosed PDD-NOS, so we did a couple years of ABA therapy.
I'm interested to know why you stopped. The early elementary years are a great time to do ABA, because kids should be learning new skills in reponse to increased demands at school. If your ABA therapist was good, I'd resume that at home, and also have that person involved with coordinating the plan at school. If school and home are working consistently on reinforcing the same skills, you should see progress.
But I feel like we have worked on stuff, and it never really seems to get much better. And it seems like there is so much difficult behaviour to work through.
The tricky thing is this: your child gets better, and then all the peers make developmental leaps so they're still ahead of your child socially/behaviorally, and school makes increasing demands on social/emotional regulation, so it feels like you're always in hot water and not making progress. Even if you really are. BTDT.
School needs to have appropriate expectations AND supports to help your child meet those expectations. A kid on the spectrum can learn, but if he's under too much stress and always "in trouble" he will shut down and not learn. DS had a behavior plan that told teachers exactly how to respond when he did anything inappropriate, AND how to prevent blowups. This was one of the best things we did.
Sometimes I just want to run away and hide.
I hear you. I will meet you in Tahiti for drinks with little umbrellas in them. Right after I take care of everything here.
