The Family Room

The Out Clause

Back when Isaac was about two and we were investigating additional interventions for him, I spoke to the representative of a local autism services organization. She stressed to me how important it was that I get Isaac into this particular type of program because, she explained, a child's neural plasticity is greatest before the age of three. So it was, in effect, a race against time, and every second wasted was a second in which Isaac's future would be forever limited. So we might want to sign up right this minute.

I hated that conversation: the implication that we weren't doing enough already (speech and OT), that this was the right program for a child she hadn't even seen. But most upsetting was this idea that at a particular point not long in the future, everything would be "cooked" and we had only a small window left to affect the course of our son's life. Tick, tick, tick.

Of course it was horseshit.

*
Kindergarten has been a hard adjustment. Aside from the question of support (not nearly enough, and about which I hope to have an update soon), the sensory environment is completely overwhelming for Isaac. Twenty kids in the class, about 400 at the school, a huge playground, intercom announcements, assemblies, a loud, echoey cafeteria, and, worst of all, recess. In a word, school. Very much like my old elementary achool, when it comes right down to it, but a completely different experience for him.

He comes home exhausted, hyper, crabby. He has far more frequent tantrums, and they're longer and more intense. The pattern, for the past few weeks, has been like this: by Friday he's not doing much work at all, Saturday is a nightmare, and by Sunday morning he's happy again and goofing around the house. He cries Monday mornings, Tuesdays through Thursdays are a little better, and then by Friday he's completely spent. Do we have twelve years of this to look forward to?

Yesterday was rough. He had a couple of really long tantrums, one of which was prompted by the fact that I refused to let him watch Thomas the Tank Engine in the room in which his father happened to be sleeping. I said he could watch it in the front instead. "I want to watch Thomas in the baaaaack!" he yelled, and that was pretty much it for the next 45 minutes.

I tried to explain how Daddy felt: that he was sleepy, that he needed to rest. But I couldn't get through, and couldn't figure out whether it was because he didn't conceive of the idea that his father has feelings, or that he knew and understood, but didn't care.

Which is worse?

Maybe there's a third option: that he knew, but was too upset and emotionally drained to behave accordingly. That's a variant of the latter, I guess, and I think it's right. Once he started to calm down, I asked him why I had told him he couldn't watch TV in the bedroom. "Because Daddy wanted to sleep." He knew.

And so when J. and I are on the sofa at night watching movies but really thinking about him, we nearly always conclude with the reassurance that, after all, he's only five. It's our fine print. It's our "out clause."

He's just a little kid, we remind ourselves. This is just a phase. He keeps growing and changing all the time.

But one day soon he won't be little anymore. He's already bigger, stronger. More is expected of him: he has homework, for heaven's sake. So will we get to a point where that out clause is just an artifact of an earlier, more innocent time? Do we have to prepare to give it up one day? Or is that a betrayal of his potential?

What is the right balance between faith and acceptance?

Bittersweet

Agrodolce is an Italian sauce made from vinegar (the agro) and sugar (the dolce), among other variations. The name translates to sweet and sour, or what we would think of as bittersweet. The genius is in the balance: enough sweet to please the palate, enough sour to stimulate it.

It's an image that comes up a lot in this house, especially during the past few weeks as we've watched Isaac accommodate himself to Kindergarten. There's the stimming, the anxiety, the moodiness, and then there are these moments of clarity when I can see him struggling to express new, more complex thoughts and feelings.

This weekend he had a few tantrums--more than usual (he's pretty even keeled, generally) but fewer than last weekend--and at a certain point we gave him his first official time-out. He was angry, confused and unable to calm himself for a good long while. Finally, he burst out with "I want to play but I DON'T want to play!!"

Then he demanded we end the time out so he could go play again, but I insisted that he apologize to his father first. "That's the rule, Isaac," I told him in what I hoped was a sufficiently firm and mature voice. "It's a BAD rule!" he yelled back.

So that's why I use the Italian to explain this particular scenario. The aggro part was obvious. The dolce was watching him find the words to express his conflicted feelings.

Way to go, kid. Now tell Daddy you're sorry.

*
This morning Isaac woke up a bit grumpy, insisting that we stay home so he could play and go to the "blue playground" (one of his favorites). We've been talking about vacations lately, and about weekends, and Isaac has adopted the language of vacation (which he sometimes pronounces "theycation") to describe anything or anyone he doesn't want to deal with at a particular moment. School? It's on theycation. His babysitter? She's on theycation too.

Today, however, I watched as he finally, fully seemed to grasp the meaning of weekends: how lovely they are, and how suddenly they are over. "I want to say home today," he announced this morning. "Sorry, Isaac, it's Monday. It's a school day for you, and a work day for me." "It's the weekend!" he wailed in protest. "No my sweetie, the weekend is over. Today is Monday." "The weekend is agaaaaain," he wailed, and burst into tears.

I know exactly how he felt.

Bitter, but also kinda sweet, you know?

Bumping into ‘NO”: Managing Tantrums in Kids on the Spectrum

By Lisa deFaria, LCSW, BCD, Faculty, ICDL (Interdisciplinary Council on Developmental and Learning Disorders)

Susan’s note: Lisa originally posted an earlier version of this on the Yahoo Floortime board. I thought it was so timely and helpful that I asked if she would be willing to let me share it with you all, and, lucky for us, she did.

As our children move forward developmentally, "typical" phases that were previously delayed may emerge. One example is the (so-called) "terrible twos." Many kids on the autism spectrum never had the "terrible twos," a time when children become more engaged in their world, with new-found communication, mobility and intentions ("I want”/”Me do it...")

So when parents start reporting to me that their child is tantruming and oppositional and won't do what they say, I say "great!” The child has moved beyond the earlier, more disconnected, passive or self-absorbed phase and demonstrated that he is "cooking." It's when a child doesn't move to this phase that I am concerned.

Of course, with these changes, the child is, perhaps for the first time, bumping into "NO."

Now we have a new set of challenges--not bad, just different. As your child moves forward into this phase, he is also much more aware of the complexities of his environment, the expectations of others, the world moving too fast, too loud, too bright around him. Though he now understands far more language, he may be slow to process it, and many adults forget that the child can't take in a wall of words.

Motor planning, still often immature, becomes frustrating for your child, for how exactly is little Johnny going to get from here to there? A profound desire to be "in control" kicks in, as though saying, "Wait a minute! Slow down!!!" So many kids in this situation need to put their brakes on and try to hold onto control, particularly during transitions (into the car, into bed, out the door, TV off...).

Sensory issues may also be involved. "No" for our children is a bit of a different experience than it is for a typically developing child. With awareness and engagement with their environment, often more sensory issues emerge during this phase. This can create a very challenging pattern of behaviors--look at how many transitions occur in any given day!

A child at this phase needs a lot of transactional support to help ease his movement through the day. You have to experiment with what will work.