Help ! Need help for coping outside of routine environment

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Hi , I'm new to the site. My nephew(6) was just recently diagnosed with high functioning autism, aspergers. I have never dealt with this kind of disorder before and I am just learning how to deal with it. We have a lot of problems with him when he are in social environments like the grocery store. He throws tantrums and knocks things off shelves if he can't have something he sees, or he gets very agitated. I was hoping some of you may have some suggestions for helping with this problem. It is getting so bad my sister has almost given up taking him anywhere, which means that she can never go anywhere either. It makes it really hard this time of year when we want to do our Christmas shopping. Any input would be great. Are there any kind of distractions any of you use that seem to work well?

Thanks

Nice to meet you, Lexyt83.

Well I can't say much about distractions because I'm always distracted when shopping with my mom but I always managed to get the task done for her at least.

Hmmmm. That's a stumper for me. I was a sensitive little wuss as a young child, but I wasn't greedy, and couldn't relate to people who wanted material things, so I had the opposite problem.

My very unprofessional guess would be that his greed and agitation is unrelated to his AS: that his AS just means he has difficulty expressing that.

Welcome here, Lexyt83. One resource which I've found valuable is Dr Ross W Greene's book The Explosive Child: Understanding and Helping Easily Frustrated, "Chronically Inflexible" Children. Here is a LINK to Dr Greene's website.

I particularly like his "three baskets" strategy. Boiled down, you sort the child's behaviours into one of three categories, and deal with it accordingly.

Basket A: Behaviour which threatens the child's safety, or others' safety, and which is worth risking a meltdown over. "No, you must not hit anyone or break things."

Basket B: Behaviour over which there is some room for negotiation and compromise. "It would be fun to go see a movie this weekend and go to the park, but all these toys and games need to be put away. Let's make a plan that will let us do all these things."

Basket C: Behaviours which are not worth arguing about. "I'd prefer if you did your homework at the table, but if you want to sit on the floor to do it, that's fine." "If you don't want any more broccoli, that's okay. How about some fruit instead?"

Best of luck over Christmas, which can be a difficult time of year even at the best of times!

I don't know if it would help, but this is what I did with my kid when she was a toddler. Perhaps your sister could adapt it in some way? I would tell my child the day before (or as soon as I knew) that we would be going to the store. When we got to the store I would tell her that -

* mom would take her out of the car (or the stroller if we were on-foot) and put her in the basket seat, which was special, as only little kids got to sit in them.
* we would go up and down the aisles until we had all the things we needed to get.
* we'd then go to the checkout lane, put the groceries on the moving belt (she could help because she was a big girl).
* Then we would pay for them and the people would put them in the bags.
* and we would take them to the car or walk home with them.

I did this for every trip, until I could ask her what we were going to do on our trip to the grocery store and she could tell me - I could then say "that's right!". It got to where I could say - "we need to go to the grocery store - what do we do at the grocery store?" When she could tell me the whole sequence without a prompt, she got a "that's right! That's what we're going to do." And we'd do it.

As part of the early prep, even before she was talking and was barely walking, I told her that at the store little children would be allowed to have a special ride in the shopping cart (if at the grocers) and that she could be a big help by putting the food we needed in the cart. It would also be a big help if she could help her mom remember the things we needed to get. (I'd then give her something to remember - milk and cereal, or toilet paper, or something she knew. Not too many to remember.) I kept doing this, holding up the special item when we got to it and asking "is this what we need?" and she'd nod yes soooo proudly. When she could talk, she could tell me what she needed to help me remember.

I also told her that some children did not know how to behave properly in the grocery store, but that I knew she was going to do her very best to do a good job. Doing a good job meant staying by mom, helping mom do the shopping, by sitting nicely in the cart, and by being "a big girl." I reinforced this by telling her something similar every time we got to the store.

I'd then take her in, put her in the cart, and tell her what thing we needed to find next. When she'd spot it (if she knew what it was), I would hand it to her to put in the cart - a very important job. If she didn't know what it was I'd show her and tell her a little bit about it, and let her put it in the cart. I'd also be very grateful to her when she "helped" me "remember" the things we needed to buy. I'd be sure to say "thank you for helping me" when she did.

I had also made a rule with her when she was very young about asking for things. I told her that it was very bad manners to be asking for things like some of the other children we would see in the store (throwing tantrums, etc.). Our rule was that she could ask for one thing at the store and I would consider it during our trip. If it was a reasonable request and there was not a reason why she could not have it, she might have it when we were done shopping - IF she did not ask for it again. If she asked for it a second time I'd remind her that anything she asked for three times she absolutely would not get, even if I would have gotten it for her otherwise. That was the rule. You can ask once, you can remind mom (or if you forget you've asked once, that's ok). But if you ask the third time, that'd kill your chance.

I was a lucky mom in that the kid didn't used to ask for much. She would ask for a cookie or a ride on the little mechanical horse outside the door, something that we could afford (we were on an incredibly tight budget). If I did not have the money for it I would tell her that I did not have the money for it this trip, but that perhaps she could help me pick out something special in the groceries instead or that we could go on a special walk together to look at the ducks or go get a book at the library - and that SHE could choose which one to do. She just loved that.

Amazingly, it worked really, really well. People used to come up to me in the store and compliment me on how wonderfully behaved my kid was. A good part of that was that I would make sure to not take her anywhere during "the arsnic hour" - late in the afternoon when she was tired or when the store was going to be loud and crowded. I tried to set it up as a chance for her to succeed. She did a pretty darned good job of it. She also learned what the veggies looked like, and how their names were spelled on the cans as we'd spell them out when we picked them up.

Now and then we'd have a problem, and the solution at that point would be that we'd have to go home. Nothing else we'd planned would happen. No blame, no shame, just a "well, it looks like you can't handle this today and so we'll try another day". And we would promptly go home, no detours. Then we would try another day. Eventually, there were no problems.

Maybe this might help in your nephew's case, if adapted for a child who is slightly older?

Go fairly soon after eating, so everybodys tummies are full ( and blood sugar on even keel); a meal full of slow-burning complex-carbohydrates (pasta, wholegrain rice or bread etc), proteins ( high in vit B's like beans, meat, fish, eggs etc), fat ( cholesterol is soothing), and if possible some kind of vegetable. etc, NOT after a meal full of sugars, colourings and artificial flavours/sweeteners.
I agree about setting up a "helping" programme, my son feels very much more involved and valued if he is weighing stuff, finding things, loading the trolley etc. Very important.
But i have realised the times it doesn't work are when we're all hungry/tense with low blood sugar, OR when been eating rubbish which excites and irritates.
Good luck.

Outcomes and ends.

Why are we going, how long we will be there, what we will do after.

When after sounds better, they look for finishing the task.

Store are overwhelming, a zillion choices. Focus on what we are hunting for, the rest fades.

We shop, then chicken strips and tatter tots. I have the evidence, girls can grow up on nothing else.

She was well fed, her mother, but eating out, always the same.

Enough problems with new places, people she did not know, chicken strips she knew.

She was not hungry, daudled, but when I took one of her tots, she gave me a dirty look and ate, guarding her food.

She got all wound up, time to go, in the car she curled up like a cat and napped, car was safe.

You can talk a horse into anything, if you have a carrot. A horse can only think of one thing. If the end goal is a carrot, it will do as you want, and it will get the carrot.

My words of power were Chicken Strips. She agreed the meaning of life was moving toward chicken strips.

With a girl friend along it was ice cream, she did not do ice cream alone.

In college now, her mother still does her wash. I asked her why she did not do her own. She told me it gave her mother something to talk about, that they agreed on, every day, better laundry, than letting mom have to find a topic to speak of, laundry is impersonal and a goal was reached.

Whenever it gets to, that is none of your business mother, which can turn emotional, she talks of laundry and calm returns. End goals, very useful.

Exactly.

My little brother - who has selective mutism, not AS but still pretty difficult and along the same lines - used to be pretty tricky to take shopping if it was just the two of you. We used to use a 'helper' programme, much like Nan outlined, and it worked a treat. He'd love putting things in the trolley. Occasionally to get him on side I'd grab something silly like dog food (we don't have a dog) and see if he'd let me put it in - he'd feel so proud telling me off because we haven't got one and to stop being silly.

We'd also reward him at the end if he was good with a Kinder Surprise (the (cheap!) hollow chocolate eggs with the little toy in the middle). He loved collecting the toys, and because they're small and hollow there's hardly any chocolate in them anyway so it wasn't going to spoil his appetite or ruin his teeth or whatever. He knew if he was good he'd get one, so he generally used to behave pretty well.

I once had a complete meltdown at a Walmart because I wanted to play "Gladius" on the Super Nintendo display, and wasn't allowed to. :P

mum used to do a similar thing with me..

"Mum, can I have some sweets?"
"we'll get some when we've finished shopping"
"But I want them nowww"
"If you ask once more you won't get any..."

Wow Caffeine_Demon , you have the most awesome of names!

Welcome to WP!

Tim