Poll: Are consequences effective?

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Most likely she is not getting enough destress time, and yelling and stomping are her ways of keeping other people from interrupting her so she has a chance of getting a few moments alone. If it is not preventable, I'm afraid the solution needs to be to avoid talking to her any more than is necessary to convey things she absolutely needs to know, and to learn to ignore the rest of her behavior.


Aspies don't deal well with small talk. Talk less - don't ask her about how her day was - and ignore her glare and let her read.


Again, talk less. Just ask her to get her feet off of you. Adding the extra explanation just invites an argument, and the fact that it's joking is lost on an aspie. If you do accidentally trigger a tirade, just apologize and ignore it.


Just ignore it. If all interactions are horribly unpleasant, then just try to have as few interactions as possible, preferably none.


What she would like you to do is not to worry about when she gets to bed. If it's possible just to let her get to bed on her own, however late she wants to do that, that would be once less negative interaction for you to worry about.


Always ignore tone of voice when dealing with aspies. It means nothing; ignore it.


What you are missing is that you are trying to have conversations with her in a social way - to have small talk that helps to reinforce social bonds. Aspies don't do that - it just doesn't work for us. Trying to do it is a recipe for frustration. Better not to do the small talk in the first place.


Do NOT ask her what she wants unless you are ready to provide whatever she asks for. Are you ready to make filet mignon with bernaise sauce for dinner if she asks for it? Or haggis if she asks for that? If not, do not put her in a position where she could say that, because it comes across as a bait & switch when you ask her what she wants, then tell her she can't have it. If she asks you what you are making, tell her, don't ask. Otherwise, she can find out when she sits down for dinner - one less piece of information to disturb her destress until then.

Bottom line: ignore her and leave her alone. Don't talk to her unless you absolutely have to, and it's so important that it's worth having an unpleasant experience.

psychohist
PostPosted: Sat Jun 11, 2011 7:00 am Post subject:
squirrelflight-77 wrote:
I have always been a very firm believer in prevention. That is no longer possible. She doesnt break rules or misbehave as normal children do. The problem is the yelling, stomping, slamming doors, arguing, glaring, pushing at me, being rude, and having a horrible tone/ attitude. This is not 'preventable' or even 'predictable'. .. a few examples from this week would be ..

Most likely she is not getting enough destress time, and yelling and stomping are her ways of keeping other people from interrupting her so she has a chance of getting a few moments alone. If it is not preventable, I'm afraid the solution needs to be to avoid talking to her any more than is necessary to convey things she absolutely needs to know, and to learn to ignore the rest of her behavior.

Quote:
I picked her up from her dads office after work and in the car I asked her how her day was.. she slammed her book down on her lap, glared at me and hollered that she was trying to read..

Aspies don't deal well with small talk. Talk less - don't ask her about how her day was - and ignore her glare and let her read.

Quote:
the other evening she put her foot on me and I told her to get her feet off of me bc they were filthy from her playing outside all day.. (said jokingly about the dirty feet) she went into a tirade of how she only played outside for 20 min and ran down a list very rudely and loudly of all the other things she had to do that day besides playing outside and how dare I act like she just plays outside all day!! ..

Again, talk less. Just ask her to get her feet off of you. Adding the extra explanation just invites an argument, and the fact that it's joking is lost on an aspie. If you do accidentally trigger a tirade, just apologize and ignore it.

Quote:
I have been yelled out for standing near her.. moving my leg (my stim I suppose), walking through the room, not knowing what she is doing or saying, asking a question (it should have been obvious), poor grammar, and serving lunch at 11:56 when I said we'd eat at 12, and pretty much anything else I do. Some days are better than others and this is sporadic .. other days I have NO interactions with her that are not horribly unpleasant and I sometimes find myself just avoiding her bc she is so miserable to be around.

Just ignore it. If all interactions are horribly unpleasant, then just try to have as few interactions as possible, preferably none.

Quote:
There just isnt any win-win anymore. If tell her she needs to get ready for bed its an explosion of how that isnt fair and why doesnt she have more time and she needs to finish X, etc etc.. If I set a timer and/or warn her that bedtime is coming she yells about how I'm stressing her out telling her how much time she has and why dont I just let her know when it's time. I mean what the hell am I supposed to do????

What she would like you to do is not to worry about when she gets to bed. If it's possible just to let her get to bed on her own, however late she wants to do that, that would be once less negative interaction for you to worry about.

Quote:
The rude ugly tone could never be improved even with my giving her examples, etc.

Always ignore tone of voice when dealing with aspies. It means nothing; ignore it.

Quote:
So what am I missing??

What you are missing is that you are trying to have conversations with her in a social way - to have small talk that helps to reinforce social bonds. Aspies don't do that - it just doesn't work for us. Trying to do it is a recipe for frustration. Better not to do the small talk in the first place.

Quote:
that I should stop giving her choices or asking her what she wants for dinner, etc

Do NOT ask her what she wants unless you are ready to provide whatever she asks for. Are you ready to make filet mignon with bernaise sauce for dinner if she asks for it? Or haggis if she asks for that? If not, do not put her in a position where she could say that, because it comes across as a bait & switch when you ask her what she wants, then tell her she can't have it. If she asks you what you are making, tell her, don't ask. Otherwise, she can find out when she sits down for dinner - one less piece of information to disturb her destress until then.

Bottom line: ignore her and leave her alone. Don't talk to her unless you absolutely have to, and it's so important that it's worth having an unpleasant experience.


Not sure if I've quoted/copied this post right, but just wanted to say that I agree with everything psychohist has said. I learnt the hard way, lots of angry and sad meltdowns.

I now pick my son up from school and say nothing until he talks to me.
He doesn't get choices because he can't do choices, there are to many variables. What if he makes the wrong choice etc? These are words that he has thrown back at me, and no I can't accommodate all his wants. The only time I will do choices with him is when I have carefully thought through what I am willing and able to do, then those are whats offered.
My son would not have been asked "Honey can you take your feet off me please", why? because the answer could have been "yes, but I don't want to"and this could lead to an argument. I would have simply said "J take your feet off me please".
Please don't take any of this as criticism, it's not meant that way. I'm simply trying to help you get to where I am now with my son with fewer heart aches and arguments in between.

Another thing I just thought of is, whilst in some ways it's enviable that your daughter is home schooled, she has better chance of getting an education aimed more specifically towards her and her needs and I'm sure her carer is more supportive and accommodating than what she would get in a mainstream school. It's possible that your daughter's stress levels are going to be as high if not higher now because there is no room for her to just be anonymous. I imagine she would need a lot of down time.

It's really hard as a parent to not jump in there and ask questions and to let "rude" behavior slide, parenting an aspie child you have to stop thinking like an NT parent, it comes with a different set of rules. I found with my son, the stress he was showing externally he was feeling 10 x worse on the inside. Good luck with it all you sound like a fantastic mum, that is only trying to do the best you can for your daughter.

Sorry just realized, I didn't really address your poll. I haven't submitted a score because there isn't really one that fits. I very rarely punish my child or take things off him. I will tell him when i don't like something he is doing or has done, but I have to weigh up, is this my problem or is this his problem. Even then I have to be very careful as to how he is "told" I have to be clear and direct, he will then usually punish himself much worse than I ever could or would. (not that I want him to do this either)

Something that I was told long ago and It took me a long while to discover myself
"be careful what behavior you change, because another behavior may replace it and the replacement may be worse".

I think hormones have a lot to do with teen aspie behavior problems. When I was a teenager, I was quite a handful to the point of having to be hospitalized and then later put in a day treatment program. Something about hormones affect the aspie mind in very powerful ways. I always felt as if my nerves were on fire and the slightest incedent would cause me to really blow up. Nothing in this world is more illogical and ill-tempered that a aspie girl teenager with pms!! My moody behavior did not improve until I was in my early 20’s. After that, for a while, I felt really guilty for being so mean to my mom, but she said she forgave me when I did it. At the end of the day, there is nothing like a mother’s love. Hang in there, it will get better as she gets older. The worst age I have found for aspie girl hormonal behavior problems is between 11-15. After that, things start getting better, but you not out of the woods as far as moodiness goes until early adulthood. Birth control medication might help with the moodiness though.

One thing that is missing from this discussion is that it is perfectly normal for girls to "fight" their mom's. There can be a push - pull dynamic in a mother - daughter relationship that does not exist in other relationships. Best theory being that while the daughter wants to be close to mom, being too close to mom makes it difficult to establish a unique and independent identity. So the daughter fights it, and fights the mom. But not the dad ... and it has nothing at all to do with how dad disciplines, he's just blessed by being male, a simple fact that makes the daughter have less need to fight him. She's not as emotionally tied to him to start with, and has less need to separate her identity from him because she's not the same gender.

It's super obvious in our family how strong that mother - daughter push - pull dynamic can be, and it has been since my daughter was born. NOTHING like the relationship with my son. My husband sees it, too - totally baffles him, but he can't deny that it's always been there, and neither of us actually does anything to create it or even exacerbate it. My daughter needs me desperately, but she doesn't WANT to.

So. While there are definitely AS issues involved in creating what you are seeing with your daughter, I think there is also an element of push - pull that exists simply because she is a daughter. You can't discipline that away. As far as I can tell you just keep walking around it. Pick your battles, be careful what lines you draw in the sand. When it matters most, be an immovable wall; a very calm one.

What worked best for me was having it explained why something needed to be done a certain way, and then having it explained how to do it right. If I knew why something needed to be done and how to do it, I didn't have any issues with doing it.

Sometimes of course I had organization/task-switching issues that interfered with my ability to do things that were required of me. But presuming that I was capable of something, if I knew its purpose, I didn't have any issues. The very well-defined rules at school, all of which had a purpose, were quite easy for me to obey; I was almost never punished at school, and from what I remember, the punishments were largely irrelevant because I never got anywhere near doing something that might've resulted in one. That was another thing that helped: Knowing exactly what was expected of me. I actually tried to write a family constitution when I was a young teen, trying to get my family to make predictable rules. (The constitution itself wasn't a set of rules; it was a set of rules for making rules and having family meetings.) Of course it was ignored by my parents, but it does show just how much I wanted a predictable set of rules to live by, how much I wanted to be able to predict what was going to be expected of me.

Rewards and punishments both made things worse for me. If I felt forced, I instinctively rebelled because it made me feel like I was losing my autonomy, which for me is the most frightening feeling in the world, just pure panic. And of course if I were bribed or threatened to do something, the task itself became much more unpleasant to me, and the second I wasn't watched, I'd stop doing it and even begin to actively try to avoid it.

I think it's important to adopt what I call "air traffic control-style communication" when dealing with an aspie, especially an aspie child. This includes how you talk and how you initially react when a child misinterprets or doesn't know something you see as common sense. Consider the following. When a pilot approaches an airport for a landing, communication with the control tower is absolutely critical! If you don't communicate and get clear information, you can overshoot the runway, land on an occupied runway, or collide with another plane coming for a landing. And at the same time, you absolutely have to react with the same calmness and professionalism to a student pilot on his first solo flight the way you would to an expert pilot who just got out of the Air Force. But how do you think they communicate?

Let's look at the following scenario. A pilot wants to land his plane. It's a clear, cloudless day, with good visibility at and around an airport.

Consider this: (everything said in a firm, flat voice)
"Control tower, this is November-nine-four-five-echo-bravo." (that's N945EB)
"November-nine-four-five-echo-bravo, this is control tower. We read you."
"Requesting permission to land on runway six-northwest."
"Negative. Runway six-northwest occupied. Circle airport, proceed to runway four-north."
"Proceeding to runway four-north."
"Thank you. Out."

As opposed to this: (italics show raised voice inflection)
"Control tower, this is November-nine-four-five-echo-bravo." (that's N945EB)
"November-nine-four-five-echo-bravo, this is control tower. We read you."
"Requesting permission to land on runway six-northwest."
"Are you joking!? Can't you see other planes on six-northwest? Circle airport, then go to runway four-north now or will report you the FAA!"
"Circle or go to four-north? And why are you yelling at me? I just want to land my plane."
"Don't take that tone with me! I'm the control tower and I can have your license taken away for not complying with my orders."
"But I just asked if I could land on six-northwest."
"You can't, because I said so! Go to four-north." (but I thought it was because 6NW is occupied by another plane)
"Going to four-north." (suddenly, because the tower said that, not because 4N is where it's safe)
"Thank you. Out."

Obviously, I was being facetious here, but consider what happened here. Even if the pilot overlooked what he was supposed to see himself, the control tower agent is still required to communicate information the same way he would if it were foggy and visibility was near zero. Nothing is assumed or implied, although when the visibility is good, the control tower's priority is checking for air space violators, rather than guiding planes, but they're still required to guide a pilot if their time allows. In the second scenario, the pilot in question would have gotten in trouble just for asking if a particular runway was clear. It doesn't matter if visibility was good. The pilot could have become disoriented due to a headache, and the tower has no way of knowing that, given the fact that all they got for communicating is the radio.

Similarly, aspies don't have any communication tools other than words; things like tone of voice and body language are impaired and therefore unreliable. So it's important to try to filter them out, and respond only or mostly to words when listening to an aspie. This will reduce the need to give out consequences (which is I see strictly as a more politically correct way of saying "punishments") in the first place, due to ridiculous misunderstandings like using the "wrong" tone of voice.

I was just thinking....if Dad is spanking her and being a general big meany, springing punishments on her ect. could it be possible that this is the source of her stress and why she is turning that anger around at other people?....people she is not "afraid" of. Im sorry to imply this but the way you describe your husband, if I was a little girl Id be terrified of him. Yeah, his methods work for him because she is afraid and this fear is probably the root of a lot of her problems.

That... yeah. That's actually quite possible. I think that's part of why I fought so hard against my abusive stepfathers--because I knew that they wanted to turn me into somebody who would obey unquestioningly. The problem was, they were using fear and violence to try to force me to become compliant, and I knew that if I gave in altogether, I would lose my identity, or lose my autonomy, or something of that sort--I don't know; it was mostly emotional. I just knew that if I gave in, it would be way worse than anything they could ever do to me physically or emotionally. While most parents aren't abusive like that, using fear and intimidation can have a similar effect--the child becomes frightened that the parent will try to take their ability to decide to obey the rules. The less I was forced to comply, the less I feared compliance. A polite request from my grandmother would send me scrambling to help out--she didn't force me and she thanked me when I finished in a way that made me feel like I had honestly contributed, rather than simply been ordered to do something by someone who expected to be obeyed because of my lower status.

I know that if my Mother had not shielded me from my Father as much as she did I would have been very angry with her as well. I know that I was the few times she didnt....you have to do something with all that fear and anxiety and sometimes its not very nice!

Are you living in my house?? Actually, I have a son, so I guess it must be a different house

Anyway, my DS is 11 1/2 and been just nasty lately. He is an extremely clingy boy, wants to be with me 24/7 if he could. He needs me to lay with him as he falls asleep, he likes me to help him in the bathroom, all in all, he feels very close to mom. SO - one day when the mood was pretty good, I said:

"Hon, you know that at your age, kids start going through puberty. One of the issues that usually comes up is that kids start wanting some distance from their parents. They want to spend a little less time together. Sometimes kids don't know how to make that happen, so they get nasty. Not really on purpose, but that's how it comes out. Anyway, I have noticed that lately you haven't been very nice to me. It could just be your age, and that's ok. Here's the thing. I don't like it and it doesn't feel good when you're mean to me. So when you're mean, I'm going to go in another room. I don't accept anyone being mean to me."

He didn't like that I would go in another room, but I told him that I deserve to be treated nicely, just like he does, his brother and dad too.

these are realistic consequences. They are connected to the issue, they make sense, they are not punative, they are respectful. Nowhere in the conversation do I say, if you x then you are in trouble and your punishment is y. I just say, it's a normal phase, but I'm gonna take some space.

For us - punsihment is counterproductive and makes things much worse. Even positive reinforcement is a nightmare. We like natural consequences and they go both positive and negative, just depending on what happened.

somebody call the authorities, squirrelflight has stolen my 14 yo son and turned him into her own 10 yo girl.

this is pretty much the behavior of my oldest. he is miserable to be around, everything is a battle, everything i do is wrong, and every day is the worst day of his life.

as for your consequences question... this is the one child where consequences have NEVER been a motivator. teachers, psychs, and school administrators look at me like i am crazy when i say that, but its true, and it has been since he was about 3. his entire goal in the world is to prove me wrong (and he has actually stated this, too!). he will argue until he is blue in the face, even if i prove his argument invalid with logic and reason, he will still continue to argue against me. he is the epitome of the saying, cut off your nose to spite your face.

contrary, thats the word for this behavior. i could say the sky is blue, and he would say its pink, just to disagree with me.

i cant say ive ever found anything that really worked. its gotten better a bit in the past year, but there are still some days where i want to throttle him. to save my own sanity, i usually take the stance of giving him orders rather than requests, like others say, it leaves less room for argument or interpretation. i refuse to argue with him, and will walk away rather than let him try to argue with what ive asked of him. doesnt solve everything, but it makes ME less frustrated at least.

my other two children respond to consequences just fine, even the 5 yo autie altho he has some difficulty with following directions. with my autie, i use "1, 2, 3", and usually by 2 he is towing the line even tho i never say what the consequences are when i get to 3 =P he responds better to rewards than punishments tho. my 7 yo NT is highly motivated by consequences, either punishment or reward.

one thing i will say in regards to tone/attitude, your daughter may not really hear her tone and how it sounds to other people. both my SO and my oldest have this issue, they simply dont understand how their tone comes across. i consider it part of the non-verbal communication difficulties that are just inherent in autism. it may be valuable to videotape your daughter and show her the videos, let her see her facial expressions and hear her voice, and have her evaluate how others perceive them. my autie SO has real difficulty with this, his face and tone get just plain MEAN when he is trying to be stern, and he has no understanding of what his face looks like or how his tone comes across at that time, which is about 10x harsher than he is trying to be.

1. Are there things that she likes that make her feel good? Outlets for her stress? For some kids swinging or spinning or other sensory diet activities can really help them feel better so they are not so uncomfortable in their own skin all the time. For some it is playing video games. See if you can find any activity that really reduces her stress and makes her feel GOOD. You mentioned reading and 1 other activity. Are either of these really helping her de-stress or does it seem like it is just post-poning the outward expression of her emotional state?

It's hard to tell if what she is doing is helpful or not. Sometimes it is and sometimes its just another frustration. I have started a system of mandatory breaks that is going well. Too soon to tell if it makes any difference but for every hour of computer time she has to take a 15min break that is up and moving. She sets a timer for all of this. She likes to spin and does that off and on throughout the day either spinning or just spinning her chair.. LOL

psychohist Thank you for your post .. it was very helpful. I do most of what you suggested not unfortunately most just see me as being permissive and not disciplining. A lot of our problem right now is the ongoing debate of aspergers or just lack of discipline. I completely agree with you on a lot of points. .. On dinner.. that is one of those things that is not an arguement or problem but is time consuming. It can be a 30min process of her choosing her foods. Breakfast is always a breakfast drink, lunch at Jenns is the same everyday (the only things she will eat there) so dinner I let her decide. Her dinner is broken down into carbs from different sources plus 2 protein items. She goes through the fridge and pantry and pulls together her choices. Rarely is there an issue it's just time consuming every evening. I guess bc I had major major food issues as a child I work extra with her here. She is very limited on food between diabetes, pickiness, texture issues, and being a vegetarian. She NEVER eats what I cook for us. LOL

He doesn't get choices because he can't do choices, there are to many variables. What if he makes the wrong choice etc? These are words that he has thrown back at me, and no I can't accommodate all his wants. The only time I will do choices with him is when I have carefully thought through what I am willing and able to do, then those are whats offered.

Another thing I just thought of is, whilst in some ways it's enviable that your daughter is home schooled, she has better chance of getting an education aimed more specifically towards her and her needs and I'm sure her carer is more supportive and accommodating than what she would get in a mainstream school. It's possible that your daughter's stress levels are going to be as high if not higher now because there is no room for her to just be anonymous. I imagine she would need a lot of down time.

It's really hard as a parent to not jump in there and ask questions and to let "rude" behavior slide, parenting an aspie child you have to stop thinking like an NT parent, it comes with a different set of rules. I found with my son, the stress he was showing externally he was feeling 10 x worse on the inside. Good luck with it all you sound like a fantastic mum, that is only trying to do the best you can for your daughter.

yep.. learned this one the hard way too.. LOL choices can seriously backfire. As far as schooling .. she doesnt do well with the other children. they stress her out. Children are loud and unpredictable I suppose. Even Jenn was amazed at the difference when she had Jordan alone for an afternoon with no other children.

I think hormones have a lot to do with teen aspie behavior problems. When I was a teenager, I was quite a handful to the point of having to be hospitalized and then later put in a day treatment program. Something about hormones affect the aspie mind in very powerful ways. I always felt as if my nerves were on fire and the slightest incedent would cause me to really blow up. Nothing in this world is more illogical and ill-tempered that a aspie girl teenager with pms!! My moody behavior did not improve until I was in my early 20’s. After that, for a while, I felt really guilty for being so mean to my mom, but she said she forgave me when I did it. At the end of the day, there is nothing like a mother’s love. Hang in there, it will get better as she gets older. The worst age I have found for aspie girl hormonal behavior problems is between 11-15. After that, things start getting better, but you not out of the woods as far as moodiness goes until early adulthood. Birth control medication might help with the moodiness though.

I agree this is a large part of it.. the moodiness.. LOL

What worked best for me was having it explained why something needed to be done a certain way, and then having it explained how to do it right. If I knew why something needed to be done and how to do it, I didn't have any issues with doing it.

Sometimes of course I had organization/task-switching issues that interfered with my ability to do things that were required of me. But presuming that I was capable of something, if I knew its purpose, I didn't have any issues. The very well-defined rules at school, all of which had a purpose, were quite easy for me to obey; I was almost never punished at school, and from what I remember, the punishments were largely irrelevant because I never got anywhere near doing something that might've resulted in one. That was another thing that helped: Knowing exactly what was expected of me. I actually tried to write a family constitution when I was a young teen, trying to get my family to make predictable rules. (The constitution itself wasn't a set of rules; it was a set of rules for making rules and having family meetings.) Of course it was ignored by my parents, but it does show just how much I wanted a predictable set of rules to live by, how much I wanted to be able to predict what was going to be expected of me.

Rewards and punishments both made things worse for me. If I felt forced, I instinctively rebelled because it made me feel like I was losing my autonomy, which for me is the most frightening feeling in the world, just pure panic. And of course if I were bribed or threatened to do something, the task itself became much more unpleasant to me, and the second I wasn't watched, I'd stop doing it and even begin to actively try to avoid it.

This is what I have found with Jordan. If she knows what to do she will do it with no problem. Punishments and rewards both made things worse. She doesnt really rebel though. Compliance is never an issue.. its' just attitude or not .. LOL

I was just thinking....if Dad is spanking her and being a general big meany, springing punishments on her ect. could it be possible that this is the source of her stress and why she is turning that anger around at other people?....people she is not "afraid" of. Im sorry to imply this but the way you describe your husband, if I was a little girl Id be terrified of him. Yeah, his methods work for him because she is afraid and this fear is probably the root of a lot of her problems.

This could not be further off.. Dad is very patient with her and none of these things are ever a first response. So she is not often punished and rarely spanked which is one pop on the butt and occasionally yelled at when all else fails. The discussion is that Dad has suggest that since these things work as a 'last resort' maybe they should not be the last resort. I understand his POV .. I just disagree. But she is not fearful of her dad.. she does care what he thinks. She has ALWAYS been more cooperative with men since toddlerhood. Not sure why. But he is absolutely NOT her source of stress. Her day away from home is. Really reminding myself this was intended to be helpful but her dad is in no way shape or form abusing or mean to her. He is struggling to deal with a difficult child the same as the rest of us. He walks away more often than he yells and is really making the effort to be more patient in light of the aspergers possibility.

That... yeah. That's actually quite possible. I think that's part of why I fought so hard against my abusive stepfathers--because I knew that they wanted to turn me into somebody who would obey unquestioningly. The problem was, they were using fear and violence to try to force me to become compliant, and I knew that if I gave in altogether, I would lose my identity, or lose my autonomy, or something of that sort--I don't know; it was mostly emotional. I just knew that if I gave in, it would be way worse than anything they could ever do to me physically or emotionally. While most parents aren't abusive like that, using fear and intimidation can have a similar effect--the child becomes frightened that the parent will try to take their ability to decide to obey the rules. The less I was forced to comply, the less I feared compliance. A polite request from my grandmother would send me scrambling to help out--she didn't force me and she thanked me when I finished in a way that made me feel like I had honestly contributed, rather than simply been ordered to do something by someone who expected to be obeyed because of my lower status.


again.. not applicable here.. No abuse.. Not treated as a 'lower status'.. And compliance is not an issue for us. She is compliant but difficult about and asking nicely versus demanding makes no difference. A bad attitude day means a bad attitude regardless of anything else. A good day is fine with the same circumstances.

azurecrayon yes.. it sounds we have the same kid stomping around our house lol.. hahhaha

--- Whew!! I think I answered everything! LOL

It does sound like Asperger or something similar to me.


Wow, that's a lot of dietary constraints. Diabetes - type 1 or type 2? Is she vegetarian for moral reasons or health reasons? Vegetarian diets don't tend to work well for diabetics because they are generally high in carbohydrates.

Are you certain that she actually enjoys the 30 minute process of picking out dinner? If she's aspie, it's quite possible she'd be just as happy having the same thing for dinner every day, just like breakfast and lunch. Then she might be able to have 30 more minutes of alone time, which might be helpful.

Her and her dad are both type 1 diabetics. She has never tried meat. Cant stand the smell of it cooking. It has bothered her since toddlerhood. Now of course at 10, its an animal rights issue to her but in reality she has never even tried any meat. She does like yogurt, milk, cheese, peanut butter, and most nuts though so we include those a lot. Dad and I are NOT vegetarians.. lol.. when she was five she went on a little field trip to the mexican restaurant.. she ate chips and lectured the entire group on the vegetarianism.. hahahahaaa I'm just sure she is an aspie.. it takes all the things I have seen forever with her and it just makes sense of it. Dad and I also both have a lot of the tendencies too so personally I feel we are a very aspie family and so we ALL take lots of alone time.

As for picking out her dinner choices.. its her choice to. She has a lot of alone time once she gets home being an only child and all. We get home around 3-4pm and she is left alone until dinner at 7 and then off and on until bedtime at 10. The she is usually reading, drawing, or making things out of clay for another hour or so after that in her room. I generally leave her to do what she wants and be alone and am 'available' if she asks me to do anything with her or whatever. So my approach is pretty much to leave her alone as much as possible and whenever she initiates any kind of interaction I'm up for it.. Usually it's mad libs, or a movie, or listening to her ramble on and on about whatever game she is playing.. LOL or some joke that I dont get.. hhahaha Her sense of humor can be very odd.

She wanted this really cute little bookmark that says.. what would you attempt if you knew you couldnt fail.. I thought it was cute.. found out later she thought it was hilarious because if you couldnt fail it should say 'do' instead of 'attempt'.. word plays are huge in my house.. lol That and spelling and math drills. Anytime we are waiting in line, brushing her hair, getting lab work, etc I just start tossing spelling words or math drills and she will do fine.. She's an excellent speller.. at her last testing she got in the 99th percentile for spelling.

and thats another oddity.. she was very advanced in the 'verbal' side of an IQ test but a bit below average for the non verbal reasoning side.. Testing lady said that was very rare and could be a sign of a problem but she wasnt sure as she had never actually seen it.. saw somewhere that this is a common result for aspies.. apparently for the average person the numbers from the two sides should be pretty similar.. hers were about a 30pt difference between them

I have certainly spent a LOT of time thinking about this of late with my 7 year old AS son.

Not to cop-out but it really depends on what you mean by "effective".

If you mean "will it help them become functional adults able to live in a world where all choices have consequences" - then, yes, they are very effective.

If you mean "will it change behaviour in the short term" - then, it largely depends on the child. For my son, no, they are not effective at all.

My current thinking is putting consequences into the perspective of the Ross Green philosophy - "Children behave if they can" as oppose to "Children behave if they want to". Consequences really fall into the "make them want to" category. But for us, I know my son wants to, he's just missing the tools to do it. Consequences won't provide him the tools.

But that does not mean we don't have consequences, just means we look at them as a long term tool for development, not a short term tool for behavioural change.