Please share **coping skills** that work for children

Post Reply New Topic

Hello,

My son is almost 10 years. He has autism and is high functioning and verbal. But he can get very angry / very upset for a variety of reasons, then he screams, gets physical / cries and then sometimes even talks about wanting to die

He needs to have coping skills / coping mechanisms.

PLEASE share coping skills / coping strategies that work for your child, to help him/her when they are very upset.

Thank you.

What makes the biggest difference for my son is diet. Certain foods make him highly irritable. These include oats, gluten, sugar and dairy.

We also try to notice what his triggers are and strategize to minimize them before they cause irritation. During a meltdown, there isn't as much you can do but pray and sympathize.

One of the things that helped me most was understanding the meltdown cycle, and learning to intervene at the early warning signs.

As already mentioned, you have to get your child into a coping process BEFORE he melts down.

See if you can figure out your son's warning signs, indicating that he is stressed and heading into overload. For my son, his movements would get more stiff, his eyes would start to light up as if he was amused, and he often would try harder and harder to control everyone and everything around him.

THIS is the time to engage your child in coping skills.

Most likely you already know what your son wants to do to cope, but may not have recognized the function of the behavior. Think about movements and activities he seeks that you might find odd or weird, and that are most likely somewhat physical and repetitive. Common ones include pacing, rocking, chewing and hand movements.

Moving into a calmer, safer environment also helps. Or a favored activity that requires focus and concentration.

I recommend looking at the threads linked in our parenting index (sticky thread, above) that discuss meltdowns. You will also find a breakdown of the meltdown process in the free book available for download at ASDStuff.com .

Once I knew my son's stress signals, I was able to teach them to him, and he was able to take responsibility for diverting behavior and preventing meltdowns. It was a huge relief to reach that stage. It has been years, literally, since we've seen a problem.

But a few things you need to do. One, is accept it at face value when your child learns to tell you he is not coping. It is more important for him to learn to self-calm and recognize his own stress factors than it is to get to school on time. To get anywhere on time. And so on. You need to invest in the process. Eventually, you will know that certain activities are simply not something your child should engage in, no matter how much you want him to and no matter how much he appears to like it. Some places need to be steered clear of. One thing is for certain: they do not want to melt down anymore than we want to witness it. It is worse for them than for us.

Oh yes, what did I do when a meltdown happened? For my son, who finds comfort in hugs, it was helpful to just hold him regardless of how much he fought, mostly to let him get it all out safely. Or to get him moved into his own room, his personal safe place. We had the issue resolved before he got too large and too strong for me to handle. Not everyone has that option since some children are very strong, and not all children can learn self-mitigation, but now is the time to put it at top priority.

We did also decide that he seemed to be sensitive to soy and have avoided foods with soy in them ever since. Not very scientific, but the simple logic is that no one behaves their best if they don't feel well, and lots of people today seem to have different foods that simply do not affect them well. Keeping a food log would help you figure out if anything is at play there.

Learn his triggers. Also, talk to him when he is calm. Ask him about his day, if he would like to get his feelings out, so on. Sometimes, kids can't be verbal with their feelings. I know I had to draw. One time, I was in a special school, and they had us hit very soft mats as a way to get out our frustrations. It also physically wore us out.

Note: My parents were not nice and helpful, so what I'm saying may not work. I'm only going based on what I wished my own parents did at that age, especially when I got violent. Mostly, if I couldn't calm down, the goal was to get me calm. From there, I wish my family would have tried to allow me to get my feelings out.

When you read posts at Wrong Planet there is quite a bit from adults who have ASD about wanting to die. I think that comes from the world smashing at us that we aren't acceptable. Sometimes the effort becomes too much, and if you then hear that you've failed, again, when you KNOW you were doing your best, going on feels too hard. Maybe the effort you put in isn't obvious, but when you're trying and people don't see it and say to try, or try harder, that will lead to falling apart.

The coping skill that helped my child is help learning to communicate in a fashion understandable to adults and accepted by adults. Because adults, not peers, have been who she depends on. You may be able to have a limited impact on the frustrations from your son's school day, but mostly, what you can do is more to find ways to help him feel safe somewhere, then try to expand it.

I think maybe before adding coping skills, watch what coping skills he has now and celebrate those with him, talk to him about how what he is doing works, counter the societally pervasive demand that he change because he is unacceptable the way he is (I am not saying you do this, only that perhaps you can help counter the world). And when you have made certain he sees that you appreciate his hard work in keeping himself together, you will find he listens to suggestions to try this or that you might suggest to be even more together.

(Imagine your reaction to your boss saying "great job, could you emphasis this more" and imagine your reaction to "this is a poor job and is not acceptable". For most people, one works harder for "great job". And for most people, one argues when told one's efforts are unacceptable. I understand you want your son to change, I just always needed to catch myself when I criticized a problem area in my child and she'd get more disagreeable, and to remember she isn't just a child, she's a person, and takes things literally, and deserves far more appreciation than criticism as she in many ways works much harder to accomplish things like a conversation than most people have to. Only if she had just run 10 miles, people would offer her water and snacks and a shower, but they don't really see the effort that went into having a conversation, so no extra support for doing it.)

I don't know if I'm being clear, but I know for myself and my child being told we aren't doing enough is demotivating, and being shown respect for effort and capability motivates more of that.

DW as usual is making such good points, and says things better than I could, but I also want to paraphrase what she I think said---help your child learn to tell you and other adults when he is not coping. And then accept, and to the extent you can, encourage and help other adults to accept, when your son tells you he is not coping.

Because being overwhelmed to this extent isn't and shouldn't be a child problem to solve on his own. And the only way we can shift it to being an adult problem and solve it for him so he learns to solve it for himself is when we believe him that he is becoming overwhelmed and he can really see we take on the problem that is too much for him. So he can give it up to someone else and stay in control.

We relay on a lot of scaffolding. By this I mean the first thing we did when he was really young was we removed all predictable triggers, and so all we had to deal with was the stuff we could not anticipate in advance. That was plenty. Things like cartoon characters saying their abc's and being interrupted mid-stream would set him off, to give one example.

Then we would do what we could to facilitate self-calming, but he still doesn't do well at this at 9. He is a lot better, though than he was. Once he was old enough to reason and started to understand what we could and could not control, it started to go easier. Then we were able to add in new stressors, gradually, when we thought he could handle them. We are still working on this. We bought some emotion books, and I am going to try some more specific communication strategies this summer.

Summer is much more relaxed for us, even now that I am homeschooling. I don't like to change things mid-stream during the school year if I can help it. When our son was in public school, it was next to impossible to try new things b/c the school wanted to be in control of strategies, and there was too much un-scaffolded stress there.

Edited for literacy reasons.

Last edited by ASDMommyASDKid on 03 May 2014, 2:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'll throw in a plug for the books by Ross W Greene -- Lost at School and The Explosive Child. His philosophy is rather than focus on developing coping skills, identify and solve the problems that are causing your child to have meltdowns. Solve the problems, and he won't have as much to cope with.

Last edited by zette on 03 May 2014, 5:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I find with my daughters (16 and 12) that doing less works well, with sticking to one event a day (such as just school or just shopping or just outing) with no added extra things and lots of calm down time on the computer.

When my daughters are suicidal I find reminding them about all the possibilities of nice things in the future helps, all the things of their special interests they can get, different pets they might own one day, places to visit- helps them be brave about their 'bad day'.

One of my friends had a good idea, however, they are an adult. The idea was to limit themselves to only 3 major actions in the day. So, school would be one. Homework might be another. Then, one chore would equal three. This would prevent meltdowns and/or getting to overwhelmed. It seems to work good for her, and she used to be VERY prone to meltdowns and has a lot of other physical problems.

The key is knowing your kid and what his/her limitations are, but also keeping an eye out for ways to expand those abilities. On the weekends, we normally try to limit our errands to a maximum of three different stores. (It took us a lot of work to build up to that.) He seems to handle it better, these days, so very rarely we will try four. We make sure it is short, and we only do it when we can tell him that if we do four stores today, he can spend all of the next day at home. If he says he cannot manage it, we divide the chores into two days. We do not do it often b/c it is a lot to ask of him. So far, so good, though.

Working on emotional IQ helped Dd. Now we are working on "the moment". If one negative thing happens, she tends to doom the whole day and think of all the bad things that have happened to her. So we are working on identifying negative events as "moments" that have or will pass. So, instead of stating "I'm having a bad day" she's starting to say "I had a bad moment, it is in the past, and I am going to let it go." Works with somethings, like going to the dentist or Dr appt.

Now she will let me know that she is exhausted because of school - mile run test during PE or something happened at school (fighting with friends), then I try to cancel any extra activities for the day and she'll spend alone time in her room. If I try to force her to do anything, she will have a meltdown because she is spread thin that day. I definitely have to let her unwind after school, because she is pretty exhausted, before we go anywhere or she starts homework. I also let her know the schedule of the day, the night before and the morning of. That way she is more prepared of any changes in schedule and is less likely to be upset by them.

what helped me the most growing up was getting completely away from the situation and doing something else. if I was left to stew on what ever was setting me off I would definitely go into a meltdown or a shutdown

First time DD wanted to die she was 7 or 8. The way she saw it was that her classmates had perfect lives with lots of friends and she just couldn't get accepted and then the birthday party invitations dried up too

She will be 11 next month. We've come a long way. She changed schools and is in special education now. Academically she feels she is learning again and emotionally she has been uphill since she changed schools (7 months now). The school has an active policy for dealing with playground politics and she has now found her place in the group.
Routine helps enormously.
Diet can make a big difference too. I believe in TCM food energetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_food_therapy and foods, herbs or spices that move (liver) Qi are good for dealing with anger. I am trying to teach her to listen to her body. She recognizes that coca cola makes her busy and accepts it easier when I don't allow her any.

She has learnt to recognize when she gets overloaded and deals with it as best as she can. At her new school they have a time-out room so when she does lose it there is not the stigma that was at her mainstream school as most of the kids in her new school have ended up in time-out room at some point

She has a special interest in horses and I have always believed it is something she could take into adulthood if she wanted it badly enough and have tried to encourage her without strangling her. She wants to do her first rider certificate this year as she will be old enough in September. It really gives her a sort of focus. That and her love for fashion. At one point she said she wanted to be a equestrian clothing designer

She was told of her diagnosis more or less after she got it on the assumption that she will have to learn to deal with it asap as it was already affecting her life in ways beyond my control. I have regular meetings with her therapists and address any issues I have. I am very open to her about communication me and the therapists have. because I tell her so much she rarely has the feeling I hold things back for her but obvously I do.

To me it is all about expectations and the therapists help me to word the expectations in such a way that they make sense to DD. After comparing myself to other mothers for some years it just wore me out in the end... I think what helped me most was to know that the expectations I had of DD were realistic for her abilities.

-hand-flapping

-spinning

-yelling (preferably in a location that minimizes the impact on others)

-bumping into things (similar disclaimer as above)

-favorite toy

-cuddling

-change of environment

-private place (even if it's a bathroom)

-being in nature

-walk/run

-playing with sand, sticks, or rocks

-finger labyrinth

-tiny music box

-headphones

DS likes to get into a small space when he's stressed. He sits in a closet, or goes under the couch or under his bed.