Struggling with transitions

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I am the parent of a 5 year old with moderate to severe autism. He is semi verbal, but not conversational. He's into fans and electricity, and is generally awesome.

Anywho, we've been struggling ro make transitions smoothly. For example, today he wouldn't leave a play area voluntarily. We used a timer to help get him ready. But still he wouldn't get into the car. He would say, "I can't" but wasn't able to elaborate. I offered to let him walk, or carry him. He was able to tell me he wanted to walk, but then said "I can't." I eventually carried him to the car, where we continued to struggle to get the seatbelts on. This kind of thing is fairly common for us these days.

Has anyone experienced something like this either from his side or as a parent? I'd love to better understand what the hang up is so I can accommodate him better.

Thanks for you help!!
M.

Asperger kids may not do well with sudden change. For this reason it can be helpful to use notifications, alerts, and warnings so that any change can be better anticipated. For example, saying “we are going to get ready to go in the car in 10 minutes” followed by “we are going to get ready to go in the car in five minutes”, etc. can be useful to take a little of the edge off making transitions.

Thanks!

We have been using a visual timer to get him from the play area to the shoe area (he doesn't go voluntarily but does let me pull him by his feet without screaming too much), but maybe each area deserves it's own timer - play to shoes to car to seatbelts.

Well try it out!

Update: unfortunately timers are not working and we are now seeing this happen more often. I'm concerned because he bangs his head when upset. Also we have been struggling to get a seat belt on him, which has its own safety concerns.

Anywhoo... I thought I'd check with this group to see if there is anything I've missed.

Thanks!!

The trick to raising an Asperger child is to help him learn how to control himself.

This usually requires both carrot and stick. For a stick we found two options. For melt-downs we had the child sit on a chair until they regained their self-control. For out right refusal to comply with instruction or for lying, we would use a paint stirrer and give three slaps on the back of the hand. (A paint stirrer is an effective device in that it is almost impossible to inflict any damage)

For more routine consequences, we would ask the child if they wanted three swats on the hand or five minutes on the chair. They would almost always select three swats on the hand as it is over so quickly. For example,

“Were you supposed to hit your sister?”
“No”
“What were you supposed to do instead?”
“Say help Mama”
“Do you want three swats or five minutes in the chair?”
The child would then hold out their hand.

This scenario would be repeated hundreds of times for various consequential incidents but with reducing frequency as the child ages and learns to take responsibility for controlling their own behavior.

The use of a timer may automate the process, but fail to fully engage the child with understanding his role in the event. The use of consequences helps the child understand the usefulness of taking responsibility.

Here is a link to a parenting booklet for Aspergers that may be helpful.

http://christianpioneer.com/blogarchiev ... g%20v2.pdf

If your browser doesn’t open a pdf document, you may wish to right click “save as”.

Excellent, thank you! I'll work with his therapist to incorporate a carrot/stick method. He's highly motivated by fans and extension cords -and denial of those may be the kind of "stick" we need.

I appreciate everyone's help with our situation!!

M.

That’s textbook child abuse.

I agree. I am very surprised to see this kind of advice here in WP - I doubt most members would accept these methods. OP, please do not employ these methods on your child. The likely result would be to damage your relationship with your child, and give him negative mental health effects.

Very Lovaas like....

There is one person on this site that may be able to help you. I would recommend you get a copy of his book called "Eikona Bridge". His name is Jason Lu.

Perhaps the real child abuse is failing to teach a child how to have self-discipline, to anticipate and deal with consequences, to develop self-control, and to master his ability to deal with his environment.

The Asperger child is doubly in need of such guidance as his inner directed life is less subject to influence from social cues and environmental encounters.

It is easy to see the attractiveness of a sort of “care bear” view of parenting. However, the failure to teach a child self-discipline leads to a sort of millennial snowflake with a crippling inability to deal with reality. While this philosophy permeates our culture today, those few parents who still wish to help their children develop a greater ability to function more fully in life may wish to consider more traditional methods of child rearing.

Abuse is abuse. I know someone very close to me who was “diclipined” the same way you are suggesting and now as an adult they struggle with PTSD and sucidial thoughts.

Thanks for the input, everyone. We will be cautious with the method we use and distinguish between meltdown and tantrum. Our situation is more meltdown than tantrum, and i want to be sensitive to that.

Please take a look at http://www.eikonabridge.com/fun_and_facts.pdf

Autism is all about the mind getting stuck on one particular thought. Once you connect the children's negative world to their positive world, the issues disappear.

During the moment of negativity, you need to collect evidence. For that, at your son's age, that means you need to draw a picture to capture the situation, at the bad moment, or immediately afterwards.

Then, the best way to talk to your son is to take him our for fun activities, on a one-on-one basis. Something outside routine. My son likes elevators and Tesla cars, so I would take him to shopping malls. My daughter enjoys ice cream. Anyway, see what makes your son happy. Draw a new picture of his happy face. While he is happy, you bring up the previous picture that you have drawn while he was sad/mad, and talk to him, ask him how he felt before. Explain to him that "sometimes life is tough, sometimes life is fun."

Another time you can talk to him about all this is at bedtime. Show the two pictures, and ask him how he felt in each situation.

Next time tantrum strikes, show him the happy picture. Remind him that "sometimes life is tough, sometimes life is fun."

Tantrums/Meltdowns have always been the easiest thing for me to solve. I have never failed once to remove each type of tantrum from my children, permanently. In the example of my son not wanting to take a bath because he was playing computer games, his tantrum simply disappeared ... never came back even once. Before I intervened, my wife had the same issue happen again and again. She couldn't get rid of my son's tantrum. After I intervened, his bath-time tantrum was gone, for good.

We had a whole routine for transitions with my son.

5 minute warning
1 minute warning
30 second warning
two rounds of the abc song ending in, "now its time to leave with me"

There is a difference between teaching a child about discipline and consequences for intentional bad behavior (tantrums) and punishing a child needlessly for behavior entirely out of their control (meltdowns). If the child knows, understands, and is able to follow a rule, sure, enforce it. But not everyone is capable of learning or understanding or following all the rules all the time as much as they might want to and as much as you beat them for breaking the rules.