Hi everyone,
New here...
This maybe a crazy question but here it goes anyway-
Our daughter has recently been diagnosed with
Sensory Integration Deficits
ADHD
ODD
OCD
and Anxiety
When your child acts out- How do you know if it is from their issues OR if they are in deed seeing how far they can push you?
I guess my husband and I are having a difficult time with discipline... We have rules and TRY not to go overboard but at the same time I feel the things she is dealing with is what is causing her to act out to begin with.... I DONT want that to be an excuse for her to misbehave so How do you deal with this on a daily basis ?
It is so so hard to know. I'm sure I've made a million mistakes when deciding if it's SPD related or my son being a kid.
My husband does not tolerate backtalk, or being "fresh." Unfortunately, I have yet to find a way to explain this concept to our older son. He just doesn't seem to get it. Hubby will give him a timeout for backtalk. Then he cries that he doesn't understand what he did wrong, that teachers at school want you to answer back when they talk to you. I try to explain that replying and talking back are different but I'm not finding a clear explanation. This is something we're still working on.
Once you've settled into the diagnosis and therapies, you'll start to see when they can't help what they're doing, can see that they are reacting to something in their environment. Sometimes you won't know what the trigger was but you'll still know.
With my older son, a light touch sometimes caused a fight response in him and he would punch that person. I would have to be on constant watch when other children were around and jump in quickly if I saw it was about to happen. Remove him from the situation ASAP. Luckily, as he has gotten older, it doesn't happen nearly as often.
For me, it's just learning his triggers and how he responds to those. Then learning to prevent a problem before it happens.
Thanks Angela and Lynn
our daughter right now is going thru a demanding/ bossy tone of voice... We normally make her back up and ask in an appropriate way. In this situation I can tell she is just pushing us- in others, its not as clear lol
I have certain rules that are "always the rule" - good manners, respect, kindness toward animals (my son has 3 cats) but others, in areas where I know he stresses, we flex when needed. Example: I caught him clearly lying to me the other day, and lying is against the "always" rules, so there had to be punishment, but it had to be punishment that wouldn't cause further problems. I told him to sit on his bed (quiet, dimly lit room) until he was ready to tell me the truth. He missed his swimming lesson, but finally after 2 hours of time out (he's 11) he owned up to the truth, had to clean up the mess he'd made, and the crime was forgiven.
I think forgiveness, explicitly letting the child know the episode is over, is really important to SPD kids. Mine will obsess on his mistakes unless I make it clear "you did the crime, you did the time, we're done now."