87-Parent Consulting-Samantha

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Transcript:

Samantha Foote: [00:00:00] Welcome to Every Brand is Different, the podcast where we celebrate the unique world of neurodiversity. We are your hosts, Samantha Foote, a neurodivergent board certified music therapist and mom to three kids of ADHD and autism, and Lauren Ross, an ally to the neurodivergent community with over 10 years of experience supporting children and adults with autism.

This podcast is for parents like you. Navigating the world of neurodiversity with love and compassion. Together we'll create a world where every brain is valued and celebrated. We're excited to embark on this enlightening journey with you.

Welcome to the Every Brain is Different podcast. Lauren and I are here with Samantha and Samantha, will you please introduce yourself? And we are here for parent consulting. So let us know what you need help with or what your question is.

Samantha: So I have, he just turned five. He is diagnosed with autism level two. Lately, and honestly for all of his life, he's been a [00:01:00] very aggressive little gut kid. Even when he was like one, if something wasn't going his way, he'd start bashing his head into the ground.

Lately, now that he's bigger, it's honestly really starting to hurt. So we've been looking for different ways to, in that moment, help him out more, because when he gets to that point, it happens like this and you could see my son leave his body. There is no connection to him anymore. And then the other thing we've been facing a lot lately is lying.

And it's both the silly and normal stuff that five year olds lie about, but he told us that his school left him outside by himself for hours. When really, he raced and pushed the other kids out of the way, so they told him he had to go to the back of the line and go in last. So he was outside by himself for maybe ten seconds.

Samantha Foote: Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. So if you had like a crystal ball and you could tell the future, what would you want your future to look like with this [00:02:00] situation in six months?

Samantha: So I would like, I don't mind that he gets mad. I don't mind that he gets angry. I don't like that he hurts other people. So we've been working really hard on if he feels like he needs to hit something, we have a pillow, we have a safe place he can go to, and he can go pound on that all he wants.

As well as learning, like, lying about stuff like that can get him and us in very big trouble. We've had CPS called on us because of lies he's told others.

Samantha Foote: Oh, wow.

Samantha: Yeah, realizing just, like, the magnitude of what he's doing. I know it's a lot for a little guy, but you can't tell people, like, grandma hits him.

Samantha Foote: Yes, that is not okay to do that. That does cause a lot of issues. Okay, so I have some suggestions, some things that we can work through, see how you feel about it. [00:03:00] With the aggression, have you used social stories to show Johnny is sad, Johnny is mad? This is what Johnny can do when he's mad and just, have you ever used social stories before?

Samantha: We've tried it before when he was younger. We haven't tried it now that he is a little bit more aware of the stuff around them.

Samantha Foote: Yeah, so there are things that you can do to make social stories and I would suggest maybe putting his name in the story and then letting him draw the pictures. Does he like drawing or anything like that?

Samantha: He's not a huge drawer or colorer. Yeah. If they're If I can get him stuff like glue. Like Popicle figures and like a pom pom to make a person. He would do that. He just isn't good with coloring.

Samantha Foote: Okay. Yeah, that's a great idea. Just to get things more hands on things. He can do the physical things. And then maybe [00:04:00] read some stories about what other people can do when they're upset.

And then go from there. If you use the Diane Alber books, they teach, about happiness, about sadness, about anxiety, anger, love, and calm. And you can teach about all those different emotions. So, if he's showing his frustration, he might not understand any of the emotions. I don't know. Maybe he doesn't understand what's coming into his body, and so he doesn't understand what to do with that, and so that gets him frustrated.

Samantha: So he's pretty good with his emotions. Okay. He's been in developmental preschool since, right, when he turned three. So he's going into almost his third year of it. And there are times where he looks at me and he's like, “I'm feeling so frustrated.” And I'm like, okay, buddy, let's…let's figure out a way together that we can help you with that, or it's okay to be frustrated.

I get frustrated, but even his teacher says is that sometimes it's out [00:05:00] out of the blue. He'll be sitting there for circle time and a kid will walk past him and he'll just whack him across the head.

Samantha Foote: Yeah,

Samantha: I don't, it's, it's very, I just feel like he has a very, very small cup. So if his sock isn't fitting right and then it's a little too loud in the classroom and that kid blocks his view in that split second, he's just…

Samantha Foote: Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. And so maybe just getting a little bit more curious about what's going on right before he does something. So like you said, it might be just a bunch of different things and his cup is small and so he can't He can't accept a lot of different unexpected things coming at him, and so maybe helping him learn, Hey, when your sock is too itchy or your sock isn't fitting right, come and tell me and then we'll solve that.

And so he's more aware of what's going on. So before it builds up and he gets frustrated, Then [00:06:00] he can take care of those things before they get too frustrating for him.

Samantha: And then the way he's acting has really been amping up. So there's been two incidents in the last week where his sister and him are in the middle of a fight, an adult handling it, and honestly this last time he was, he was in the right.

So I was talking to his sister, letting her know, I'm not going to take the toy away from him, we have a timer going, it's got to wait your turn. He came over and knocked her to the ground, grabbed her head and started banging her onto the ground. Yeah, just straight in her head and so I told him like that could that could really hurt. She's two that could really hurt your little sister and he's I don't know why I'm like this I'm so sorry. And then we work on healing the situation he has to go out and check on her ask her what he can do to make. You know, he's really good at the steps for like repair afterwards. But it was like he was happily playing with it was like one of those little drawing tablets and the next thing I know he was just on [00:07:00] top of her. And I wonder if maybe it was like too loud for him, or…

Samantha Foote: Yeah, and so getting him to recognize what's going on in his body before it gets to that point might be something to start with.

Where you're like, oh, it's too loud in here. I need noise canceling headphones. Before it gets too loud and his shirt has a tag in it and the lights are too bright. So like fixing one thing at a time. So helping him recognize, like maybe do body checks. How is your body feeling right now? And just even do a body check when he's not feeling upset or anything.

And you can just say, how is your body feeling? And then he can pause and then maybe his sock is not fitting correctly. And so you can, you can fix the sock and then move on because now you've, you've fixed that thing and you poured a little bit out of the cup. Exactly. And so now he has more of a tolerance to, to handle things [00:08:00] when unexpected things happen.

But I would suggest maybe just starting with that body check and then doing body checks every once in a while, even when he's totally fine. It sounds like you were, like you were saying before that his tolerance is just low, and so when things build up, he can't handle it, and then he reacts in that way, especially considering how he feels afterwards, like he doesn't mean to do it.

And you were saying you could just see him leave his body basically. Yeah. And I have seen clients do that. I've seen my own kids do that. And so you're not going to reason with him in the moment of the frustration. Our job is to catch it before it escalates too much. And so I really think maybe trying the body check ins to make sure everything's okay.

Is it too loud in here for you? Are the lights too bright? Is your shirt okay? And ask him questions. Don't just [00:09:00] be like, Oh, how does your body feel? Because then he might be like, Oh yeah, it's fine. And let me get back to what I was doing. So how does that feel? Is that something that you feel comfortable trying?

Samantha: I think so, yeah, and we've noticed lately, like, he's starting to get more verbal, like, his shoes, like, the tongues of his shoes have been driving him nuts. And so, once he realizes that's down in his foot, then his shirt collar is too tight, and then his pants are too itchy. So we've been trying to catch him before it even spirals, like, okay, buddy, I noticed your shoe tongue is falling.

Let's get that fixed for you.

Samantha Foote: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome.

Samantha: Get him also to recognize it himself. Not just, cause I'm not, I'm not always with him.

Samantha Foote: Yeah. And so just going over that. Hey, maybe check in with your body every once in a while, seeing how it feels. And you can even tell his teachers maybe every half hour, do you want to ask him how his body's feeling?

I'm going to go [00:10:00] ahead and say, Hey, how's your body feeling right now? And just cause I know in my son's school, his teacher would just check in with him about his work. Like, how are you doing on your work? Cause he's like in fourth grade. So she just goes by, how's it going? How, how about you do these three problems right here?

If he gets too overwhelmed with the whole sheet. And so they can just go by and say, Hey, how's your body feeling? Is it too loud? Is it not loud enough? Can you hear okay? Like all of those different things and they don't have to do it. Doesn't have to be like minutes long. It could be like a 30 second check in and then he could be like, Oh, well, my shoes aren't fitting correctly.

The tongues are down and then because. A lot of times, like, it's unconscious things that we're processing. Yeah. And then when the kid walks by, and that's the one thing that pushes him over the edge, so then he's gonna push the kid because all these other things are going on under his radar.

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Lauren Ross: In addition to that, because sometimes it sounds like it's a lot of sensory things, like having a visual aid of a body, like that's stressed. And so you pinpoint, okay, is it the shoes? Is it the shirt or the collar that's itchy? And having that in addition, when doing those like body checks, I think could be helpful as well.

Because then he has a visual [00:12:00] aid too. As a reminder of things that have bothered him to check on those things.

Samantha: Yeah, we've noticed because he has, he also goes to the bathroom, like there's one day I counted in a three hour period, he went to the bathroom to pee 40 times. And we've ruled out everything medical at this point, it's just something behavioral as far as we can tell.

But I think the second he realizes he might need to pee, he just takes himself and goes and I think even like checking him. Hey, can you hold this a little bit longer?

Samantha Foote: yeah, just checking in to be like, okay, you need a pee But do you really need to pee right now?

Samantha: It's funny because we notice if he's going to the bathroom a lot and we're having more behavioral issues.

You know, it's just probably all tied in together.

Samantha Foote: Yeah, you might consider neurodivergent kids often have that interoception that's either way more than their peers or way under. [00:13:00] So they either feel their insides a lot more. Or they don't fill them as much and so that's part of going to the bathroom is he probably feels it way before a typical person would feel it and so then it bothers him because he's like, Oh, I have to pee.

So that makes sense of why that would happen. But that's so frustrating for him.

Samantha: You're right. He was really easy to potty train.

Samantha Foote: Yeah, yeah, I bet.

Samantha: He hated the feeling of being wet. He never had an accident.

Samantha Foote: Yeah, but that makes sense because that could be going on. He realized he has to pee and then his shoes aren't right and then just everything builds from there.

That's just another thing that might make him frustrated. Yeah, so moving over to the lying, I had a few thoughts and once again, it's just getting curious because I don't know what's causing it. These are some things that I was [00:14:00] thinking. It sounds like he might just be wanting the attention from the lie.

That's called negative attention seeking and so if you can just really like pile on the positive connection or positive attention and then when he does tell the truth like even if it's over a small thing like You ask him how his day was and he told you how it was be like, Oh, thank you so much for telling me the truth.

And just really building on that and then building on the positive connection activities. And so spending quality time with him, really giving him your attention when he's with you. And I'm not saying you don't give him quality attention. I'm not saying you don't give him quality time.

Samantha: My perception of it is different than his perception of it.

Samantha Foote: Like, he might be thinking, oh, you spend a lot of time with my sister, or you spend a lot of time doing this, and I want more of your attention. [00:15:00] And so, just thinking about different ways that you could increase the positive connection activities, because I really like the old way of saying it was attention seeking behavior, and now it's connection seeking behavior.

So really, he's not just wanting your attention, like he wants that connection with you. And he might be seeing it in a completely different way than you see how you're giving him attention. So that was one of the things. What were you thinking, Lauren?

Lauren Ross: So I kind of dug into this this morning a lot actually, and you mentioned in the, the profile sheet that you potentially suspect ADHD and all of my research kind of led to that specifically with children, because a lot of times the autism diagnosis, it's not like the line isn't necessarily a really big trait in that diagnosis, but I kind of looked into it and[00:16:00] that might be kind of part of that as a potential, so just something keep in mind, but a lot of the things I read, in addition to that attention seeking, it's also a fear response and so like you kind of mentioned like he lied and said that his teacher left him outside.

Well, the truth was that he did something naughty and then got sent to the back of the line, and so it might be the fear of that punishment or whatever that might be of. I did something naughty, so now I'm going to tell this lie to get out of it. But my, so my boyfriend has severe ADHD and I asked him when he was a child, did you do these types of things?

And it was a resounding yes. And a lot of it was a fear response or a trauma response. And I'm not saying that he has a specific trauma or whatever, but just something to maybe think about and keep in mind.

Samantha: Trying to really pay attention to [00:17:00] like when he lies and what's like, what's the whole picture.

So that would make sense because like the other night, if they've been good for sitting, if they sat at the table, they ate most of their dinner, they get a piece of candy. But he chose not to eat his dinner that night, so he didn't get a piece of candy. So he came running to me, because dad was the one handling him, he came running to me and said, Daddy said I can never have candy again.

Can you get daddy in trouble? And I was like, I could hear the conversation there, buddy. Daddy didn't say that. Daddy said he can't have candy tonight. We can try again tomorrow. But it felt like he was trying to get his dad in bigger trouble. So I wouldn't realize that he was the one in trouble.

Samantha Foote: Yeah. And that I like Lauren, what you said about understanding the why behind the lie.

So is it to get other people in trouble that he's mad at? Cause maybe he was mad at his teacher when she put him at the back of the line, and so he wanted to get her in trouble, he wanted to get his dad in trouble, or is it a fear of punishment that he's going to be punished, and so he's going to lie because he doesn't want to be [00:18:00] punished, and then there's anxiety, did he actually hear You're never gonna have candy again, or is that just what he thought when when he was told you're not gonna have candy tonight Maybe there is anxiety that oh, I'm never gonna have candy again or something like that Or was there a fear that? He was gonna be left outside when he's in the back of the line that someone was gonna forget about him. Anxiety and the way that kids perceive what we say is sometimes totally different than how we perceive what we're saying.

And so with the lying, I would just get curious and do what you're doing already, look for patterns. And when he's doing it, is he lying when maybe you haven't been paying attention to him as much as you normally do? Or is he lying about things that he's done so he doesn't get in trouble?

Or was he afraid that you were going to get him in [00:19:00] trouble because he did something he wasn't supposed to and then got sent to the back of the line. Is it anxiety like we talked about before? There's so many different things. Just looking at the patterns like you're doing and then if you want more help, like after you look at the patterns and you see something, definitely you can contact us again and be like, Hey, this is what I'm noticing…give me your thoughts or whatever. And we would be happy to do that. I think right now it's just like gathering information to figure out the why behind the behavior, because like we've said a lot on this show, there's always a why behind the behavior. Like kids don't do things just to do it. So yeah, that's what I'd invite you to do.

How does that feel?

Samantha: That feels good.

Samantha Foote: Okay, cool. Do you have any other questions or anything else we can help you with?

Samantha: Not at this time. We have an ear, nose, throat appointment coming up because his tonsils are super, super swollen.

Samantha Foote: Oh no.

Samantha: We're hoping when he starts getting better sleep some other things will like overall improve.

Samantha: He's a fun kid. He really is. I've been trying to train myself to see the good, not just the hard parts.

Samantha Foote: Yeah, it's so easy to focus on the things that are hard, but I've noticed with my middle kid, he's really hard for me. We just clash a lot and I think it's because we're so much the same, but I was thinking about him the other day and I was like, he's such a cool kid, but he has these meltdowns all the time.

Then I'm like, Oh, they're so hard, but he is such a cool kid. So I totally understand that. But yeah, thanks for coming on today and I hope we were able to help you a little bit and let us know, give us an update, let us know how it goes.

Lauren Ross: Yeah, I will. Thank you guys.

Samantha Foote: Thanks.

Lauren Ross: Thank you for listening to today's episode.

We hope this discussion on neurodiversity has provided you with support, understanding, and inspiration. If you're looking for more support, you can go to [00:21:00] everybrainisdifferent. com and download the Ultimate Guide to Parenting Your Neurodivergent Child.