Marguerite
Active Member
I've got a curly question for you.
I'm hoping someone can help me find the appropriate label for difficult child 3's pattern of speech. husband does it too (not as much) and also to a lesser extent, easy child 2/difficult child 2.
It's worst at the end of the day when medications have worn off; also in the morning before medications kick in, but evenings are worst.
What it is - there are two main issues.
1) He will come to me and say something which is interesting to him but not to me. Example - "I dreamt last night that Daisy [pet budgie] got out of her cage and flew away."
He then will walk out of the room and come back maybe 30 seconds later (not immediately) and add more. "Then in the dream she came back and had another bird with her." He leaves the room again, to go back to what he was doing. But he is back. "This other bird was smaller than Daisy, and a different colour."
What intrigues me is the pause each time - it's as if he is telling me each thought in sequence as it goes through his head. But the pause i longer than you get in normal conversation. If I'm reading a book, for example, it means I get interrupted each time I read the same sentence. Or maybe I'll get another sentence half-read, before my train of thought gets interrupted.
If I were having a conversation with him I wouldn't mind so much, even if we're still talking about things not relevant to me, if only he would stay in the room and finish the conversation. But he doesn't seem capable.
2) He cannot be interrupted, he MUST finish what he starts to say. easy child 2/difficult child 2 will throw a tantrum if interrupted, and yet will not realise she interrupts other people in her zeal to contribute. Example is when she begins to tell a joke we've heard before. We can say, "We've heard it!" We can even utter the punchline, but she still MUST continue and finish what she is saying.
This evening I was talking on the phone to a friend, she was listening to my side of the conversation. I didn't want my friend to realise she was there (he would then have felt more constrained in what he was saying, and he needed to talk) but I had a very difficult talk trying to signal to her to whisper and not speak loudly; and to be discreet and brief. (Plus, I was trying to continue to listen to my friend, I was aurally multi-tasking, and that's not easy). As she began to speak I realised she was repeating what I had just said to my friend, but in different words; I tried to tell her, "I just said that," but she still had to get to the end of the last sentence of what she was saying.
3) And the really weird one - difficult child 3 (and husband) has an odd pause when he speaks, mid-sentence. It's as if he is stuck for a word (hey, it happens) but the next thing is NOT normal - he will go back to the beginning of his sentence and start again, instead of merely pausing then putting in the word. Or syllable. No "um"s or "er"s. Just a total restart instead. Sometimes I hear the same sentence four or five times before I get to hear it in completion. difficult child 3 plays the piano the same way - when trying to play music, e would seem to get 'stuck' while trying to work out the next note, and he would either continue to play the note he is on (by hitting the key again and again) or he would go back to the e of the phrase, or even the beginning of the piece of music, and begin to play again. When he was hitting the same (previous) note over and over, his piano teacher tried to tell him, "No, dear, you only play that note once, not three times. It's time to move to the next note." Which, of course, was what he was trying to do, and this would provoke a rage.
With all these phenomena, trying to correct them or trying to hurry them up provokes meltdown.
difficult child 3 is getting really bad with all three at the moment. The non-stop talking as if expressing every thought going through his head - that is a big problems for us at the moment especially in the evenings. I'm busy trying to get dinner for everybody and difficult child 3, if he hears me walk past, will call me back to talk. Sometimes he might have something important to say (or ask) so I go back; but a lot of the time he just wants to tell me something which is clearly just his thought of that moment.
It can be so bad that when I am resting (and with my current extreme fragility he understands I need to rest) he will come in to my room and wake me up, just to tell me that in the computer game he was just playing, he accidentally hit his ally on the head, and his ally hit him back. Then he will leave the room and go back to his game, to come back into the room thirty seconds later... you get the drift.
We tolerate a lot with our family, but other people are less tolerant of them.
I have a hard time explaining this to the various doctors we see and when you explain it, it seems so trivial. But there IS something odd, it worries me (and drives me up the wall) and especially in the kids, I would like to find a way to fix it. Or get a name for it. Even possible names. A more formal label which describes it would be a help.
So - any ideas?
Marg
I'm hoping someone can help me find the appropriate label for difficult child 3's pattern of speech. husband does it too (not as much) and also to a lesser extent, easy child 2/difficult child 2.
It's worst at the end of the day when medications have worn off; also in the morning before medications kick in, but evenings are worst.
What it is - there are two main issues.
1) He will come to me and say something which is interesting to him but not to me. Example - "I dreamt last night that Daisy [pet budgie] got out of her cage and flew away."
He then will walk out of the room and come back maybe 30 seconds later (not immediately) and add more. "Then in the dream she came back and had another bird with her." He leaves the room again, to go back to what he was doing. But he is back. "This other bird was smaller than Daisy, and a different colour."
What intrigues me is the pause each time - it's as if he is telling me each thought in sequence as it goes through his head. But the pause i longer than you get in normal conversation. If I'm reading a book, for example, it means I get interrupted each time I read the same sentence. Or maybe I'll get another sentence half-read, before my train of thought gets interrupted.
If I were having a conversation with him I wouldn't mind so much, even if we're still talking about things not relevant to me, if only he would stay in the room and finish the conversation. But he doesn't seem capable.
2) He cannot be interrupted, he MUST finish what he starts to say. easy child 2/difficult child 2 will throw a tantrum if interrupted, and yet will not realise she interrupts other people in her zeal to contribute. Example is when she begins to tell a joke we've heard before. We can say, "We've heard it!" We can even utter the punchline, but she still MUST continue and finish what she is saying.
This evening I was talking on the phone to a friend, she was listening to my side of the conversation. I didn't want my friend to realise she was there (he would then have felt more constrained in what he was saying, and he needed to talk) but I had a very difficult talk trying to signal to her to whisper and not speak loudly; and to be discreet and brief. (Plus, I was trying to continue to listen to my friend, I was aurally multi-tasking, and that's not easy). As she began to speak I realised she was repeating what I had just said to my friend, but in different words; I tried to tell her, "I just said that," but she still had to get to the end of the last sentence of what she was saying.
3) And the really weird one - difficult child 3 (and husband) has an odd pause when he speaks, mid-sentence. It's as if he is stuck for a word (hey, it happens) but the next thing is NOT normal - he will go back to the beginning of his sentence and start again, instead of merely pausing then putting in the word. Or syllable. No "um"s or "er"s. Just a total restart instead. Sometimes I hear the same sentence four or five times before I get to hear it in completion. difficult child 3 plays the piano the same way - when trying to play music, e would seem to get 'stuck' while trying to work out the next note, and he would either continue to play the note he is on (by hitting the key again and again) or he would go back to the e of the phrase, or even the beginning of the piece of music, and begin to play again. When he was hitting the same (previous) note over and over, his piano teacher tried to tell him, "No, dear, you only play that note once, not three times. It's time to move to the next note." Which, of course, was what he was trying to do, and this would provoke a rage.
With all these phenomena, trying to correct them or trying to hurry them up provokes meltdown.
difficult child 3 is getting really bad with all three at the moment. The non-stop talking as if expressing every thought going through his head - that is a big problems for us at the moment especially in the evenings. I'm busy trying to get dinner for everybody and difficult child 3, if he hears me walk past, will call me back to talk. Sometimes he might have something important to say (or ask) so I go back; but a lot of the time he just wants to tell me something which is clearly just his thought of that moment.
It can be so bad that when I am resting (and with my current extreme fragility he understands I need to rest) he will come in to my room and wake me up, just to tell me that in the computer game he was just playing, he accidentally hit his ally on the head, and his ally hit him back. Then he will leave the room and go back to his game, to come back into the room thirty seconds later... you get the drift.
We tolerate a lot with our family, but other people are less tolerant of them.
I have a hard time explaining this to the various doctors we see and when you explain it, it seems so trivial. But there IS something odd, it worries me (and drives me up the wall) and especially in the kids, I would like to find a way to fix it. Or get a name for it. Even possible names. A more formal label which describes it would be a help.
So - any ideas?
Marg