Yet another threat. Waiting to hear punishment.

Shari

IsItFridayYet?
Good para was gone, substitute spent some of the morning with difficult child from 8:15-8:30 and 9:45-11:00, while he was with the substitute he did not have any behavioral/emotional outbursts.
Numerous complaints of being tired. While at table in SpEd room he appeared to fall asleep while sitting up continuously during the course of 15 minutes. He was offered a rest, but refused. He went to Occupational Therapist (OT) and seemed to perk up. When he went back to regular classroom he made the comment that he was tired 6 times. Still refused resting time.
11:53=Refusals of work, kicking table. This was 10 minutes after he got inside from lunch and recess. He was on his normal schedule and working in the exact same spot as he does everyday. He was given the choice of a book on tape or a worksheet from his tub, he made the choice of a worksheet. He is always given a choice at this time. He was working on a worksheet with fun riddles, sounding out the answers to the riddle so that he could write them. The para(so-so para) was providing difficult child with lots of support at this time, as this was a worksheet which he had not worked on before this point.
Putting fingers in mouth and rubbing spit all over para. After refusals of work he was asked if he needed to go to safe room, he said that he did. Walked with Para to room. When he got in room he started crying and screaming. Once in safe room the following tallies were made:
Hits on wall=15
Screams=2
Spitting=9
Cursing=21
Threats=1
"I am going to bring a knife to school tomorrow and stab you in the heart."
While in the safe room difficult child was throwing his shoes against the wall. Para went in to remove shoes, difficult child threw them at her hitting her with them, hit her once and spit in her face.

The shoes were crocs. I'd have left them.

Other than that, the past 2 weeks, his blow ups have been at 10 or noon. There have been 5, I think, out of 8 days at school.

Pretty boy at least pulled me aside before I left and told me he had to call the super and they were waiting on an answer from her as to what to do.
 
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AnnieO

Shooting from the Hip
Shari, I'm noticing a pattern. Maybe I'm missing something, but...

He goes willingly (or willingly enough) to the safe room.

Then he blows up.

I agree with whoever suggested a walk in the garden or even playground. Maybe he thinks "it won't be so bad this time", gets there and it reminds him that he's had issues there before. difficult child 1 has this problem with the model of car creep drives. If she sees one go by - even a different color - she gets real uptight and anxious.

That on top of the time of day. We have the biggest issues with difficult child 2 at about 7 PM, and difficult child 1 at 9:30 (ish). About the time they're getting tired.

I wonder if you aren't on to something with the depakote. But I don't know. When difficult child 2 was on concerta, he was fine in the morning until he took it (right around 7 AM) - then he went to school. He had accidents (major wetting) and meltdowns around 11 AM. He would come home from school at 2 and be whiny and aggressive unless allowed to play video games (we do not allow on school days). Then about 7 PM his behavior got better, bedtime was no issue - except he couldn't get to sleep. When he finally did, he slept like someone had smacked him with a 2x4. He would sleepwalk to pee in the middle of the night - and many times, it was all over the floor in his room or the bathroom. He had no idea. Then he'd wake up fine. Now - when BM had the school giving it to him about 8 AM, push this back an hour and it was almost exactly the same.

We took him off the concerta because we couldn't stand the meltdowns, peeing all over the floor, etc. He turned into a grade-A BRAT while on it. Off it, yes, he's got LDs but he's a child instead of a monster.

Just my thoughts/story. Worth a check anyway.
 

Shari

IsItFridayYet?
my thoughts, too. safe room has negative connotations.
also, writing again. and he doesn't get very many jokes, so, fun for who?

The one joke that he actually might get?

Knock knock.
Who's there?
Dewayne.
Dewayne who?
Dewayne the bathtup, I'm dwowning.

And he'll laugh and laugh, then start with another knock knock joke and say, jump, or something, and the punchline will be "jump over the rope", so I'm not even 100% certain he gets this one.
 

AnnieO

Shooting from the Hip
OMG. THE BAD KNOCK-KNOCK JOKES.

Are you positive wee difficult child and difficult child 2 aren't the same child?!

OK, so that's kind of impossible, as they are different ages and they'd have to teleport themselves. Still.

difficult child 2 hasn't quite figured out that I can't take the pointless jokes (I try though. I really do). He does know now that he doesn't get a lot of funny things. He will say (after laughing) "I don't get it." Which is kind of sad.

How about the "Can I tell you one thing?" Over and over and over. (Trying to get him to say "something" instead) Or "Guess what?"

My favorite (I have a degree in English, poor kid) is when we do the can-may correction (Can-you-get-me / Can?) - and we get "May you get me apple juice?" AGH!
 

tiredmommy

Well-Known Member
I would have left the shoes too.

Shari, I've been subbing for the paras at Duckie's school for a few months now. I view my job as to help the teacher help the child get a fape. I'm very careful not to escalate the child (having a difficult child has it's advantages, lol!).

You truly need to push that any para that works with difficult child receives training on how to best handle an explosive child. Paras receive very little if any training and are generally not notified of a child's diagnosis, iep status or behavior issues. These adults are generally the ones working directly with our children. The resourceful ones develop a bag of tricks to get the job done, the rest tend to blame the child (or the parents) for their inability to do their job.
 

Andy

Active Member
Makes you want to scream, "PEOPLE! THIS IS A 7 YR OLD! HE IS HURTING! HE FEELS TRAPPED! STOP ATTACKING HIM!"

I can imagine that by now your difficult child feels like his is pushed into a corner and no one is listening to him.

I want so much to swoop in and pull him to a new school with caring compassionate willing to handle kids with patience staff.
 

Marguerite

Active Member
StepTo2, you picked it up as well.

The time of day, plus writing task - problems. Also, again the safe room - he walks therewillingly, THEN explodes.

Either the safe room has bad connotations for him, or he's in a pattern of expectation. "I'm in the safe room, therefore it's the place and time for me to throw a tantrum and make threats."

He mightn't even be doing this consciously. Or he might know it's likely, but is tihnking, "THIS time I'll hold it together." But the memory of all the past bad times just won't let him keep it together.

This para doesn't sound like she did anything wrong; she sounds like she was trying to do it by the book (although I agree, thinkingther task would be fun - she doesn't 'get' him, but that's the problem, nobody really does yet.) If you can, thank the para for trying to help him and for giving such a detailed report. tell her that this information is really useful, a pattern is beginning to emerge. It will shock her, to be thanked - she's expecting criticism, I suspect she knows she's bad at her job and is aggressive about it. Thing is, today she did the right things, as far as I can see.

Current protocol seems to be a big part of the problem (and, of course, idiot pretty boy). This IS a very young child, plus he has problems still not fully identified. Without getting a solid handle on the problems, it does hamper the hired help, so to speak. There needs to be wiggle room for modifying things when it becomes clear that it's just not working.

So, Shari - how are his medications administered? Is he getting regular medication top-ups through the day? Is it maybe wearing off too soon?

Or another thought, which was very much an issue for us with difficult child 3 - if he's getting hassled on the playground either by other kids or by teachers, he could be coming back in to class more hyped up than he should be. Sometimes it's not anybody doing anything wrong, it's just difficult children not understanding the social rules of casual, unstructured play. For example, we'd get difficult child 3 playing on the playground equipment but getting upset because he didn't get a turn. Other kids wouldtease him and tell him he could have a turn after them, then they wouldn't get off. Or they would keep letting other kids in ahead of them, which kept difficult child 3 at the back of the queue. He was obsessed with this play equipment. There were times when he would refuse to come in after lunch because he had been promised a turn and hadn't yet had it. It really made the after-lunch lessons really disruptive, especially towards the end of the school year when everyone's tempers and tolerances were frayed.

Has the IEP meeting been timetabled yet? You need to have one urgently, to re-visit some things:

1) the Communication Book has to be found and put to use. The current communication is clearly beneficial to everybody.

2) The "safe room" needs to be re-evaluated and perhaps a different protocol put in place; there has been a conditioned response built up so that putting him in the safe room now, appears to be dramatically escalating him. The habit must be broken.

3) Use of computer for written tasks. Voice recognition software perhaps NOT a good idea, he's very young and needs to learn to type. But if he needs it due to language-based problems, then thank goodness for speech recognition technology.

4) Alternative diversions need to be in place to help him de-escalate. However, this seems to be an ongoing problem that everyone needs to keep focussed on, to find a solution. He's getting fired up very quickly, either on the way to the safe room or once there. But the reasons for heading to the safe room ARE NOT work refusal, there is something else going on here.

What is working currently - having a para. And giving him choices - VERY good. Kudos to the para for this.

Suggestion - he needs an alternative, quieter, work environment especially for challenging tasks. Possibly having an audience could be making it harder for him to calm hiself. Alternatively, if he is working in a room with no other kids and he begins to get upset, it's no skin off anyone's nose if he makes a bit of noise. By not needing to move him, then the tantrum onset can be ignored, the para can back off phsyically and give him space and time. The worksheet is still there and still needing to be done, it won't go away.

SO to add to this suggestion - we already know that certain tasks (writing) and certain times (round lunchtime) are bad. So I recommend that at lerast for a while, those times be highlighted as MOST important to be proactive and to set him up in a quiet place to begin with. Tell him that for a while, he has a different quieter place to get some work done, so the other students won't be a distraction.

Next step - if he begins to get upset and can't calm himself, then maybe take him outside into the open (because self-noise doesn't generally echo outside, it's harder to scare yourself with your own screaming).

Safe room - absolute last resort, if then. At least for the rest of this year. It's not only not working, it's making him worse. Much worse.

As for the threats - they shouldn't be taking them seriously. Of course he needs to learn to not say these things, but frankly as things are at the moment, he's being trained to say these things, because it gets a reaction. It's good that the para is taking notes of how many times he is hitting his head or throwing shoes, but we need this level of data for the period BEFORE he gets upset, and as he is escalating.

I hope you can get some strategies in place. If someone higher up comes in and says, "This kid has to go," or whatever, explain that the problems are simply the result of this kids' needs not yet being fully identified or appropriately met, and you're not blaming anyone here because it's simply a matter of teamwork plus knowledge being needed. You have some strategies to try which (thanks to the newer information) should work better.

An analogy - you are tracking an animal with a radio transmitter collar. You are on your own in the forest, the animal is in there somewhere too. The best you can do to begin with, is to know that the animal is in a particular direction away from you. So you move (and hope the animal is not moving). Then you take another reading - with the second reading you have a different direction. So you draw this on the map, and you should get two lines which intersect. At the point of intersection, is where the animal should be. So you go there. Now you are really close, but it still mightn'y be perfect, because perhaps the animal DID move, or perhaps the hilliness of the ground has confused the reading. But each time you take another bearing, you are so much closer to finding your target.

And so it is here - all this information is helping. Of course everyone is highly likely to go in the wrong direction to begin with, simply because of lack of knowledge of tis particular child. There is also stuff always going on that we just don't know (the animal being hidden in there somwhere; maybe moving, maybe not. Maybe there is a predator in there chasing our target animal). The best we can do, is to keep trying, and each time we try, we get closer. There should be no blame, or guilt, for not getting it right yet. We only blame, when someone clearly goes off in the wrong direction knowing it's wrong, or they switch off the radio receiver, or they sit down and ignore the job entirely then fudge their reports and pretend the animal was found, when it wasn't really.

Shari, these guys are frustrating. But after having him for a year, they have some understanding. If you move him, you will to a certain extent be starting over. You need to weigh this in to your decision. Of course, it may still be worth making a move. Or you might find things begin to improve a lot from here (it's like drawing the second line, giving a much closer estimate).

I'm not saying don't move him, I'm not saying you should move him. But after all this effort, it would be good to see some positive results and the fruits of your hard work.

Marg
 
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