Advice on 6 year old's trantrums (update)
Just wanted to share an update on the stuff I overshared in this thread nearly a month ago.
It's been an incredibly long, frustrating, but successful month. Within a few days of writing that post, we took my son to the doctor and I just explained everything going on. The doctor seemed as unsure as we were whether my son was experiencing illness or anxiety, so she decided to tackle both. He got some medication for the stomach issues and we got the ball rolling on getting him into therapy.
The following few weeks were very hit-and-miss. I tried to get him to drive with me on little errands here and there throughout the week to get him out of the house, comfortable in the car, and to try to work through the fear he was experiencing. At first it would take quite a lot of convincing and sometimes I got frustrated and acted like an idiot. Eventually we got to a point where the convincing took less time and resulted in less tears (and frustration). But we are at a point where he's getting better at calming himself down and going in the car even if he's a little scared.
We still haven't made much progress with getting him in the car with his sister though. We've done a few trips to the nearby park all together, but my wife had to sit between them to calm him down. Likewise, he's still hesitant to sleep in the same room as her (they share a room for now). And again, it has nothing to do with her, aside from her overreacting to him being upset and him being upset by that. It's a vicious cycle. Honestly this is the most difficult part right now because it's making doing anything really complicated. We literally cannot do family trips anywhere without taking two vehicles. More on this later.
One of my biggest concerns in the other thread was that he was scheduled for eye surgery toward the end of the month and pre/post op appointments and the surgery itself would require a lot of driving. I'm happy to report that he handled every single car trip relating to it like a champ. And the surgery itself was a success, and recovery is going really well. Also apparently thanks to COVID, parents are no longer allowed to go back to the operating room until their child falls asleep, which we didn't realize until a few seconds before they took him back. Which was really difficult for us as parents and for him as well. He keep mentioning it and I try to talk him through and explain that we didn't know and that we're sorry, but wouldn't have let him go if we didn't know the doctor and nurses would be taking good care of him.
And he had his first therapy appointment this morning. It was just an intake appointment so the therapist could get a feel for what's going on and to get to know my son a little bit. But I feel a lot better about things than I did a month ago. I know we still have a lot of struggle and work ahead of us (he starts 1st grade next month...Getting him and his sister there is going to be interesting).
I think the next few weeks are going to be spent working on getting him and his sister together in the car more. We're already working on the bedtime issue. The last two nights we had them together in the same room to read a bedtime story together and then afterwards she slept elsewhere. Just trying to baby step our way toward solving that problem.
Lastly, I wanted to thank you all for your support and comments in the original thread. It was very helpful to be able to write everything out and get some validation, advice, etc.
So I looked through the last thread and read this post, and while I don't have a whole lot of personal experience with children in general since I don't have kids, a couple years ago one of my good friends were having similar issues as you with his son and daughter.
First off, he found out that both his kids were solidly on the autism scale. He and his wife thought it was ADHD at first, but turned out there were far more social and sensory sensitivities than typical ADHD.
His kids were sensitive around things like cars or restaurants and had hair-triggers for meltdowns in those situations, and it turns out it was sensory sensitivities.
Second, like you, his son was very specifically worse in the presence of his sister. Like meltdowns being in the same room with her.
Now understand that what I'm about to ask is not being presumptuous of your situation, but it is the question my friend wishes he was forced to think about sooner, which is: How well do you know the dynamics between the siblings behind closed doors when you're not around?
The family therapist they had suggested hiding a nanny cam to monitor them.
Long story short they found out their daughter was having very aggressive full on meltdowns aimed at their son when they weren't looking. Like sometimes immediately after they left a room, or blatant provoking behavior even in the same room with their backs turned.
Before their son was born, they'd had issues with meltdowns with their daughter, and had been very aggressive to stop that behavior, and being first time parents probably didn't handle it the best. They thought she'd been getting better, but instead just had a new outlet in the household for her frustration that couldn't punish her.
Their therapist basically told them that the emotions behind meltdowns doesn't go away no matter how much you punish the behavior, it gets directed elsewhere. Healthy people cope with that by catching those emotions early before they're big and taking steps to prevent a meltdown but that takes emotional intelligence, and some people channel those emotions into things like art, sports, the gym, etc. However maladapted people, and especially kids who don't understand their emotions and don't have as many options to channel them into, can channel those emotions either inward at themselves, or outward at others and that's when it becomes destructive.
Anyways, my buddy's spent a solid year using gaming to momentarily escape the frustration and vent to me about the whole situation and give me the play by plays. I have an interest in psychology and am autistic myself so I was interested as well and gave some input. =
HOWEVER: They are doing much better now. Once they got the autism diagnosis, they started looking at things from the perspective of sensory input and overload, tantrums as meltdowns, as well as understanding their kids have super-computer level pattern recognition where they can't assume they're hiding a bad mood or anger from their kids, they have to communicate their feelings and frustrations honestly with them.
A huge thing they had to wrap their heads around was how their kids could smell their bullshit from a mile away and that made their kids insanely insecure. It was the whole thing of a kid doesn't cry about scraping a knee until the parent makes a big deal about it kind of thing, but with everything and unspoken patterns. My buddy and his wife would be stressed out about their mortgage, and would tell their kids that everything's fine, but their kids could tell that no, they were not acting like everything's fine, and that's when the RSD set in for their kids internalizing that things aren't safe or stable. Since it was easier to be open and honest about their feelings than having to become robots and mask their emotions in front of their kids, they started being honest when they were frustrated, angry, sad, and it also apparently helped their kids recognize their own emotions and regulate them better.
Their therapist gave them a lot of homework to grow emotional intelligence in their kids so as the kids grow they can realize what feelings they feel, that they are not their feelings and don't need to react based on their feelings all the time. That has seemed to help them out a LOT.
Edit: Added a few other things as I remembered them.
I totally get where you’re coming from and we certainly looked into this possibility. But the reality is that either my wife or myself are almost always in the same room as them 24/7. And if we’re not, they’re usually a room away where we can clearly hear them. Not because we’re helicopter parents or anything, but because our house is small and they’re still young enough to still want to be around us most of the time. All that’s to say we have a pretty solid understanding of their dynamic and it’s a very good one. They’re twins and they’re inseparable. They play together very nicely until one of them does something to annoy the other, in which case they’re very quick to leave the room or tattle on the other. I think the strangest thing is that when they’re together, they're practically best friends, it’s just at bed time and in the car that my son gets anxious about them being together. And I don’t think anything’s going on at bedtime, either, because we leave their door open and we can hear them. Prior to this, they were always either asleep within minutes or up late talking, joking, etc.
Regarding ADHD/Autism, I myself have ADHD, so I know at least one of them likely has it as well. And both of my kids have given me some reason to suspect very mild autism might be possible, as they’re both incredibly sensitive to loud sounds, but I don’t really know. We’ve long been planning to bring it up at their 6 year check-up that’s coming soon. And via the therapy, we’ll probably get some light shed on it for my son.
That's totally cool that you're confident in that, and as I said I don't know your situation at all so don't take this as arguing or questioning you, this is just me adding clarifying information:
I will say that my buddy truly 100% believed he knew their dynamic too for similar reasons. They were in a 3 bedroom home and never left the kids alone.
When he first told me about the nanny cam thing he was confident it wouldn't find anything. He was basically on board with setting it up just to prove the therapist wrong so they could move forward to more direct courses of action.
After reviewing the footage a week later they were a bit shocked by how hidden the behavior was and how many opportunities they created for conflict between the kids without realizing.
Anyways, that's all I'll say on that because I don't want to get into the territory of becoming preachy, I just wanted to clarify that my friend said something similar. If you have any questions about it let me know I can ask him about stuff next time we have a gaming night.
Also remember, Autism is not a linear spectrum, so it's not about mild or extreme, it's a combination of variables that differ with each individual. Think a circular color spectrum or a radar chart as opposed to a linear spectrum.
Here's what some of those charts look like for Autism: this, this, or less clinically like this.
Also that ADHD and Autism are being tied together more closely as more research into the two comes out. In fact, similar to how Asperger's is no longer a diagnosis, I expect that within 10 years we'll see the same thing happen with ADHD. Well if we don't go back to the stone age in medical research.
I appreciate the insight into autism. A lot of what I know about it is "common knowledge", which is clearly stuck in the past a bit. Which makes sense because it's about the same with ADHD where people still think it's just being jittery and easily distracted.
I apologize if I'm using the wrong terminology again, but what's the correct way to distinguish between someone who would struggle with noise sensitivity and could easily develop coping mechanisms vs someone who's non-verbal or needs more help getting through day-to-day life? I've heard "high-functioning", but that sounds off to me for some reason.
Also the charts are very helpful!
Differing levels of support needs, is what you're describing. But someone may have higher support needs in one area and lower in another. The more granular you can get the better, some non verbal folks, for example, have pretty minimal support needs in other areas and just really struggle with communication. The problem is the communication makes society think the person is otherwise incapable/incompetent/developmentally disabled/whatever term they use.
Diagnostics will have labels usually of like Level 1, 2 or 3 as an overall support need level.
I found this reddit post helpful Low Support Needs Autism is often misrepresented : r/autism
Yeah, no worries, personally I'm not militant about terminology since it seems every few years the accepted terminology usually gets co-opted as offensive, and new terminology is created and the cycle starts over a few years later, repeat ad infinitum. A lot of people can't keep up with it, so as long as the intention's good I'm good.
With that being said, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the currently accepted terms are using low support needs and high support needs.
As another commenter mentioned that also gets granular too.
This is a very good point. There is a lot of overlap between how ADHD and Autism can manifest. More and more people are also being diagnosed with both (AuDHD). I think this article gives a good overview of the "differences" but also points out research that shows some neurobiological overlap between the two conditions.
This makes a lot of sense to me. From my observations, people learn best from modeling. I think that goes extra for things like emotional intelligence, where it's just very hard to apply logic in the middle of an emotional storm. But it's a lot easier to copy someone else's emotional reaction - we see it when leaders in emergency situations can keep things calm by remaining calm themselves.
I don't remember posting in the original thread, but I do remember reading it, and hoping you would get some good advice and support, and that there would be some progress.
I'm glad to hear things are slowly starting to get better. I'm sure you're already doing this, but would getting the two of them together in the car, not to drive but to do something like wash it, and clean the inside, be a good start to getting them more comfortable being in the car together? I'm not a parent, therapist or any sort of professional (anymore - I minored in education, was a preschool teacher and nanny, but it's been a long time), but I would think getting in the car without driving anywhere would be a small way to get them comfortable together.
That's a good idea! And we've got some cooler weather coming our way this weekend, so that helps with the problem we've been having where it's hot-as-hell and both of our cars having spotty AC (especially on idle). I'll have to give it a shot :)
I have kids a similar age, it’s definitely challenging sometimes and I’ve seen similar behaviour from our kids at times.
Here’s what works for us re tantrums and behaviour:
Prepping. My wife is type A and needs to know “the plan”. My kids are also a lot like this as well so anytime we can prep them ahead of time on things they might not like or might be different we do so. Mostly this is just us talking through with them ahead of time but sometimes might involve a bit of play as well. For example, we play “pretend shots” before getting their immunizations or we did practice show and tell before my daughter had to present her show and tell. It definitely helps them have the skills and be mentally prepared for whatever the current difficult thing is.
Be gentle but firm when enforcing boundaries. Whenever we’re dealing with tantrums and the like we just try and validate how they’re feeling but let them know that we’re still doing X. We’ll try and accommodate them where we can with some kind of choice that’s irrelevant to us as parents but lets them feel like they’re in control. When the two of them are fighting with each other we’ll try and approach it from a team aspect where we’re helping them negotiate on what they both need to play nicely together.
Every family is different but here’s my unsolicited(?) advice if this was happening to me. I would maybe try and talk through getting them in the same car together ahead of time and how you can make that work for everyone. Validate in how they’re feeling and be flexible in how you’ll go about it but be firm that it’s happening. Parenting is a shitshow and we frequently break our own rules when we need to but generally keeping it consistent in the above form has worked for us.
I'm glad to get an update, been having a red bubble from you since your last topic waiting for a good time to ask for an update.
Not an easy thing to navigate for me.
Sounds like things are going well, and I especially appreciate how you realised you contributed badly by acting like a fucktard.
I don't want you to feel bad about it (although that's obviously ok too!) I'm just pleased to see an adult acknowledge themselves as a subject contributing negatively in an adult/child relationship, without making it about themselves.
You and your family will do fine.
🎉 Congratulations on being a good parent 🎉
I'm slightly exhausted so please assume I mean well and ask if something seems dumb or offensive
You're 100% good and I appreciate your comment a lot :) I went back and forth on whether to post an update. I almost did it a few weeks ago when we started seeing some progress...then last week after the surgery..but I kept hesitating. And then this morning I felt really good/optimistic about this whole situation for the first time in a while and I had to share :)
I remember your original post, I'm glad to hear things are getting better. It sounds like you're getting the right support for your son as well which is great. I hope you're able to find the answers you and your family need, and that the situation continues to improve!