October 7, 2020
So we’ve seen some return in behaviors from Bradley that we had eased over the last few months. He has been more compliant with demands made on him, like let’s go change your pants and do your meds...let’s go get a bath, let’s go eat. Don’t ever confuse compliance with lack of an opinion though. He is quite vocal about the fact that he doesn’t want to do any or all of those things above, but he would still get up and do it for us. He still will, but the defiance and complaint is a little elevated right now. Why?
Well, for one, the Zooms have started again. Not only is he forced to do school over Zoom, he has a new teacher and NO BUS. Honestly; for Bradley, school is a ridiculous concept if there is no bus. Talk about creating a monster. No bus, so in his opinion, why are we doing that class thing anyway? And about once a month or so; this isolation gets too much, so tonight he grabbed his backpack, loaded it with a single domino, his milk, his juice, asked to wear socks and was ready to head out for the bus. Redirection took some work. And frustration was pretty high. But we worked through it, because we totally get how sad he is about how things are right now.
His actual Zoom time has lessened as we have kept him in his therapies, so his hardest day is Tuesday. They want three sessions, we do what he’ll do. And he protests and fights, but they are getting better at offering more music and books and videos - less about the branches of the government...so Bradley is a bit more willing to at least stay awake - well sometimes. If his teacher talks too long, he just tunes her out and chooses to nap. Kind of an MO for him.
If he doesn’t nap and they can’t grab his attention with a video or game, he will protest loudly. And we are quite certain that all are grateful that we have an ability to mute him. We try to prevent the fist to the head as much as we can, but there is just an acceptance that he is not a fan of Zoom.
So school can cause behaviors, but usually only during school. But the rest of the day, we are also seeing more behaviors because he is showing that he can start using his words and we are pushing him to move from one word to a sentence of a group of words. Now to be fair, my son beams every time he puts a few words together to create a sentence that we understand. He gets so very proud of himself, his smile is so bright he could power a mid-size town. And then when he gets what he asked for he is completely reinforced to try again.
We are getting behaviors now because he doesn’t always get what he wants. I think I mentioned that he has asked for a popsicle at 8 in the morning. Yeah, well, even mom has her limits. So I made him waffles and he ate one of them and then he got a popsicle. Why on earth right? Well, the idea is to make him see he has to eat his meal first and then get his treat. Not ideal after breakfast, but the span of is memory and the scope of his understanding is as yet still short. I can’t tell him no you have to wait until after lunch and then you can have one, we aren’t certain that he will understand that after his lunch in four hours he will get a popsicle. Someday, but not today.
Instead, we pay attention to now and we battle the little fights with a little bit of shorter spanned If/Then - which is a whole other visual card that we have to use in our house. You know it’s going to go well when he taps the first “If” picture and then taps the seconds “then” picture and then goes directly to his “first” activity. On an amazing day, he doesn’t complain about it. He just understands and moves along. On a typical day, he complains about it, but will eventually do it. We might have to grab his token chart and work him through it, but it happens and is relatively successful.
Right now, there are times the token board isn’t quickly successful until we work through some frustration, a weighted blanket for a few minutes, some compression squeezes and working through it slowly but surely. Once we can get him into the mode of compliance then we have to work. We can keep it so simple that he repeats his numbers, the alphabet, repeating some simple gestures...whatever we can get him to do where he is not crying and fighting, when he is calm and complies he gets a token. Sometimes behavior therapy looks that simple, but has the greatest reach. And then when he is calmer and is ready to work for something he really wants, then the sentences come out and increase. He starts looking at pictures, and maybe he sees a duck, and he says duck...but instead of just saying duck...he’ll say “Yellow Duck” and then the next picture is of cats, but instead of just saying “cats” he’ll say “three cats” purposefully adding detail he isn’t required to add, but the kind of detail that creates excitement and enthusiasm that encourages him to do it again and again. That same response for times when he says “I want green cars please.” Or “I want blue tiles please” and a myriad of other sentences that he is stringing together with help, but also completely on his own because he is learning that he is going to get excitement and tokens that lead him to the treats he wants. We’re working hard with him and we’re working hard to make sure that Bradley feels like he is playing as much as possible because he is just a little boy.
Tools, all these tools in our tool box to help Bradley navigate his life. We want there to be more joy than frustration, more happiness than anger, and more safety and less harm to him or others. So we are learning how to fit these procedures into our life. Simple, yes. But make no mistake, simple does not mean easy. And they are so straight forward you would think they would be, but it is difficult to maintain the same methods with perfect consistency. So we are trying to have optimum consistency, accepting that perfection is not feasible, nor is it necessary.
There’s always something more to learn and something more to teach and each day just provides a new canvas for us to try to help Bradley create the masterpiece that is him.
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