Life with an Aspergers Child
We were talking about wrapping Ava’s birthday presents when her mom mentioned using some pirate wrapping paper. Ava, who usually likes all things pink and feminine said, “I don’t care what wrapping paper you use. It’s all white on the inside.”
It seemed so deep on so many levels, and of course, super cute.
The cat has been hiding today, and Saria decided she was going to dress up as Sherlock Holmes to find him.
She has spent an hour looking all over the house for a brown plaid shirt, which no one in the house owns, but she needs for her costume.
She is freaking out, and refuses to settle on a different shirt or use a little more imagination to pretend that she’s wearing a brown plaid shirt. She is so fixated on exactly how her costume has to be, that she is never going to get around to actually doing the fun part of pretending to be Sherlock Holmes and look for the cat with her spy glass.
She is being super grumpy, as everything is annoying her now, since she can’t find exactly the right shirt. She’s been asking if she has enough allowance saved to buy a brown plaid shirt, which she probably wouldn’t be able to find the perfect one at the store, anyway, and that she would only wear once.
Saria just came into our room and said in a snotty voice, “Mom, I want my own credit card and pay my own taxes, to buy my own brown plaid shirt.”
Saria and I were talking about her and her sister needing to keep their toys upstairs when the babies come.
Saria asked me, “What will happen if we don’t keep our toys upstairs?”
I answered, “If I find them, they’ll go in the garbage. If the babies find them, they’ll choke and die.”
“Is that all? We won’t get in trouble?”, was Saria’s response.
We didn’t actually have any pranks pulled at our house on April 1st. I’m not sure if it’s because the girls didn’t know that it was April Fools Day, or if it’s because they had never even heard of the holiday.
While watching some Disney channel, which the girls have been doing a lot lately while they’re home this week on spring break, Saria learned about the holiday.
Saria came up with a pretty good prank to pull on her sister by swapping the cereal bags inside of all of the cereal boxes. Her sister went to eat some Mom’s Best Honey NutToasty O’s®, and found some Sweetened
Wheat-Fuls® inside instead.
Since then, Ava has been trying to come up with a prank to get Saria back.
Saria had her tonsils and adenoids removed last Friday in order to treat her mild sleep apnea. She’s been in pain, on a soft food diet, and her appetite has been low, so she’s been drinking a lot of meal replacement drinks.
Her throat has been feeling a lot better the past two days, but her ears are aching, which is normal due to referred pain caused by swelling.
Saria expects her pain medicine to remove the pain entirely, and instantly, after she takes it. As a result, she doesn’t believe us that it works and has been fighting us on taking it. Even though we’ve explained it to her over 20 times, she thinks it’s impossible that the LorTab is helping with her pain in any way. The possibility of it helping with her pain is as possible as her being a green alien, she said.
This morning, Saria had a milk chocolate flavored Carnation Instant Breakfast and then asked, “Mom, can I have a reincarnation?”
Saria’s mom was laughing too hard to answer. I though she was asking to be reincarnated again because of the pain, but she was just asking if she could have a second Carnation breakfast drink.
Saria and I were talking about what she was going to do on her day off of school today, when she went off on a tangent saying, “I wish I’d lose these teeth”. She was pointing at her mouth.
I asked, “You mean your crooked teeth?”
“No, these ones,” she said, then opened her mouth and pointed back at her molars.
“Why, are those uncomfortable?” I asked
“No. I want more money from the tooth fairy. Some kids at school have lost like 10 teeth this year.”
Saria has the tendency to get up super early. Usually around 5am, but sometimes earlier.
This morning we asked her what time she got up, and she was feeling a little defensive. Instead of trying to guess what time she woke up, she responded with, “I’m a morning person, can people just get used to it?!”
Today I told Saria that I was proud of her decrease in tantrums; that compared to six months ago, her behavior has improved by leaps
and bounds.
Her response was, “I don’t leap or bounce. Well, once in a while I do.”
Last night, Genevieve and I released GreenDay, the Android app that we started developing and using in June of this year.
The Applied Behavior Analyst that we hired for help with Saria had suggested a positive reward system to reinforce good behaviors, accompanied by a negative reinforcement system for behaviors that we were trying to eliminate.
The two behaviors that we are targeting, and that most parents struggle with, are tantrums and not following parental directions. We use this application focusing on these two problem behaviors, where the children use these behaviors to get gratification, and not necessarily attention.
Every time the child does what you want them to, you give them a reward. You should be giving out at least 10 rewards a day. You also need to get the child’s attention when giving them the reward so that they know what behavior they’re being rewarded for. Regardless of how you feel about using money as a reward, we use money as a reward because it works. To get their attention, GreenDay makes a “cha ching” sound when we reward them with a token. The app then says their name, congratulates them, and tells them how much money they have earned so far. If you still have problems getting their attention, you can let them slide their icon to reward the token.
Negative reinforcement is where you don’t allow the child to do what they want to do, by taking away privileges. It was important that we stop thinking about punishment, and start moving in the direction that the kids can do what they want, and have fun, as long as they follow the rules. Fun and being able to do what they want is a privilege that is in full control of the parents. The children can do what they want, a lot of the time, because the parents let them.
We have two stages for negative reinforcement.
Yellow is where the child is on probation and needs to change their behavior around before they end up on red. They can’t earn tokens while on yellow but can still have attention and do what they want. We use a five minute yellow stage.
Red is where the child is not allowed to do what they want, and must apologize and restore the environment to get off of red. This looks a lot like the old fashioned “timeout”. We take away privileges, which acts as a negative reinforcement and consequence. At home, this is sitting on the couch or on a chair in the kitchen. If at a store, the child can face a wall or sit in the car with a parent.
There is no escape from red, and if the child tries to delay it by asking to go potty or gets up, you can pause the timer and remind them that the timer doesn’t run down until they return.
Do not give the child any attention while on red, if it can be avoided. When the red stage timer has run out, the child goes on yellow. They then must apologize and they have until the yellow timer runs out to restore the environment (pick up anything they threw, etc.) or they will end up back on red.
1. Get the child’s attention.
2. Give the verbal direction.
3. Reward the child if they follow the direction. (The child may ask for a minute to do something else first.)
3. If the child has not followed the direction, point toward what they need to do.
4. Give the child 10 seconds of pointing before they go on yellow.
5. Reward them if they follow the direction within these 10 seconds.
6. Once on yellow, take away any toys and ensure that they can’t do what they want to do until they follow the direction (so they might as well follow the direction).
7. After the yellow timer has run out, if they still haven’t followed the direction, the child goes on red.
8. After the red timer runs out, have them apologize and they restore the environment by following the direction. Goto step 6 until they do.
It’s important to have your child practice the break behaviors when they’re not upset. We do this after lunch and supper, and offer a weekly bonus if they do all of the lunch ones and a second bonus if they do all of the supper ones. We track this on a whiteboard next to the kitchen table, but may add this to GreenDay.
1. Once the child is becoming upset, you suggest that they take a break. You can press the red timer button to have GreenDay suggest a break, which the child may respond to in a more positive way if they’re mad at the parent.
2. If they take a break, reward them.
3. If they need to keep taking breaks, reward them once they’re successfully calmed down.
4. If they don’t take a break, give the direction to take one (refer to “Following parental direction”).
5. If they throw a tantrum for over 30 seconds, they go in red.
6. After the red timer runs out, have them apologize and they restore the environment while they’re in yellow.
7. If they don’t restore the environment before the yellow timer runs out, put them back in red.
Many children throw a tantrum when they are frustrated because there is a problem. It is very important not to reinforce their tantrum behavior by resolving their problem while they’re throwing a tantrum. Tell them that the problem can be worked on after they have calmed down.
Don’t forget to stay calm yourself and model the behavior that you want.
Make a list of rules that when broken will put the child immediately in yellow or red.
Make a list of goals that you will reward the child for accomplishing.
Offer the yellow and red as consequences for the child’s behavior, and encourage them to have a green day.
If one child is in yellow or red, be very generous with tokens to the child that is still in green.
We give our children a bonus when they have a green day.
Although, we hope that this information will help you see how we use the GreenDay application to implement our behavior plan, we highly recommend hiring an ABA therapist to help you come up with a behavior plan and implement it.
On the way to school this morning, Ava said, “Neutered means you can adopt kittens of the wild, but not of the tummy.”
