Poor Isaiah! He gets into trouble so much lately that Amy is at her wits end on how to get through to him to behave. He says he's a "bad" boy and when we tell him he is not I'm not sure that he believes us. He's been in trouble quite a bit at daycare for various things, one of which is him wanting his own way.
We've run into this at home, too - for which he gets a time out or other appropriate consequence, and last night was a prime example.
It was bedtime; we were all tired and ready for bed. Amy got Isaiah's pajamas out and told him to come and she'd help him change. He's always wanting to do one more thing so he told her "just a minute." She let him know that she wasn't doing this on his time frame and if he wanted help with his pajamas he could just come into her room.
A 30-minute battle of wills ensued following this and I finally ended up intervening because I wanted to get to sleep. He was so loud and insistent that she HAD to go back into his room that I went downstairs.
When I got to the bottom of the stairs and very sternly said his name, he got quiet and hid behind his mom. It's not like I was going to do anything to him but he knew I was meaning business. I wanted him in bed. I did end up going into the bedroom and telling him that he needed to do what mommy said and quit arguing with him.
He ended up with me putting his shirt on and putting him in Amy's bed, after which I went back upstairs to my bed. He cried for a few minutes and then it was quiet. Amy came back upstairs, carrying him in her arms and saying, "I know why it matters now. I've figured it out."
I was confused as to what she meant but as soon as she explained it, it made perfect sense and makes me wonder if some of his other episodes are because of this very reason, too.
Isaiah was out of his pajamas and very sad. Amy told me that she didn't connect what he wanted to do until he told her, "You have to come back to my room so you're not mad." What he REALLY wanted - instead of having his own way - was to erase the episode completely by replaying it from the exact place and the exact time frame where his mom had gotten onto him. He could only see that she got upset with him in his room over the pajamas, so she had to go back to that place so he could "erase" the incident as if it didn't happen. He kept saying "and you won't be mad at me" "you have to be happy with me."
Poor thing - his little mind just can't wrap around the fact that we don't carry the anger with us and when he gets into trouble for doing something that we don't have to back up to right before he did it for him to make amends.
After realizing that, an earlier incident made perfect sense - and other incidents came crashing back to my memory that also made sense.
Earlier in the evening I had been sitting in a dining room chair and Isaiah was standing over my left shoulder. Amy and I had been talking and he wanted to talk but I told him to hush and it would be his turn in a minute.
LOL - he collapsed on the floor and I imitated him. He yelled; I yelled. This went on for several minutes before he realized that he needed to quit having a a tissy. I asked him if he was ready to tell me what he wanted and he said he was - but I had to get back in the same chair and he had to stand in the same position. It sounds like he just wants his own way, but it really makes sense that he can't see there's any other way to address the situation.
I wonder if his daycare teachers would understand this concept? Part of the problem is they've not been trained to deal with special-needs children so I highly doubt they'll believe he's doing anything other than trying to have his way, but I do realize there's a very fine line between the two and it's sometimes hard to tell the difference. I don't know how much of this is an "autism" characteristic but it is definitely something that Amy should discuss with the counselor she's been referred to.
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