Re: Fearful of things new, changed or out of the ordinary

August 1, 2009

> I tried what you said about just talking calmly about the

> biting. And now she is saying she is bird and bumps her nose into my arm. But

last night she reverted to biting. I will

> just have to remind her and try to keep her stress down.

>

> I can see that your ideas can be very helpful.

> Transitions have always set her into

> a tantrum so a tug of my hair or a soft bite is a big

> improvement.

>

> I would say life has improved for us, she is much more

> engaging with me these last few years. But not being

> withdrawn means that she has more anxiety. Severe.

It is way cool to hear about progress, and I know it reverts a lot so keep it up

to make habits I do feel good also knowing that others feel the same way and

respond the same way as I did. I'm not so much the freak I thought I was

sometimes ;-)

>

> As I mentioned often in my mail she has not been in school

> since March so we really need the medication solution to

> help reduce anxiety. She is so gifted verbally and so

> gifted in reasoning skills that each new therapist thinks

> they can reason with her, it gives me hope too. But we end

> up in the same place, so I am convinced medication

> needs to keep moving forward, slowly carefully but forward.

I must have been just over 10 when I started Triavil. It seems good for young'ns

and for anxiety. I think it really helped me in school at least. I started

getting good grades because I stayed on task even though I still hate repetitive

questions like tons of addition/subtraction. It helped me learn social behavior

better too, I guess because of less anxiety. As an adult I used Celexa with some

sleep aid and that helps now but I wonder if celexa is only good for adults.

What the medication helped me with the most is not just temporary relief, but

giving me better focus on therapy. I responded better to things the counselor

wanted me to think about.

Thanks!

August 1, 2009

> 3) Try admitting that I am trying to understand him, but I do not have his

experience. Then pause, if he is frustrated maybe do something else for a

minute and see if he wants to continue the conversation in a few minutes.

>

> By the way, if I try to apologize and say I didn't mean to offend him, that

seems to set him off. I don't think he accepts that I don't know what he knows

yet, so he's skeptical. I think I still need to let him know, for clarification

if nothing else, but I do that later and only briefly. He is still struggling

through the theory of mind stuff. He's better than he was two years ago, but he

is still rather fuzzy on the mind boundaries.

>

Good comments. I did realize that I was often set off by some people's

apologies, and perhaps the big reason is just that I was already upset. I was in

" argue mode " . Still it could probably improve by figuring out the best exact

words to use. " didn't mean to offend " means completely different than " didn't

catch that " which is different than " didn't understand " . Sometimes the best

immediate response involves deliberate vagueness such as, " oh sorry " . I realize

that if someone added to that, " I see " then I attacked them because I didn't

think they did see.

It's hard but see if you can work with the technique of breaking off. The reason

no matter what you say gets an aggressive response could be because you need to

break off the interaction and continue later. It's something I learned in an

Assertive Parenting course and I mention it (in 3) because it worked in some

cases.

> Regarding your discussion on intentions--I wish my husband, kids, other family

and the people at the school could focus on intentions like this. I'm not sure

having good intentions is necessarily all that freeing if nobody around you

recognizes them.

>

I know :-/ that is aggravating to me. They didn't understand my intention,

didn't care what intention, didn't support it, or fought against because of

either pride issues or different intentions. Overall I had to learn to let go of

outside influence which happens no matter what, and focus on my self in relation

with my child or whoever I'm interacting with at the time. Bottom line: It will

help you feel good about yourself to the point that nobody else's point of view

can hurt you. Once you help yourself, you are more prepared to help others.

Also concerning frustrations from other people's interactions, let them be in

the past and you live now. You might find those other people gradually changing

for the better as you go. That is something you would miss if you were stuck on

past words or events.

> 5) Keep communicating that I cannot see what he means even though I don't get

a response.

>

> I say that last because my son is still struggling with understanding the mind

boundaries. He is very skeptical and sometimes offended when I try to tell him

I don't know what he means. I don't think he believes me. Like I said it is

better. I'm not still arguing with him about how he has to verbally communicate

things to his teacher when she is right there. But he still expects me to know

things that I couldn't possibly know.

>

It hurt my pride when someone didn't understand what I meant. That's probably

the biggest obstacle. He likely reacts negatively because he feels less capable

and your misunderstanding is the gauge for his measurement. I needed to realize

that when someone knew they did not understand, they felt guilty. I could

understand guilt because that is what I was really feeling and was using anger

to cover it. I did not really want them to feel guilty. That's why expressing

your vulnerable feelings along with expression of not understanding can help. He

might be shocked to remember that you have feelings about that too. It's the

sort of thing where I knew people would feel that way but forgot when I was

consumed with my own anxiety.

> I enjoyed reading how your son has progressed with his communication. Mine

has progressed from automatic " I don't know " to at least short one or two word

answers after a pause. When he gets frustrated, instead of an automatic " you're

stupid " , he's progressed to " please stop talking " . So, we're still working on

initiating and maintaining conversations that are not of special interest.

>

> Thanks for the great advice--I appreciate it.

Thanks for your feedback and I also appreciate seeing how you rewrite my

suggestions from your point of view, especially condensing the points. I think

it is some pretty good restating.

LOL, that is progress going from " you're stupid " to " please stop talking " I

can see how there's room for improvement. Actually it's a challenge to agree to

stop it right there, but I've mentioned that breaking off just for a while can

help when you continue later. How to continue can be tricky though. The pause

gives us both time to let go of built-up tension and to gather more of our

thoughts so we are reacting to an overall subject more than one sentence that

might have been misguiding anyway.

Yep, keep it up!

August 1, 2009

>

> And I'm spazing out because it is only 3 weeks until school, and I know I have

to come up with a way to explain all this in an introductory letter, at least

somewhat, because the autism team definitely didn't get a lot of this. So, once

again, it is up to me if I want school staff to have good input.

>

Interesting that I may have never known my son had Asperger's syndrome if I had

just let the experts do their thing. I had various different ideas. By one year

old they said it was autism but when I finally got through a divorce and then

took him for a followup (later than they had scheduled because of commotion),

they said it was not. Nothing else, just nothing. I finished his group therapy

(which also did not have any answers just developmental activities), and went on

trying to give him a normal life when obviously he was not responding normal.

Since I had no dx myself I only understood his trouble, not much of what would

help.

It's defintely good to write all this stuff and present it to them I

specifically asked for an ASD (or at least I used the word Asperger's) test, and

that is when they said first something that is less significant than Asperger's,

then they finally said yes it is that after starting therapy with him.

August 1, 2009

>

> Good comments. I did realize that I was often set off by some people's

apologies, and perhaps the big reason is just that I was already upset. I was in

" argue mode " . Still it could probably improve by figuring out the best exact

words to use. " didn't mean to offend " means completely different than " didn't

catch that " which is different than " didn't understand " . Sometimes the best

immediate response involves deliberate vagueness such as, " oh sorry " . I realize

that if someone added to that, " I see " then I attacked them because I didn't

think they did see.

This is really amazing to me, that is, these tiny differences in nuances when

you say the same thing with slightly different words. I don't know if I would

ever catch on to these little differences on my own, but I think you must be

right because this is exactly the reaction I get from my son. I agree with the

idea of working on breaking off sooner, and I will be working on that.

> It hurt my pride when someone didn't understand what I meant. That's probably