bad bevahior…it’s my fault

**Lets pretend I named this “Negative Behavior…it’s my fault” just cuz I think that’s better**

I think it’s after a blog where I comment on how lovely and behaved my children are where they decide to act out.  It’s usually my fault.

Like when my child goes back to neurosensory integration for the first time in ages.  I should know this messes a bit with his system and I need to be more patient after.  But I’m pregnant and tired of listening to his whining.  So I just snap a tiny bit…a tinnnny little bit and it starts a rage.

Screaming allllllllll the way home.  Once parked, he gets out of the car, runs around to my side and give me a flying ninja face slap.

Being slapped in the face makes me so mad.  I don’t know anyone who could get slapped in the face without just feeling really pissed about it.

BUT, when you’re an autism momma who’s learned how to keep herself together, you swallow the anger and send them to their rooms.  Or whatever else you use for that.  Sending him to his room keeps everyone safer in our house.

It’s hard because you can’t blame yourself for everything.  You can’t live like that.  But I think it’s really helpful to recognize when you could have done something VERY differently to avoid a situation.  With any child even.  It’s called “prevention not intervention”.

When you have a child that explodes, there’s no teachable moments during an explosion.  It’s impossible to teach when a child is in a fit of rage, anger, hurt, etc.  Nothing you do in that moment will teach them anything.  It’s the moment where we are all the most freaked out an irrational.  Parents do or say stupid things and same with the kids.  It’s best to get the child into a place where they’re safe and so are you.  That could mean many different things depending on the family.

Prevention means you avoid the melt down or bad behavior in the first place.  That doesn’t mean giving in and letting them get their way…not at all.  In my case – it meant that I needed to be more sensitive to Silas.  I could have said “Silas, I’m having trouble listening to your whining right now.  Lets listen to music until we get home and then we can talk about _____”.  Even just ignoring him would have been better than me acting annoyed and setting him off.  I’m the adult, I’m the neurotypical (kinda) and he’s the one who is the child with autism.  There’s a way to teach kids to not whine without, essentially, whining back at them about it.

I always believe we need to set our child up to have a successful moment.  No that doesn’t mean sheltering them and not allowing them to learn from their mistakes.  To me that works in the mornings where Isaac constantly gets distracted when it’s time to put on shoes.  He ends up getting in trouble every time.  How can I change that scenario so he is successful most of the time?  Lay his shoes out by the door?  Have myself ready earlier so I can keep him on track rather than me running around getting the loose ends together while he makes faces at himself in the mirrored closet door??  There’s many ways.

They’re lucky they’re cute!!