AUTISM CHILD BEHAVIOR

Today I have been reassigned. I asked the district for another aide and action has been taken. I am no longer working with Mahesh and his ODD and Hyperlexia. Now I am working with Jane who is supposedly reactive to red dye #40 and I am also working with Andrew (my original 1:1 PDD.NOS assignment). This has made me very happy. Some research was done into the food ingredients and it was found that nothing has contained the Red Dye #40 or any other red dyes, so the dye can not be blamed for Jane's recent erratic behaviors. Her parents are insisting that it is allergy related instead of seizure related (which I suspect) so I think they will be eliminating wheat and dairy from her diet to eliminate that probability. Jane was pretty calm today, she responds so well to written instructions. When she gets off topic or behaves inappropriately, I just write what she should be doing and she does it. The funniest thing was, during math, she started copying her neighbors paper so I moved her to a table by herself and she said "I'm busted!"

Today was a rough day. Mahesh was constantly defiant. At the lunch table, he was hitting other kids and touching their food. I told him that if he made one more bad choice, he was leaving lunch, he immediatly smiled and touched the kid next to him's food. I threw his lunch away and took him back to the special ed room. I had no idea what to do with him, so I asked the special ed teacher and she said give him his social story book, I said "he knows the right way to act, this book is no good" she said, "just show him the pictures of good choices" So I let him look at the "right way to eat lunch" story. Then I gave him a task to complete. I know that he enjoys writing and reading and strongly dislikes drawing, so his job was to draw the correct lunchroom behavior using no words or numbers. (he likes to lable children in his drawings with their age and bus number). It took him about 45 minutes to comply. Once he made his drawing, I asked him "why do you made bad choices when you know the right thing to do?"
He told me "I like to make bad choices."
Then I said "tell me why you like to make bad choices."
He said "Because I get to read my book"
I said "You are not going to read this book again. I know you like reading and it can be a reward for you. If you are feeling bored in lunch, you can ask me for a reading break. If you are feeling bored or like you need to read, let me know and you can work for a reading break anytime during the day."
By the time we were done this conversation, it was time for me to go to math with different students, so I didn't get a chance to work out the reading breaks with him.
The girl (I will call her Jane) that I help with math, fell asleep during instruction. I took her out into the hall way and made her hold me hands and jump 20 times, I helped her go higher every time. This woke her up. Jane always calls me Mrs. Squawky, I try to be firm and tell her to use my right name, but I am always laughing on the inside.

Today was very rough. Mahesh was extremly oppositional. His teacher asked them to draw a picture of the "person of the day" for her book. Most of the kids spent about 10 minutes working on this with no arguments. It took Mahesh an hour to complete the drawing with much protest. I had to remove him from the room when all he would do is write words and scribble. now I understand that he has hyperlexia and that words are very interesting to him but he needs to understand that he needs to do what is asked of him. I gave him a new paper and let him try again, he wrote words and scribbled again. I wrote the directions on the white board for him, he read them and said following these rules is not a good choice. I drew a picture of the "person of the day" and described how I was drawing it, he said no. I picked up his hand and drew a picture with him, then told him to draw. He said no. I then ignored him, leaving him with the written instructions, the example and his crayons and paper. He wrote boring boring boring (which is impressive for a first grader, he is so hyperlexic) all over his paper, so I quietly took it away and gave him a new one. He did it again and again. After 45 minutes of this, I went to lunch and left him with his Autistic Support teacher. She sat down on the floor next to him and quietly drew a picture of the "person of the day" and finally he decided to comply. Things like this went on all day but this was the longest incident of defiance. I wonder if there was a better way to handle this?

I learned that Red Dye #40 in food possibly causes erratic behavior in some people with autism as well as people with typical brains. I was working with a child that I do not usually work with. I came in to help her out with math. She was sitting on her chair hiding her face in her legs, when I wrote to her to sit correctly, she started screaming and crossing her eyes. She then jumped off of her chair and started hoping around the room like a frog. The class was told to come to the floor to listen to the teacher. She went to the floor but started spitting on the ground. I told her this is not acceptable behavior and she said to me laughing "Is it completely terrible?" So I sent her back to her seat. She sat in her seat for a minute then started running around laughing. She would not respond to anything, I or her teacher was saying, so i picked her up and took her to the nurses office. I was fearing that she was having some sort of seizure. She was calm in the office. The nurse took her temperature and it was 100.3 so she laid in the office for the rest of the day, since her mom was too far away to pick her up before the buses arrived. The next day her mom said the behavior was most likely caused by the red dye #40 in the pasta sauce she had that day. Now I am not completely sure that this is the true cause but it is an interesting theory.

Today the Oppositional Defience Disorder was really put into full effect. Since it is the begining of the school year the classroom teacher has to go over the class rules and the playground rules. Since the boy I work with, (I will call him Mahesh, for story sake) needs to challenge and defy everything, he acted out every bad choice that was presented to the first grade. The teacher said on the playground we keep our hands to ourselves, then gave many examples of the wrong ways to interact. As soon, as her speech was over and the kids were told to line up for the playground, Mahesh went over and pushed another kid. Mahesh is very tiny, maybe 45 pounds? So when he pushed the larger boy, that boy just belted him. I figured that was punishment enough for him, so I acted like I didn't see it. I don't know if that was proper behavior management but no one is giving me much support on how to work with him. Later in the day, the teacher assigned a coloring project, she talked about how people are not green so don't use green to color your skin, use tan, brown or peach. As soon as Mahesh got his paper he began coloring the hair green. I used the advice from the pulling in the reins article, and took the green away and left the rest of the crayons to choose from, he then laughed and chose purple, so I then took away all of his crayons except brown and black. Then he chose black to color his hair. I like giving him options and it does work pretty well to give him very limited undesirable choices. Just when it comes to hitting, there are no choices I can give him; You can hit and get punished or you can not hit and have recess time, he would choose punishment because he enjoys being punished. I guess I need to figure out what he likes about punishment.

I started working with this first grade boy, who is diagnosed with pdd.nos but I am very positive that he has hyperlexia. All day he was obsessed with reading every poster, every paper, every book, anything with words on it. The teacher was reading a story to the children while they sat on the floor, he was busy reading the board. She handed out books for the children to read along, he read his out loud very quickly before everyone even got their books. The other children were amazed that he could even read, since most of them can only read a few words. This sounds very hyperlexic to me. When the teacher was giving instructions about how to hang up their school bags, he was busy reading the numbers off of his number chart that is taped to his desk. He misunderstood almost every oral direction that was given but he remembered everything that was written. From now on I am just going to keep a portable white board with me and write out all oral instructions for him. When he earned a break, his choices were : play with a ball/sensory toy, draw on the board or do stretches. He chose to draw on the board and instead of drawing, he wrote words, numbers and letters. While we were walking through the hall, he read every poster. I asked him who taught him to be such a great reader? He laughed and said NO ONE! I said it must have been your mom, he said NO WAY, then I said it must have been your kindergarten teacher, he laughed and said NO WAY. Then I said who did then? He said NO ONE! While laughing more. I think I believe him. I haven't found many techniques to use through my research on hyperlexia. Maybe the best way to manage hyperlexia is to feed into it with more written words until his reading and listening comprehension grow. There were a few things that made me angry with his teacher, she assigned groups then each child was assigned a color and she deliberately assigned him red because it was the shortest and easiest word to read (she also said red like your shirt), she did not listen to him read off every color listed on the paper before she walked over. Also, while reviewing her behavior system, she focused mainly on the punishments and very little on the rewards. He also has Oppositional Defiance Disorder and for some reason craves punishment, soon after her explanation and examples of incorrect behaviors, he hit me, yelled and became very non compliant. Now that is off my chest maybe I can sleep easy tonight.

This is from more research that I have done. Tommorow I get to test it out. Wish me luck.

Reversing Demoralization and
Increasing Motivation in Your Child


Many times, in our effort to see children succeed, we will push them or require that they put in “more effort.” We comment on many aspects of their performance-trying to be constructive. Children and adolescents commonly see these comments as micromanaging, criticism, or as evidence that we care more about their grades and performance than we care about them. They frequently end up feeling demoralized and adopt a “what’s the use?” attitude.

We must remember that what we consider helpful comments may be perceived as criticism and negative. Our efforts to help them may result in feelings of hopelessness, a drop in morale, self-esteem, motivation and, ultimately, a strain in our relationship with them.

To reverse this drop in morale and strain in our relationship, we must:

Limit the number of comments

First, remember that it is better to note the positives. If you feel compelled to comment, then limit your “constructive comments” to one per event, whether it be homework, athletics, or friendship skills.
Example: “Keep your eye on the ball, just like you did on the last pitch.”
Instead of: “Keep your eye on the ball, elbow up, choke up on the bat, plant your foot, follow through, etc.”

Notice movement in the right direction

Second, it is most important to note behaviors that show your child that they are moving in the right direction (even though their performance may be far from adequate, much less perfection.) Without some encouragement even small changes will cease to exist. Big changes and substantial improvements only occur from a succession of small changes.
Example: “You’ve gotten both socks on without being reminded!”

Lower the bar and raise it as they progress.