at my wits end

[sassyj]

Hi Everyone,

I just am hoping that someone has some ideas on how I can bring some sort of order into my home.

I have 3 children, oldest 17 and has anxiety issues, middle son 13 (a horrible child at the moment) and My youngest son 7 who has tourettes ASD, possible Adhd and sensory processing disorder.

I am pullin my hair out with my youngest at the moment, he is physically violent, tried to punch my mother in the face, kicks us punches us, screams in our ears and slammin doors so hard that they are coming off the hinges, these tempers seem to happen at least 3-5 times a day and we are all fed up with it, He is over 7 stone so hurts and it is difficult to remove him from a room, if we all leave the room he headbutts laptops tv and throws things around.

I have tried time out, 1,2,3 , removing things he loves and not letting him go out to play but nothin works he just doesnt seem to be able to realise that he is goin to be punished (he also doesnt seem to care if he is punished) He swears at us , threatens us and is totally defiant, I often have to double lock the front door to stop him running outside during his temper.

He is taking fluoxetine and abilify, (obviously they arent working) and he has melatonin at night, which takes about 2-3hrs to kick in.

He has been well behaved at school so far, ( he started last week) but seems to meltdown when he gets home and at wkds and holidays.

He doesnt care where he will have a meltdown and often does it when we are out (I try not to take him out very often anymore.)

If we try to restrain him from hurtin someone he screams that we are punching him biting him and (we have never hurt him) and I worry that as he is gettin bigger he is goin to do someone some really bad damage . Or we are goin to end up with social services knocking on our door.

I feel totally out of control, I have always managed to discipline my elder two children and they have their moments but are pretty respectful good kids, but I feel like I am failing as a mother with my youngest and am scared for our future.

Any advice would be appreciated

My youngest is under CAMHS and has been on risperidone in the past and pimozide and strattera and ritalin but CAMHS team took them off them for various reasons and since coming off the risperidone I feel like we have lost control of him.

He is also under St Georges for his tourettes but we arnt seeing them until the middle of July.

Sometimes it is a complete nightmare living here (even tho I love my children very much)

Sorry for griping but I really feel desperate at the moment.

Sarah

[Enid]

Well I know how it is, have been through exactly the same myself, I was going to suggest resperidone but see he has been taken off it, could you ask CAHMS to retry? or have a second opioion?, my own Lad is on resperidone, and I feel it has saved us, we too used to double lock doors/windows and then lock ourselves in another room and come out when he was calm to survey the damage, my lad also didnt/dosnt get consequences, cause and effect etc. There is a brilliant book called "The explosive child" that has been a fantastic help to me, I would really urge you to get a copy, look on amazon, I`m sorry cant give you the author as have just today lent it to a desparate friend!!! It tells you how to deal with situations step by step, using plan A,or B,or C, It sounds complicated but its not and is an easy read,and has a lot to say about consequences!!!! keep strong I know how blumming hard it is. <'> <'> Enid

[Sally44]

Sorry to hear you are having such a hard time at the moment.

I am sure others will post who have more experience of these combinations of diagnosis.

My initial reaction to your post, is that if your son is behaving in school and is then kicking off at home; then it might be due to either not having enough structure and routine at home (as he has in school), or although he is behaving in school he actually is not coping and all the stress and frustration is coming out at home.

Do you feel that the school environment is right for your son and that he is supported adequately?

As things are getting so difficult at home, will CAHMS (or any other professional) support you in asking for additional supports in school or assessments to ensure that he is coping?

When he has a meltdown or kicks off what do you feel has been the trigger?

I cannot comment on the medications as I have no experience of them. But if you feel there has been a deterioration in his behaviour or how he is coping due to medication changes, then I think you are right to ask for an urgent appointment to discuss this.

I think professional can and should be involved in helping you put together some kind of strategy at home. Rather than outright punishment straight away; would your son respond to a time out type of strategy? You would need to talk it through with him and explain what it means. And then when he does or says something inappropriate you tell him to go to his room to calm down. This can sometimes stop the escalation where they say something rude or behave aggressively and we respond to it with a punishment straight away and that escalates their behaviour, so our punishment increases etc. But it all depends on whether he could respond to that.

There is also a system called 1-2-3 magic which I have heard works well with children with ADHD type of behaviours. There are courses that parents can go on. And you would be able to use this reward system for all your children.

I hope you get some more answers from others posting in these forums.

[sassyj]

Thanks Sally and Enid for your replies,

I have just got the explosive child book from the library, yesterday. It is making a lot of sense and I have decided to try and keep a positive mind and give it a good try.

I also have 1,2,3 magic but it didnt work with My DS. The problem with giving him a time out in his room is he is so big and heavy I cant actually get him there if he is adamant he is not going!

Risperidone was great with my darlin DS he was on it for about 2 yrs but after 18 months it didnt have the same effect and he piled on the weight, because there is a history of insulin dependent diabetes CAMHS decided to take him off it.

We have an appointment with CAMHS next week and I am hopin that they will offer us some support or behaviour programme for DS.

After readin some of the explosive child, I realise that as his family we may be contributing to DS frustration and that he needs warnings about time to transfer from one thing to another.

DS often has a melt down because he is playing his ds and we tell him its time for bed,dinner, going out, but I realise now that he needs some time warning to move from one thing to the other.

A lot of his meltdowns are about control, he tries to control the family, he thinks it is his job to wake up my eldest two who are both teenagers. They dont want to be woken up by him and it usually esculates into a full screamin hitting match, unfortunatly he does it when my back is turned or in the bathroom so I dont have time to intervene.

My eldest two are off to their fathers for the wkd so at least they will get a break from the abuse.

I will let you know how I get on at CAMHS.

Thanks again Sarah x

[Karen A]

http://www.asd-forum.org.uk/forum/index.ph...18&hl=magic

http://www.asd-forum.org.uk/forum/index.ph...ssive+behaviour

 

Hi sassyj .

The links above include information from recent threads that I remembered and thought might be useful.Karen.

Edited May 29, 2009 by Karen A

[Gavin]

Hi Sarah

 

I know you have probably tried all sorts of reward / consequences, time-out etc. strategies. You may feel that these have failed because he doesn't get consequences, subverts the system etc. That is what happened to us (I wrote about it on here in one the threads Karen A pointed you to). But, even though it failed before, since we have re-introduced time out, there has been a dramatic improvement in our family.

 

The approach that made all the difference for us was to keep it simple and give the time out for one reason only i.e. hurting people or things. We don't ever use it for anything else. We have forced ourselves to be 100% consistent. Time out can happen anywhere, including in the street or in the car, behind a closed door, or recently behind a curtain at the Science Museum. Even on the occasions where things still get out of hand (a couple of times in the last six weeks instead of twice a day that we were having previously), he still has to do his time out after he has calmed down. This is good because it provides a break between the problem and the next activity. Another tip is to reassure him that he will still be able to carry on as normal after the time-out is over, for example if stopping to give time-out on the way somewhere, reassure him that he will not be late.

 

He understands that if he hurts someone or something, he has to do the time-out. The extreme episodes have reduced in frequency by 90% and relative stability has started to return.

 

The only negative is that apparently since he got better at home he has been showing more testing behaviour at school!

 

We are continuing to reserve the time-out for hurting only and use a (very simple) reward system for encouraging positive behaviour, again focusing on one thing at a time. We have recently started a reward system for lights out at night, which is working OK. I would never have believed it a few weeks ago.

 

By the way, have you done the NAS Earlybird Plus course? We are on it at the moment. I think it helps to understand the reasons behind the behaviour.

 

All the best

 

Gavin