Siblings mimicking behavior

[JCB]

I have a terrible problem with my other children mimicking my 4.5 year old's (undiagnosed yet) behavior. I have 4 children, 7,4,3, and 2. The others all copy C when they don't get their own way as they see C getting his own way so they think it's acceptable.

 

It's got to the point where my youngest is continually displaying the same sorts of behaviors as C did when he was 2. It's very hard to tell if there is genuinely something there or if it's pure mimicking. For example, he will 'play' with his cereal every morning in the same fashion. He has to have 2 bowls. He pours the dry cereal between both bowls for about an hour, occasionally eating some. He does this every single morning. He has an obsession with pouring. Anything he can get his hands on that can be poured, he does. He can also zone out completely. You can call his name for ages (minutes) and he will just stare and stare the other way. I'm sure he can hear fine. He will just suddenly snap out of it and come running. He also hits strangers all the time. We have never paid any attention to this behavior but it's so embarrassing in the supermarket when he just runs up to a grown up and whacks them. They don't see the funny side! He does baby baby ballet with his sister at the weekend and spends the whole entire class stiff and staring across the room. You cannot rouse him. The only time he wakes is when the teacher brings out the tambourines. He springs to life, joins in and when its over, sits back down and zones out. The other parents just look at him strangely, it's sad to see.

 

I'm sure he is just copying this behavior from his older brother because sometimes he can be really funny and sociable (with adults) hes not yet at the developmental age where he will play properly with other children his age (he just ignores them or hits them).

 

So my question is: do your other children copy this behavior? To what degree? How do you deal with it?

[Mannify]

I think we all find my son's joyful arm-flapping infectious. Beyond that, though, there are other types of behaviour which we cannot immediately modify in my son, but which we do not want the other two to copy. Obviously, you have to feel comfortable with it, but for us our main strategy has been to be very open with all our children about autism. That way we have been able to explain which behaviours are associated with autism and are therefore not ok for the others to copy. I suppose your two year old might be a little young to understand, but I remember my daughter grasping the situation quite well at 3. It's surprising how well children can understand given the chance. I do think the self-knowledge has been good for my sons, too. If as they get older they can identify behavior which is autistic, it might help them to self-adjust to some extent.

[Lyndalou]

I have a terrible problem with my other children mimicking my 4.5 year old's (undiagnosed yet) behavior. I have 4 children, 7,4,3, and 2. The others all copy C when they don't get their own way as they see C getting his own way so they think it's acceptable.

 

 

 

Firstly, I would ask what you class as C 'getting his own way'? It must be very difficult to juggle 4 kids - I find it hard enough with 2 - but I would say that without C getting given any sanctions for behaviour you find unacceptable your other children will definitely notice. There may be mimicking behaviour but also resentment with the resultant playing up that shows itself in various forms.

 

There seem to be two issues here as I see it; your other kids 'mimicking' poor behaviour or behaviour that occurs as a result of possible ASD-related problems and your concern about your 2 year's general behaviour and whether this is because of C or independent of him.

 

Don't be fooled into thinking that autistic children can't be simply naughty but it is very hard to separate out what behaviours are caused by being 4 or by sensory/social overload or other autistic thinking. My son is the same age as yours and some of his main triggers are tiredness, difficulties with the concept of sharing (he can kick out and grab from his sister if she comes too close to 'his' things, including remote controls), problems with proximity to other children (so playdates have to be well monitored and I always try to get as much information about how he has been at playgroup or nursery), certain sounds and volumes (he has acute hearing but is also very bothered by continuous droning), visual imagery (including puppets, programmes such as 'Teletubbies' which he is still terrified of and random stuff like tiny pictures of monsters on his toothbrush), being interrupted while engaged in sequences or by being told he can't do something he wants to do or have something he really wants to have (turned down requests for biscuits can see him running screaming to his room).

 

The thing is, even if the behaviour has it's basis in his particular way of seeing the world, some things are simply not acceptable to me like when he lashes out at hs sister or takes a tantrum over a biscuit. With the former, he is immediately told that it was a 'bad' thing to do and if his sister is crying it is explained to him that she is upset because of what has happened. He often now says 'Sorry' without being prompted. With biscuits it can quite often be that the requests are made shortly after breakfast (he has a very big one!) or close to lunch. If he throws himself on the floor I tend to ignore him until he comes round. When he does we tend to use the clock to show when he can get one which is (I hope) giving him a concept of time.

 

It is not easy. His behaviour has been driving me a bit round the twist recently.

 

As to your 2 year old, I would probably want to raise your concerns with a Health Visitor or another health professional. Although some of the behaviour you are describing could be ascribed to copying his big brother, some of it may be worth following up independently. I wouldn't necessarily class 'zoning out' as a bad behaviour and I'm not sure if a 2 year old could effectively 'copy' this type of behaviour from a sibling. My daughter often screams out for attention which probably is a 'copied' behaviour and it does result in attention but I would be loathe to say that she as a rule copies her brother although this may change as she gets older!

 

All the best, Lynda

[JCB]

Thank you for your answers. I really appreciate the time you have taken.

 

The type of behavior I'm talking about him 'getting away with' is things like going up and down the stairs in he correct order and making sure the biscuits he eats are whole etc etc. for example, this morning, my 3.5 year old decided she had to have an unbroken biscuit for her snack. The only reason for this is that C will never eat a biscuit that is even slightly damaged so she thinks she can do the same. I obviously didn't let her have an unbroken one and tried to explain to her why C needs to have one but I ended up with a 30 minute tantrum that I ignored. This then set C off.

 

He runs our lives, everything has to be planned around him. We can't even go to the supermarket as a family any more. It's so hard.

 

C is also very very violent towards others. He kicks and punches me and my husband and his siblings when he is frustrated. My youngest (the 2 year old) is becoming the same now and its worrying.

 

What's most frustrating is that as he has no diagnosis yet, I find it difficult to know if I'm always doing the right thing with him as I have nobody to ask. I have worked with children with Aspergers so I understand to a small degree what he needs.

 

We have noticed C was different from birth, he hated being held and hated being left in his cot/chair. We couldn't win. We have been telling various GP's and HV's over the years that something's not right but we haven't been listened to. We moved into a new area and the HV actually agreed with us, along with the nurse that visited. She, along with the GP referred us recently to the local paeds but we have 3 months to wait for this appt. the paed will see us and decide if C is severe enough to go on a 9 month waiting list for the CDC. We are looking at 18 months minimum before we get a yes or no diagnosis. I would go private if a) it wasn't so expensive and it wouldn't put me in the realms of accusations of god knows what. (yes we've had private and NHS clashes with a different medical issue in the past leading to nearly disastrous consequences - but that's for another day and another post!)

[JCB]

Ooh I got an emoticon instead of a oh well!

[JCB]

Aargh! It should be b!

[Mannify]

What's most frustrating is that as he has no diagnosis yet, I find it difficult to know if I'm always doing the right thing with him as I have nobody to ask. I have worked with children with Aspergers so I understand to a small degree what he needs.

Yes, and it's hard when you keep being offered generic advice which may or may not work, but which is probably more suited to typical kids. Even the advice you get from such as the NAS may not be relevant to your children, because each child is so unique. When my son was biting me a lot we got lots of advice, but ultimately any kind of sanctions actually cranked the behavior up and we found the best course of action was to react as little as possible. But that strategy got a lot of tuts from onlookers.

 

With regard to your younger son, a diary might be a good idea (easier said than done for us busy mums, I know). But it will help to both help you see patterns which may help to understand his behavior better, and offer evidence if at any time you feel it may be worth pursuing investigation.

[A-S warrior]

Aargh! It should be b!

 

hahahaha! that happens to me all the time

[Lyndalou]

It must be difficult to be 'in the dark' so to speak. We're lucky in the respect that we have specialist intervention which has made a great deal of difference since our son was 3. The nursery my son attended had very good specialist teaching staff with a lot of experience working with children with ASD's. As Mannify says, every child with ASD is different but a main component in how the staff have worked with my son at school is a consistent approach, including helping my son to deal with changing from one activity to another and learning to understand imperatives like 'No' which can be a tough thing for someone with ASD, especially if it interrupt an activity or it is something the person doesn't necessarily want to do.

 

My little boy had a split placement with a mainstream playgroup and we were having a problem with the playgroup staff allowing my son to do whatever he liked in class for fear he would become upset. A visit was arranged so the playgroup staff could see how the nursery staff worked with the kids and when I spoke to the playgroup staff later, they said with some surprise that the nursery staff were very firm with them and didn't take 'No' for an answer. My son had been refusing to sit down in playgroup with the other children at playgroup but at nursery he was the first child to sit down, running to his seat! All it took was the playgroup to agree to change 'Registration' to 'Hello Time' as they did it in nursery for my son to agree to sit with the other children, albeit slightly removed from the other kids as he has a problem with proximity to others. His time at playgroup was difficult for him and he required downtime when he got home but I'm convinced it was helpful for him to be with mainstream children and to be treated the same with adjustments made to keep the stress for him to a minimum.

 

Does your son have his own space he can go to when things get too much or when you can start to see the signs that he is getting stressed? It may be likely that he is lashing out when things all just get too much or it is possible that it may even be something he is doing out of habit. Either way, it isn't acceptable behaviour but it is understandable behaviour if it is the only outlet for his frustration.

 

It may be that there are many reasons that your son finds going to the supermarket difficult like the amount of people. My son does not tend to act out too much in the supermarket but there are certain problems we do have like him running off and getting lost in the aisles, he makes a beeline for the photo booth, he likes checking out the cash registers and if something takes his fancy then he can throw himself on the ground and refuse to move if we are moving on. I tend to do things like allow him to go up and down the travelator or the lift a couple of times during the shop because for him this tends to grab his attention as soon as we go in the door and it seems to have a calming effect because we've got it out of the way. I also let him ride in the trolley although the nappy box has to be put in a particular way. I know he finds it tricky in the freezer aisles so we kind of 'psych up' for going through that bit!!

 

What I'm trying to say is that there are going to be things that only you know about your son, what the signs are that something is going to kick off etc and there are ways and means to head it off before it descends into chaos. trust your own instincts and do your own research. The fact that you don't have a diagnosis for your son is in many ways irrelevant. The main thing is that you can help your son to manage his emotions and that his siblings are not adversely affected by it.

 

I would also say that there is also a 'choose your battles' element with your son and other kids. I think the 'whole biscuit' issue is quite common from my discussions with other mums. I don't know what happened for my son to stop demanding this, it just happened one day! If your daughter is copying this, it may just tail off on it's own sometime in the future.

 

I'm not sure if what I've written makes much sense but hope it adds something to the discussion.....

Edited July 26, 2012 by Lyndalou

[Sally44]

Well i'm glad to here that the move to another area has bought you into contact with professionals that are listening and looking and referring your son on.

 

Yes children can mimick. But if you have one child on the spectrum there is a higher possibility that other children born will also be on the spectrum.

 

How is your 7 year old?

 

Your other younger ones, at 2 and 3 are just at that age when they should be developing socially. But what worried me about your posts was the behavioural aspect ie. the pouring, and the appearing deaf. That is very hard for a child to mimick that at such a young age.

 

What you could do about the biscuits is to have them out of reach and so when 'C' wants one he gets a complete one. If your other kids want one and are determined to have a whole one, I would just let them have it. But at some point there are going to be only broken ones left, and so they will have to choose whether to have a broken one, or none at all. That would make no difference to 'C', he would still want a whole one. But I would be interested to see how the others decided ie. to have a broken one or none at all.

 

I think when you see the HV or nurse or whoever, that you also raise your concerns about your other children and say that they are showing similar behaviours to your son. Don't offer up the mimicking idea because you need them to be observed and assessed for the relevent professionals to tell you that. You would hate to assume it was mimicking, to find out years later that actually they are also on the spectrum.

 

You could make a diary and record what each child says and does over a period of a month. That would be useful for any professional.

 

My son can also be social with older children or adults. He struggles with his own age group. And he is definately ASD and has a severe/profound speech disorder. So remember that an ASD is a 'spectrum' disorder and that there are so many facets to it that every child on the spectrum can present differently.

 

But I would definately advise that both your younger children are flagged so that professionals observe and assess their development.

[justine1]

Hi

I got five kids and have experienced similar. Sam(9) got his diagnoses age 6. I already had my concerns about his younger brother Dan long before Sam's dx. Sam's dx was pushed cause of his problems in mainstream ,on the otherhand Dan had more problems at home than school. Though I to thought it was copied behaviour there were things I read post Sams dx that Dan displayed and Sam didnt. To cut a long story short he to got a dx almost a year after Sam.

With Eli,who is 4, I can tell when he is copying behaviour. I have concerns about him to,the health visitor said due to his brothers dx he will be more closely monitored.At the moment I want to see how he gets on at school.

 

As for the food thing or getting own way...I treat all my kids the same.I cannot let Sam and Dan get their own way cause of their Asd it wont happen in the real world. I used to just give in as it was easier than listening to a tantrum but now I say if you wont eat a broken biscuit you get no biscuit. There are foods they just wont eat which is fine but generally we all eat the same meals. My eldest is 11 and does say I take Sam or Dans side due to their Asd but honestly all children say that,I know I did as I was the only girl so always moaned about how I was treated differently.

 

My opinion is firstly wait to see if your other child does get a dx before raising any other concerns. Also dont read too much into behaviours I know after Sams dx it sometimes felt like everyone was autistic as I read so much into simple behaviours. I personally think when a child has been through reception that is when it will be clearer as you can get a detailed picture from the teachers.

[trekster]

Would a book called 'my brother is different' help to explain to your kids what autism means?