what I've learned

I had a one on one appointment with the therapist on Friday. Here are my notes of what I learned. I think that these will be very helpful. The therapist said that the behaviors will get worse before they get better and the hardest part with all of this is the follow through. I'm making up my morning, homework and bedtime routines now! I have an appointment next Friday to go over how to handle the summer routines - basically you still have morning, homework, and bedtime routines, but the homework routine may be just reading for a half hour at X time).

*She also stated that this could take 21 days (of us following through perfectly) before it makes sense to the kids!

The number 1 important thing that she stressed is that during discipline you have to act like a complete robot. Do not show any emotion over the situation. After you have reacted to the behavior (timeout, soothing box) then you can show emotion over what they did.

5 things that parents must commit to: (if you cannot commit to these 5 things, you will never succeed).

1. Structure - you should have 3 things that always stay the same (morning routine, homework routine, bedtime routine) and at bedtime you should take 5 minutes to let your child know what the schedule is for the next day.
2. Consistency - what we expect as parents must stay the same. Family rules should be posted in the house.
3. Follow Through - because the rules are posted in the house and have been discussed as a family, there should be no warnings given if a rule is broken. If a rule is broken, straight to timeout. Timeout should be in an open, neutral space (not a bedroom - bedrooms need to be reserved for quiet, peaceful places that we sleep, not where we take timeouts). If the child is disruptive during timeout, they gain additional minutes (timeout minutes = 1 minute for each year of age)
4. Teamwork - stay in communication with everyone who watches your child. Let them know what works, what doesn't work, etc
5. Communicate - whenever someone enters the house (i.e. Dad comes home from work) that person should be given 5 minutes alone to change clothes, etc. When a parent comes home, they should use that 5 minutes to communicate with the other parent about what happened during the day.
   

ROUTINES
Laminate routines so your child can check them off with a dry erase marker.
For the homework routine, estimate an amount of time that homework should last, don't allow it to go longer (this is so the child knows that the homework timeframe will end and they wont dillydally).

Rewards
You can use video games as rewards. If your child completes everything on their morning routine, for example, they earn 15 minutes video game time starting at X time.


MELTDOWNS

When to remove from the situation?

• If you are out doing something for him (i.e. at T-R-U and he can't decide what he wants so he starts to melt down) you leave.
• If you are out doing something for you (i.e. grocery shopping) you do not leave.
  

How to deal with meltdowns?

• His bedroom should be his safe, quiet, peaceful sleep place.
• He should have a "soothing box" in his room filled with things that are calming to him - music CD, a favorite toy, a blanket, a journal, a blow up punching bag.
• When a meltdown starts, send him to his room to calm down and tell him to use his soothing box.
• If you find him in his room hitting himself, tell him that it is unacceptable and he needs to find something out of his soothing box to calm himself.
• Offer him the option of using his journal to write down his thoughts about why he is angry, frustrated, etc. For us, he will yell that he hates his brain so the therapist suggested that he write a letter to his brain in his journal.