What if his challenging behaviour is actually a cry for help?

If you were walking home in the dark one night and heard a female screaming for help would you see those screams as challenging behaviour?

What if you were in a hospital and heard a child cry? Would you see that as challenging or would you be more sympathetic?

We all understand the lady screaming on a dark night is desperate for help. We all understand the child crying in hospital is scared and does not understand what is going on around him.

So why when my child with learning difficulties and autism screams and cries does everyone suddenly see it differently?
Professionals have labelled my child as having ‘challenging behaviour’. He kicks, pulls hair, scratches, bites, screams, cries, throws himself down stairs, throws objects in temper, head butts the floor, and attacks people. He is now almost my height and a third of my weight. He is only eight!
He can also be loving, gently, funny, happy, warm, lovely and wonderful. 

Like the lady screaming in fright on a dark night there are times he is scared. Right now he is terrified of open doors. His anxiety soars making his adrenaline pump through his little body to an extent he has to react. His challenging behaviour is his way of communicating fear and anxiety.

Professionals tell us to restrain him, speak to him calmly and discipline him. Would we do this to the lady screaming on a dark night? Most people would in fact rush to help her yet people seem to rush to get away from my son when he has the same feelings of life being out of control. Both scream…both are full of fear…yet we call one challenging behaviour and the other simply a means of communicating for help in a desperate situation. Perhaps we need to realise both are the same?

Like the little child we hear crying in the hospital ward who is worried, in pain, and not understanding what is going on around him so too is my son at times when we take him places he isn’t familiar with or he doesn’t want to be there. Why do we have sympathy for a little child in a hospital ward yet look in distain at my son when he cries at the supermarket aisle? 
My son has no speech. Behaviour is his way of getting his message across. How can he communicate that he did not want chicken nuggets for his dinner? One way is to throw them at me. Instead of punishing that behaviour or seeing it as challenging I prefer to see it as communication and frustration at not being able to say what he wanted. I don’t want to encourage his behaviour but until I can teach him a better way of communication I have to understand his method of ‘speech.’

When he drags me out the door and onto the street some professionals feel I should ignore him or restrain him. How then would he be able to show me the reason for his fear?

Yes I would love him to be calmer, happier and less physical at times. I do discipline and teach him as his difficulties allow but I want society to stop seeing my child as simply having challenging behaviour and see him as a child crying for help exactly like a woman on a dark night or a little boy in a hospital ward.

 
Perhaps the challenge in his behaviour is actually a challenge to society? What if the challenging behaviour is actually a cry for help that we are all ignoring?

 
Perhaps in that case we need to challenge our own thoughts and not his behaviour?

My best friends…the beautiful flowers

Sometimes I just don’t want to know about my daughters day at school. It seems contrary to all good parenting advice but when I asked my six-year-old whether she had any friends the other day she told me she spends her outside social time at school talking to and looking at the “beautiful flowers”. I just can’t bear to hear any more.

I know the school well. I know the names of every single child in her class. I even volunteer within the school for several hours a week. I talk to the Head on first name terms.

My daughter is not being bullied. She is just unable to play with the other children. Her social skills are limited. She takes what the other children say in a very literal way. She is vulnerable. Her interests are far different to the others of her age and ability. She is socially isolated and happy in her own world. She is surrounded by children who know and understand popular culture, current television characters and have physical skills she has yet to even attempt. She has only one current interest which not one other child in the class have even heard of. She is a little girl with autism in a world of mainstream children.

Her perception of what goes on in school is so different from the other children. Where others listen to a story she will home in on that one child who is biting their nails and tell me at home how biting your nails is not good and that child should have been told to stop. It is only when I deduce that the children were sitting on the carpet that I figure she was perhaps having a class story. Her tales of school are all about what children did to break the rules, whose name was taken down the tree today (a behavioural chart used in the class) and who touched her and when (she hates being touched!).

Try as I may she can not grasp that the world can be seen another way. Her autism prevents her from seeing things from other people’s viewpoints. And this is impacting on so much now. Even in the simplest tasks like reading. When I asked her the other night why she still had the same few words home to practice when I was confident in her ability to know those words she said, “I read them to you mummy so why do I have to read them to the teacher too?” It was a genuine question. In her mind she knows them. She knows that and I know that so why would her teacher not know the same thing? She is genuinely ‘blind’ to the fact the teacher will not know she knows them without her reading them to the teacher. The same way she thinks I know exactly what goes on in school because she does so why would I not too?

This is happening to so many children. ‘Inclusion’ is the way to go apparently. It is a very delicate balance between what is right for my child (and many like her) academically whilst balancing the child’s social and emotional wellbeing. School is like a mini real world where she will be misunderstood, become confused at things others find easy and just interpret everything in a different way.

She is the proverbial round peg in a square hole. It is about allowing her to be her, allowing her to be autistic but balancing that against her mental wellbeing and self-esteem when she seems so different. It is a very difficult balance and one that needs very careful monitoring.

So today as I walked my beautiful daughter home from school, with trepidation, I once again asked her how her day had been. “Oh mummy, wait until I tell you what happened to my friends today…” It was beautiful to hear her happy, animated and excited and talking about that elusive thing we call ‘friends’.

Has someone lost a tooth, had a birthday, had a new baby brother or sister, or even asked her to play I silently wondered.

“My friends, the beautiful flowers, opened up for the first time today and now they look even more beautiful!”

Maybe I have it all wrong. There is an area in her playground full of greenery, shrubs and flowers. But the one flower my daughter noticed was the one that was different. Because it was more beautiful, more noticeable and something very special indeed.

I think today she just told me the most beautiful thing about school I ever heard.