Special Needs
cdominique11
member
Help!!
cdominique11
member
A week ago, I found out that my 3 year old may have autism. How do you manage tantrums, without wanting to throw one yourself??
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Re: Help!!
Age 3 was our toughest. He just didn't have the capasity to understand enough to avoid a temper tantrum in some instances. Bribery was our friend. Our therapists encouraged the "first this then than" mentality. For us it was the grocery store- he hated it. So we had a social story that we would read that explained the rules of the store, and said first the grocery store, then a happy meal. It may have helped- but for us, he needed to be engaged orally or visually while in the store. So dum-dum suckers became our temporary crutch. I think I never went out without several for that year. We were able to wean him off of them as he began to understand that the shopping trip would soon come to an end. Our therapist explained it: it's like if you're washing dishes, and you can't see how many dishes are left, so you just keep washing and washing and washing.. eventually you're going to get upset/frustrated/annoyed. So it goes with kids with ASD. Even now DS likes to know exactly how many things we're going to get at the store- so he can prepare himself. He knows a "big" trip is 30-40 items, and a small trip is 2-3. For other tantrums, or crying jags, we calmly told him that it was okay to be sad, but he needs to be sad in his bedroom, or on a couch, etc. Those were hard times, because I'm not sure he had the capasity to fully understand why he was mad. the 1-2-3 magic approached as he got older- especially with me removing myself from the room (i.e. giving him a "time out" but not by sending him to his room, but with me just leaving the room).
Good luck! This too shall pass.