challenging behaviour

The Ride Access Pass explained…

We were recently able to apply for a Merlin Ride Access Pass. So I thought I would take the time to explain why we have it and why we are not just skipping the queue because we feel like it (yes that was shouted at me yesterday).

My little one is completely and utterly taken by Rollercoasters. He watches POV’s (point of views) on YouTube, can tell you any fact about them and how much air time you get on each one. So it stands to reason that a preferred day out for him is a day at Alton Towers.

But we have a slight problem, my little one has ADHD. So queuing is incredibly difficult. He can do it because at the end of it is something he is desperate to do. But it comes with issues – like the last two times I’ve queued with him I’ve ended up with injuries and bruises.

So why is this… When a person with ADHD has to queue it’s like an elastic band being twisted and twisted until it’s very tight and at some point that elastic band has to spring back into its original position. This twisting can be a combination of anxiety, excitement and inability to be patient. This then can result in acting impulsively – swinging on the bars of the queue, running away or making incredibly loud noises.

The sensory issues surrounding queuing can also be daunting.

Smells such as food, other peoples washing powder or perfume can be overwhelming.

Loud noises such as others laughing or screeching or the music from the rides itself can cause anxiety or over stimulation.

Standing still for children/adults who are sensory seekers it is agonising as they are all the time trying to meet their sensory needs and therefor standing still doesn’t meet that. So to meet these needs they fidget, move around, jump, touch everything and generally be distracting to everyone around them.

For children and Adults who are sensory avoiders, queues can also be incredibly difficult. Again smells, loud noises and having people near by can cause anxiety and overwhelm. Making the whole process so unenjoyable and therefor they can’t enjoy the experience of coming to the theme park.

If by any chance they do manage to hold it together and queue especially for something like the cinema or the London eye (recent experience), then you find that they can’t actually enjoy the thing they have queued up for because all of their energy has gone into queuing and they can’t hold it together any more. One experience we had, was for a ride and he held it together to queue and do the ride, but it was all too much so came off and was aggressive and shouting. Not fun for us and not fun for him.

For me as the parent, I find queues difficult because I have no idea what will happen or what he will do to meet his needs. And usually it’s me who gets the impact of it. I end up like an elastic band of stress, it gradually getting worse the longer we queue.

Merlin have a great system, so where people may feel we are skipping the queue, we are not I assure you. We queue by walking around the park or playing on the play parks and when it is time for us to ride we make our way to the ride. We can’t go on other rides during that time and we queue for the same amount of time that is stated outside the ride. So we are really not skipping the queue I promise, we are just queueing in a way that means myself and my little one are not hurt in the process of queueing!

Mothers Day verses Birthday

After Mothers Day I posted on FB that it hadn’t been the best day.

It hadn’t been great because my little one hadn’t been prepped at all about a different day and not only was it different, it was about me and not him!

So I challenged myself to have a better birthday and I can say it really was a great day. But to get to that point I had to put in some work. But it really was worth it!

1. Prepping for the day
This started the day after Mother’s Day. I was determined for it to be different. And it just started with conversations. Conversations about my birthday coming up and how birthdays are important days for some people and on those days we should treat them well and treat the nicely.

My husband also took him out on a special trip to buy me some presents. My husband used the opportunity to say that Mummy probably wouldn’t want a rocket for her birthday, can we think of some things Mummy might want!

We talked about it quite a lot, and expressed regularly how he needs to behave.

Because my birthday was during the holidays, we made a holiday picture time table and my birthday was part of that.

2. Taking it personally
This is such a hard one. It goes against everything in you. If any adult or Neuro-typical child behaved in the way my little one did, you definitely would take it personally and you probably wouldn’t speak to them for a while, because you thought they were quite mean, and unthinking.

But as our ADHD nurse put it, you have to reframe it. It’s not him being mean and horrid (even though it is), but he doesn’t understand, he doesn’t know how to do this right, because socially speaking those skills are not honed yet. In some ways the whole day would have been far better if I hadn’t taken it personally. If I’d have realised all of this in the morning and not at my bedtime! If I’d taken it in my stride, then we would have had a better day. For my birthday I was half expecting it to go very wrong, so in some ways it was a complete shock and surprise when it didn’t. I altered my behaviour and tried to help him alter his.

Now I’m not saying his behaviour on Mother’s Day was acceptable. And at some points in the day there were some consequences for his behaviour. But like with all behaviour, we have to ask why? When I reframed the situation, I wasn’t as insulted and put out. Try it next time you’re in a similar situation. I hope it helps.

3. He struggles with these types of days.
We recently met with an ADHD nurse and she said something that hit me like a ton of bricks!!

“Children with ADHD don’t like CHANGE!!”

Now yes I should know this, but it’s never been said in such a clear way. Now Mother’s Day is definitely a change. It’s not part of the norm and it’s very different. This is the same for children with ASD and other neurological conditions.

So you can either give into this and say well we won’t celebrate it let’s just keep everything the same and then you as the mum miss out (again!) or you can allow it to happen and either face the consequences or prep. I personally as the mum don’t want to miss out. I work so hard at being a Mum, I want to celebrate this fact!!

4. See it as a brilliant opportunity to teach social skills.
This is not going to be the only time in his life where he will have to put someone else first. As a child his friends will have birthdays, his family will have celebrations and when he’s older and gets married and has children, that’s a whole lot of putting others first. So this has got to be taught.

We’ve always had to break social skills down into small basic chunks to support our little one. And this should have been no different.

* Putting others first
* Respect others and their feelings
* Understanding how celebrating someone else might make them feel loved and special.
* Why we have special days
* These types of days are a regular thing

Now of course you don’t teach all this in one go. But you drip feed little nuggets. The very act of prepping shows that this is important. It takes time, it might take a few years of it not being great. But have hope!!

Meal Times

I was asked this week by a family to support with meal times.
Meal times can be tricky for all families and all families do meal times differently, which is completely fine.

But however you do, do mealtimes there may be some common difficulties we all face. These difficulties arise for many, many different reasons but some of them can be:
1. Your child has ADHD or is just a fidget and getting them to sit at the table is hard.

2. Your child has ASD or sensory issues which makes eating certain foods tricky.

3. Your child is colourblind and basically a lot of food looks yucky

4. Your child is a child and meal times just become a battle ground.

As with all my posts, take some of the ideas and that you think might work for you and leave the rest. Or let my ideas spark new ideas that may work for your family. But know if you are struggling with meal times then you are not alone!

Trying new foods
I never wanted to broach this subject with my little one because to be honest I just couldn’t face it. But when it got so bad, I knew I had to try. And really its just forming new habits (If you say it like that it seems easier!)

The main way we worked on this was to serve up his normal food and on the table I would keep a reward chart. I would then put something new on a plate to the side of his dinner. Every time he tried a new food he got a sticker. He knew the rules and I would just put the new food on the table, but would not go on about it. We would talk about our day and try and have a normal dinner time, but we wouldn’t mention the new food. But as soon as he tried the new food he would get a sticker. As soon as the reward chart was full he got a reward. We did the chart a few times over and gradually food didn’t seem so scary. I’m not going to lie and say that he now eats everything far from it, but food isn’t so much of a battle and his repertoire has increased.

Buy Reward Chart Here

Meal Times are a battle
It’s so easy to get worried about what they are eating or not eating, that, that is what meal times become about.
I have such fond memories of meal times all sitting round the table chatting about our days and then my dad making teeth out of the orange peel!! But meal times in our house became about me being stressed out and meal times being horrid. So try different things to take the focus away from the food.

Games
Pass the story
We would play the story game. One person starts the story then passes it to another to carry it on and so forth. We had some fantastic stories come out of these times and no one really realised they were eating food.

Play would you rather
This game begins with ‘Would you rather…’ You then say two different things like – eat cold baked beans or sit in a bath of baked beans. And everyone around the table has to choose what they would rather.

Conversation starters
Have a jar on the table with a bunch of conversation starters in. If you feel like the meal time is becoming about the food then take out a conversation starter and see where it takes you. This can be also a great idea if you have a child you likes to bring the conversation back to his latest obsession. (There are only so many tea times you can talk about hand driers – believe me!)

Sitting at the table
We do not have expectations that our child sits at the table for a long time. But we do expect that whilst he is eating he has to sit down. This is a constant battle for us.
– Friends of ours have tried the wiggle cushions and says it works for them.

– We take the approach that if he gets up there’s no pudding, but this is tricky, because with children with ADHD the impulse to get up over rides the outcome. So I have started putting a visual on the table of a person standing up with a line through it as a constant concrete reminder.

– There are times like going to other people’s houses for dinner (Not something we do regularly) or going to a restaurant where sitting is a social convention. I make sure I take activities and fidget toys and I am really clear with our child and the people we are with about how long realistically the sitting can last.

But if all else fails. Just end the meal time and start again the next day. You want meal times to be a half lovely time for your family not a battle ground.

I hope there are some ideas that help.

What does time look like?

This is something I have spent a lot of brain power on lately. How does my little one (who probably has ADHD) perceive time?
I’ve always found it so funny that someone who is quite clever and can work out maths sums in seconds cannot for the life of him work out what day it is, or what day is coming next. Then when it was my husbands birthday, my son asked when is your next birthday? It was in that moment that my suspicions of struggling with Executive Functioning were confirmed.

So I went on a search to find out what does time look like? Now I am very aware that there is a much deeper, philosophical answer to this than what I am about to give you.

Firstly what does time look like for people who don’t struggle with Executive Functioning. For me it’s a straight line, or like a time line the ones you see in history books. The past, the present and the future all spread out in a colourful line. It’s all clear, it’s all visible and its all colour coordinated (but then that is just me!).

But as Sandy Maynard M.S in this great article writes:
Some experts think that individuals with ADHD perceive time not as a sequence but as a diffuse collection of events that are viscerally connected to the people, activities, and emotions involved in them. That often means they’re always late. Children and Adults with ADHD don’t see events they feel them.

And this is what I have witnessed in my little one. It’s all about now, or what is coming up next, but he doesn’t understand quite where the next comes in. There might be things that need to come first, but that doesn’t take priority. Understanding that you have to get dressed before going out and making time for that. Or getting so lost in time that there is no awareness where he actually is in the current time.

I get it, he’s still young, but what I am realising is this is something I need to teach him. I need to put in place strategies that will help him. Some children just learn this intuitively and some children need to go back to basics. Which means we as the parents have to go back to basics and realise how do we do things. We need to break it down for them to help them make sense of it all.

A calendar to help realise how time is linear

ADHD type characteristics

First let me explain the title. We have fought a long battle to try and get an ADHD diagnosis for our child, and it seems to go nowhere. This is for a number of reasons that we don’t need to go into. But basically I may never get a piece of paper saying my child has ADHD, but it doesn’t mean that I am not going to support him. And the way we support them is in the same way you might help a child who is diagnosed with ADHD. You may also have a child who has ADHD characteristics but doesn’t meet the threshold for diagnosis or you may just have a child that is fast, lacks focus and gets easily distracted (sound similar!)

I have pulled my hair out with my child’s behaviour over the years, and maybe this may help you to keep some of your hair. These are just a few ideas we have come up with over the years that have helped and I have also used in my work as well.

Rewards and Praise before consequences
Now I am not saying here that your child should not face the consequences of their behaviour, but before it gets to that point try rewards and praise. Children with ADHD respond so much better to praise and rewards than shouting and consequences. I find in my not so great moments that when I do shout his behaviour gets worse and it spirals. So try some of these first as a preventative measure.

Marbles in a Jar
The key to rewards and praise is looking out for the good behaviour rather than always dealing with the not so great behaviour. Techniques like marbles in a jar helps you to focus on the good behaviour. So every time you see some great behaviour even if it is really small put a marble in the jar. Every morning empty the jar and talk about the jar together saying we want to see this jar full by the end of the day, can you do it? Seeing the jar full is in itself an intrinsic reward. If you wanted to up the joy, you could say that if the jar is full every day for 7 days we can have a small treat, which adds to the praise and rewards. This is so helpful for you as a parent/carer because it makes you look for the positive and over time your mindset will change. But it supports your child, because they are being praised regularly throughout the day rather than being told off a lot.

These next two examples are exactly the same principle just different ways of showing it.

This needs some preparation, but it is colourful and fun! (Maybe best for slightly older children because of the use of magnets) Each pom pom has a magnet glued onto the bottom. The rainbow sheet which has been laminated is sitting on a metal baking sheet. Every time your child does some brilliant behaviour even if it was they said please or thank you. Put a pom pom on the rainbow. Can they fill the rainbow by the end of the day. You can download the rainbow print out below.

rainbows Download

If your child is into lego or Duplo then use the Lego to make a tower. How big can the tower get? Fill a bowl with bricks every morning and see if you can use them all.

The important thing with this technique is not to take away. So if they show some not great behaviour then deal with that separately. This is all about rewards and praise.

Brain Breaks
Before entering into homework time or something that is going to require sitting still or focus. We have often gone on a run or walk first or before needing to sit still for a while we have been to the skatepark or the park first to burn off some of that excess energy. But particularly before homework time we go out for a walk. You can use this time to talk about the expectations you have for the homework time coming up, what you will do and how long it will take. But mainly this time is for letting off some steam before sitting down. It doesn’t always work, but I have noticed a difference when we have done it and when we haven’t. Or say you’ve gone to a wedding or round someone house, which isn’t completely set up for an active bean, then regularly go for a little walk outside. This will do you both the world of good and it takes the pressure off your child. We recently went to the theatre, it was an hour long show and instead of me expecting him to sit through it for the whole hour I set in my mind that at the half way point we would talk a short walk. The walk was 1 min, but that change of scenery and getting up completely settled him and he was able to enjoy the rest of the time.

Activity and Challenge
I also find that sometimes the best focus comes whilst he’s concentrating on something else at the same time. No I am not meaning watching a screen whilst testing timetables. But maybe jumping on the trampoline whilst shouting out the 3 timetables or during lockdown we took to reading a book whilst jumping.

I watched a programme once where a child played table tennis whilst revising for a history test. It may seem counterproductive to get them to do other stuff, but I think it takes the pressure off. It’s the same principle as using a fidget toy, but a whole body work out.

Where this type of thing isn’t possible, then fidget toys are brilliant. You can readily get hold of fidget toys on the high street now. Another great thing (again for older kids) is letting them have blu tac or play dough to play with whilst working or kinetic sand. Just gives them that outlet.

I guess what I am mainly trying to say is that in some ways it is better to embrace their ADHD characteristics instead of always fighting against them. There are times in life where you have to fight against them. But there are also times where you can work with them and it’s finding that balance.

Let the picture timetable do the talking!

Using a picture timetable is another strategy you can have in your tool belt that may help those tricky times of day!

Very similar to a now and next board. But this time all the activities are all there in front of them and you tick them off as the activity is completed. They are really helpful for times like getting ready in the morning or getting ready for bed.

What is great about these frames is they become the authority; it’s not you nagging, its the frame telling them what to do.

So how do you use them? First break down the main activity into smaller tasks. E.g. Getting dressed is the main activity – break that down into small jobs, such as put on trousers, put on socks etc. You can either take photos or draw the items. Then put it in a picture frame. Make sure you put the frame in a prominent position, somewhere it will be seen and somewhere your child can reach it. When you are doing those tasks – go to the frame and see what the first job is. Do the job and then using a white board pen tick it off. Then look what the next job is and so on.

If you don’t feel confident in your drawing skills send me a message with the activities you want and I can make one for you for £10 or £15 for two.

My little one is a bit older, but I can now say – “go and look at the jobs on your frame” and mostly mornings are a million times better. But we have used the frame now for quite a few years.

The other great benefit of putting it in a frame is that you can wipe off the ticks and it’s ready for using again the next day. See if it works for you.

I’ve definitely been in a place (still am sometimes) where my child’s behaviour is so overwhelmingly awful. In those times you feel like you have two options:
1. Let the wave of despair overtake you and give up
2. You decide to give yourself a good talking to and say enough is enough.

So please hear me when I say I know it can be difficult and I know for some of you it is just difficult almost all of the time. For those facing that I applaud you and think you are particularly amazing. But I do believe, even if you child has additional needs or not, that it is possible to work on at least some of the behaviours and put in strategies that can support you and give structure and routine to your child.

There are some key things to remember when thinking about behaviour:

1. The behaviour is always telling you something
– Has the behaviour got worse in the last few days? Are they coming down with something?

– Does your child struggle to communicate? Is the challenging behaviour a way of expressing frustration?

– Have things changed at school or at home?

– Are they needing a bit more attention?

To name but a few of the reasons. But maybe if you can take a step back from the situations you may find that there is a reason for the behaviour.

2. You can’t combat all issues at the same time, you and your child will get overwhelmed.
For example, my little one when a lot younger would not walk up the stairs to our 2nd floor flat. He could walk up the stairs, he just wouldn’t. He would lay on the stairs or scream or generally send me over the edge especially when you had loads of bags and no lift! At the same time meal times were horrible – getting up or throwing food. To make matters worse bedtimes were also very difficult, and the list could go on! But instead of tackling all the issues at the same time, I had to decide which was the more problematic and then focussed on that one.

If you focus on one issue you can give your attention to that issue, also you can gain confidence as things change and also it can give you hope that success if possible.

3. Turn round the negative into a positive
It’s so easy when you are tired and possibly despairing to only look at the negative behaviour. Don’t worry we all do it!
If you can use strategies that encourage you to look for the positive behaviour, your child will pick up on this. Strategies such as:

– Every-time they do good listening – put a marble in a jar, can the jar get full by the end of the day.

– Put a Lego brick on a the tower every time they are kind – how tall will the tower get by the end of the day.

– Reward charts for eating their meal well.

By turning round the negative behaviour and looking for the positive both you and your child can start to form new habits, you can start to see that your child can do good listening even if at the moment it is only half the time. Children with ADHD particularly respond to praise and rewards so all of these strategies would be great if you child has ADHD or ADD.

Below is a reward chart you can download. Write in the top box, what you want to achieve and in the bottom box write the prize they will get when they have 8 stickers (don’t go large with your prizes – this won’t be the last reward chart you will do.)

Reward Chart.pdf Download

4. Model it
I remember once shouting to my child ‘stop shouting at me’. And it made me realise that I shout a lot. I certainly won’t judge anyone who shouts and it’s not a habit I have been able to break 100% of the time. But if I want my little one to stop shouting at me, I need to stop shouting first. If you want your child to be brave about something, do you need to show them what it is to be brave? I mean not all challenging behaviour our children exhibit is stemming from what they see you do, I certainly didn’t go round biting people!! But there are somethings that we can model.

I know this post doesn’t necessarily solve specific issues, maybe that will come at a later date. But hopefully it will help you look differently at the challenging behaviour and give you the confidence to challenge the behaviour!