[Quick Tip] How to Help Autistic Toddlers Through Tough Times & Big Emotions
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What should I do when an autistic toddler gets upset after hearing the word “no”?
What should you do when an autistic two-year-old has trouble hearing the word no? There was a great question I saw posted in a Facebook group about a therapist asking, What should she do? She has a two and a half-year-old autistic non-speaking child. And when she hears the word no, she gets very upset and she scratches mom to the point of bleeding. So, what would you do in this scenario?
What's up everyone and welcome to Making the Shift for Autistic Kids.
We're an SLP couple from California with four boys.
And we're here every week to bring you neuroaffirming tips, tricks, and tools. Are you ready to make the shift? Let's do this!
Okay, so let me first of all, I'm gonna read you this whole question just that you can get a good idea of what the context is. I'm in my clinical fellowship with the early intervention population. One of my clients is two and a half year old girl who is autistic. She's non-speaking. I've started to use some simple communication boards. She recently started scratching mom when frustrated to the point where she bleeds. We tried sensory calming techniques such as deep pressure and body squeezes when she's frustrated. Which seemed to help at first, but not anymore. Is there a replacement behavior we could teach the function of the behavior is completely due to frustration, typically from being told no? She gets upset, scratches mom for a couple of minutes, but then calms down quickly with cuddles from mom.
for comfort and her pacifier. Any tips? Okay, so first of all I wanna say and I don't know why, but I feel like People don't like to hear this. Sometimes because when we hear about a child who has behaviors that are affecting other people, like scratching to the point of bleeding, they don't like to hear this, but I'm gonna say it anyway. Which is It is very normal for two year olds to get super upset when they hear the word no. Okay, I'm not saying that the scratching is okay and making mom bleed is okay, but we really have to keep in mind that a two-year-old getting upset when they hear no is so normal. And I and we need to tell parents that we need to validate that for them. We have parents who come in here all the time, and they're parents who like this is their first child.
How do the hosts introduce themselves and set the purpose of the episode?
uh their child is autistic, their child isn't like the their neuro neurotypical peers. And a lot of times parents are wondering, Like Is what my child doing, is this because they're autistic or is this because they're two years old? And I like to tell parents, like, this is very normal behavior for a two year old. So Getting upset, I mean, when you hear the word no. So Just so that it really validates the parents and what they're going through, I think that helps. Okay, but what I like to teach and if you know me, you know my major specialty is sensory and regulation. And for context, I also have four kids under the age of eight. Uh soon to be five. So this is something I have dealt with not only in private practice here through our clinic where we see a couple of hundred kids a week.
A lot of them are very little. But we also have our four crazy little kids at home. I like to say that regulation is like a seesaw and we need to think of it as a seesaw. So if a child's seesaw is balanced, that means that they are regulated. If it's tipped, that means they're dysregulated. Oftentimes we only look at a child's Seesaw and we only consider their regulation after we see that it tips, after they are dysregulated. And then we wonder, what can we do to help this child? And it does sound like this is something that is happening in this case, which is the child is getting really upset, Seesaw is is tipping to the point where they're so dysregulated and so frustrated that they are scratching and we are trying to think of strategies we can use to help in that moment.
So I would put that in the bucket of reactive strategies, meaning the strategies we are using after the dysregulation happens. Okay. And I'm s and there's absolutely a place for that, first of all. But I will say that It is equally important for us to think about what can we do beforehand?
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Chapters
3 chaptersSpeakers
1 identifiedMore from The NeuroAffirm Podcast
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