4.5 yo AS son...
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4.5 yo AS son...
| Sat, 05-13-2006 - 9:06pm |
Xander threw me a curve ball this week. He got up from his nap, went into the bathroom and poured out a bottle of shampoo, a bottle of hand soap, 4 bottles of nail polish and a ton of water onto the floor.
He has NEVER been one to get into anything, he just doesn't do it. This is something I would expect my 3yo dd to do. Anyone else have any experience with regression at this age?



Hummm... Jake was about 4.5 when he started acting out. But he did it more physically -like he would throw things, hind under things, hit people, head butt people and refuse to do things. I remember one time we were in the doller store and he refused to leave-got limp and fell on the like a 2 yo would do. I picked him up threw him over my shoulder kicking and screaming and got a lot of wierd looks. He wasn't dx then so I had no clue why he was acting this way.
Maybe Xander misses his Daddy and doesn't know how to express it-so he is acting out in that way.
Liza
My son regressed some in behavior.
Andie,
Regression? Are you sure?
I think this could be *progression*. He is exploring his environment, "Getting into things". Pushing boundaries. I don't think that's necessarily bad. OK the poision risk and cleanup aspect of this particular escapade is bad, but you can see where I am coming from here.
Yes it's a pain for Mom to deal with when our predictable little ones suddenly do something unexpected. But at the same time, breaking out of the mold and doing something like this could be a very, very positive sign developmentally.
It could be a indicator of progress for the reasons I outlined above.
If you honestly feel this is regressive behavior it could STILL be a sign of progress: I have noticed (and I think other moms on this board have too) that an advance in one area can lead to a temporary decline in another. For years we saw this in Peter: His language would advance, and his behavior decline for a few weeks. Usually the language stayed advanced, and the behaviour gradually returned to it's previous level or higher. That is, until the next language jump...
Watch him and see if I'm right.
-Paula
visit my blog at www.onesickmother.com
Paula, I think you hit the nail on the head!
I had never thought about it, but you are right....but my son was always regressing behavior-wise right before a milestone.
I was thinking the same thing Paula. That it might be progress in one of many ways.
Another thing I was thinking, and this is a tough one for us moms to come to terms with. Many of our AS kids seem on target in many areas of development, usually cognitive being one. There for it can be very hard to come to terms with the fact that they are delayed in other areas particularly social areas. You said this is something you would expect from your 3 yo. Well in many ways a child with AS who is 4.5 is probably emotionally, socially and behaviorally more like a 3 yo or younger.
Renee
That was my first thought, that our kids are often neck-and-neck with a few years BEHIND them developmentally, but that can often be hard to mexh with when they are advanced in language. If our kids are missing steps developmentally, they start taking them a few years later, which really looks wrong to us in a larger child, but is really right for them to be taking this particular step next, KWIM?
I also wonder if one could call this a regression when it is one incident. I guess if I saw a few weeks of suddenly more childish behacior, I would start looking at regression possibilities. Sounds like a fun esploration, also any chance he is angry about something that pouring everything out might help alleviate? Emotional communication is so much harder for our kids.
Sara
ilovemalcolm
Hi Andie!
I think Paula, Renee and Sara hit it on this one. I do think our kids tend to be quite a bit behind and even if they seem to be going along on a normal developmental curve they often throw us for a loop when they do something totally unexpected. I know that Weston is so academically gifted and talks like an adult when he decides to share things with us, but then I'll think "huh, he really is emotionally and social much more like Owen (4.5) than his 9 almost 10 age would put him." Weston also tends to do some lashing out when he's about to make a developmental leap. He doesn't respond to things like my other kids either. He tends to let things brew and we might not see a reaction for days to something that I had forgotten about or that I didn't think made a difference to him.
ALSO, I have found some strange/simple answers to questions like this after the fact. Often things i would say jokingly or off hand in conversation to someone else would come back to bit me! Like, "that shampoo did nothing for my hair, I might as well pour it down the drain" might end up a week later in Weston pouring it down the drain-- he would have taken it literally and when the thought struck him he'd do it. Not that he did exactly this, but there have been several cercumstances where he took something literally and did something that I totally didn't understand and I construed as naughty when he thought he was doing the right thing because he took something I or someone else said literally. Last summer Weston (age 9) ate some ants off my parents deck because my mom had jokingly said, "oh, they're a good source of protein", she didn't tell him to eat them, but he'd studied nutrition and knew that he needed protein and if grandma said it then it must be true. there are other instances too, where he kind of made incorrect links in his brain and did things that seemed naughty but were really connections in facts gone haywire by his inability to understand nuiances in language.
anyway, we've all been there, it's hard because their development can be so all over the place it's hard for us to understand them!
Betsy
Andie,
Just the other day, Peter tried to lie to me about something. So there I am trying to keep a straight face: "Now robbers didn't REALLY come in a do it, did they?" while inside I was rejoicing (he is trying to decieve! This is NT behaviour! (Aspie implementation) OMG this is a HUGE step").
I call being happy when they misbehave 'upside down thinking', and it has kind of become a fact of life for me as a special needs mom. And it's kind of funny sometimes too: "maybe robbers sneaked in and did it?" ROFL!
-Paula
visit my blog at www.onesickmother.com
Hi Andie! Maybe you can provide some insight to my post?