Explaining emotions question....

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-27-2007
Explaining emotions question....
4
Fri, 01-11-2008 - 1:27am
Geez how can I explain this ? I want some other moms to tell me if their Autistic child does this ?


My son will get angry like tonight over my daughter making a noise, he litterally gets all like "he is going to explode." He has sensory issues. I finally resorted to putting in ear plugs in him...mommy had a migraine. Its been years of this and its been getting worse.

He can not seem to say, "stop that bothers me," instead he gets all weird and says things like " Cali you are making me hot, " or "Cali that noise is depressing me." Does this make sense ? He never uses the right words. The of course he just starts making noises and running off and freaking out over the one noise she is doing.


He says things odder than that, but I can't even remember. Oh another one he will say "your hurting my feelings," but to things like if she is talking to loud or something not appropriate.


I hope someone knows what I am talking about. He seems to get like this when he gets all worked up. He almost "stims' off the words and will just repeat random words trying to express feelings/emotions etc...that make no sense. Maybe like echolalia too, he does do that stil in times of stress.


He also has been saying 'you're embarrassing me," for things like if I told him to clean his room.


He is 5. When he does these things they seem very autistic, I can't even fully explain what he is saying/doing, but is this normal or an autistic thing ?

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iVillage Member
Registered: 11-28-2006
Fri, 01-11-2008 - 1:54am

CC, My son falls to his knees when you take your fingernail and scratch the surface of a hollogram book cover, or scratch the surface of his winter jacket

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-25-2007
Fri, 01-11-2008 - 4:35am
I really think his responses are just the way that he interprets what he is feeling. As they say, people on the spectrum just think differently. My son will say that he's feeling "squingy" when something makes him uncomfortable. Now this kid has a vocabulary like a college professor, but squingy is still the way he describes it. Maybe you can try verbalizing for him like "Are you trying to tell your sister that the noise is making you uncomfortable?" Over time he might begin picking up the phrases you use. Good luck!
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Fri, 01-11-2008 - 7:11am

Yep, my 10 year old daughter (aspergers) is like that. In her efforts to try and understand her emotions, she tends to mix up the corrects words for them. I know what she means and repeat what she said using the correct word but she still has a lot of trouble. Our social worker gave us a print out of different facial expressions that correspond to different emotions. The sheet had too many on there for Haley though and it just confused her but thinking about it, you could draw the most common ones on a piece of paper or index cards with the corresponding emotion on them. I may try that.

I've also noticed that Haley has her own different expressions for things she's feeling. I spend a lot of time explaining them to the school and to family members. It's just how she is.




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Mom to Erin (19) and Haley (10yo Aspie)


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Mom to Erin (19) and Haley (10yo Asp
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-07-2003
Fri, 01-11-2008 - 8:54am

Last night's meeting with Deborah Lipsky was fairly insightful, so I'm going to refer to an experience she shared (sorry I keep doing it).

She has had a lot of negative experiences at the hospital ER near her. They don't accept that she has autism and treat her horribly, even when she articulates the things that are problems for her and requests simple coping strategies (like don't put me in room "x" 'cus I'll go into sensory overload -- so they immediately put her in room "x"). The staff just thinks that she's horrible because she goes into these meltdowns and behaves poorly.

The last time she was at the ER and having a negative experience that kept deteriorating, she got to a point that she was non-verbal. She felt compelled, though, to somehow identify that she was still holding it together. In her mind, the best way to do that, was to repeatedly bang her head against the table. In hindsight, of course, that wasn't a very logical thing to do, but in her state of stress, it seemed appropriate.

I would imagine that there's something similar going on when our kids express things in odd ways. They're already stressed and trying to hold it together, they're having a hard time coming up with the language skills necessary to articulate what the problem is, and even tho' they don't make a lot of sense, it's the best they can come up with.

There may also be a level of not knowing what words/emotions apply to what situations. When my dd was younger, she'd respond to me using phrases from books she'd read. So, if in a book a mom said something the child didn't like, and the child responded, "but all my friends get to do it," then if I said something to my dd that she didn't like, she'd respond, "but all my friends get to do it" even if our home situation didn't match the setting from the book. Dd's gotten better over time, but when she's upset, she still sometimes has difficulty coming up with the right words. My ds is worse with it than dd was.