Sooner or later I will be doing that, just like Weizhi... frustrated! Cos I really don't know what is happening to Weizhi recently :(
Ever since there was some disruption to his DAC schedule, a couple of weeks back (things in DAC are back to norm soon after), Weizhi has been displaying some behaviour which I am unable to comprehend. It has been a nightmare at least for me when he went outing (this is happening in his DAC outings too). He has been wetting himself since the last 2 outings... in fact tracing back, it was found that whenever he went outing with us, he would wet himself on the transport back to project. This seem common. However, for the last outing, it got even worst though I tried my best bringing him to toilet as frequent as possible. He already wet himself twice in Sentosa. He then wet himself on the transport back to the project not once, not twice but thrice. It has been a nightmare for me bringing him for outing and it is also getting on my nerve as I keep reminding myself to remember to bring him to toilet.
Today on his way to project, he wet himself on the taxi and when he alight, he wet himself again!
There was alot of speculation did he do it deliberately because everytime when he wet himself, it was quite wet (alot). However, whenever he wet himself, he would be very frustrated, hit himself & want to change his wet clothing and I could see he is upset because his eyes were red. If it is not deliberate, it would mean incontinence and initially I suspect is it due to the behaviour management medication he was taking. However, after spoken to his mum, I found that he was only on medication for 2 days and have stopped taking it since then. Could it possible be incontinence out of sudden?
I wonder what could the doctor do if we bring him to the doctor for diagnosis, for incontinence treatment? Would the doctor understand him and know how to attend to people with special needs?
To make matter worse... I don't know why he is starting to hit his head and bit his hands so hard & so often nowadays. I can understand if he did it immediately after wetting himself or if the weather is hot. What I couldn't understand is even after bringing him to the playground to cool him down and the weather was good, he still did that to himself. Even when he is in the classroom listening to his favourite Westlife songs and with fan directly blowing on him, he still hit his head & bit his hands. I could see his eyes were red and yet couldn't do anything, I felt so useless.
Unlike Phang Wei who is usually frustrated by hot weather and who will calm down after cooling him, offering him food and letting him listen to his radio, Weizhi is different. It seem I need to put in more effort to understand him... maybe I am not up to the task!
Sigh.... I am not giving up but I don't know how to help him!
-choon seng
Sunday, September 9, 2007
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8 comments:
Hey Seng,
Thanks for sharing, I can understand your frustration. You can hit your head and bite your hand but PLS DONT wet your pants =p
The only thing we can do now is to bring many pants and make him sit on some diaper. Can we consult a doc on this?
JY
Hey Jianyun,
I will bring extra clothings =D
There are 2 issues now with Weizhi.
(1) hitting head & biting his hands - have spoken to his OT at DAC, the home is equally puzzle cos Weizhi can out of the blue do that... even when he is sitting/resting there doing nothing. They can't explain why he did that so often recently, they suspect Weizhi might be upset over something which I will need to find out more from the family. I will also check with Autism Resource Centre...
(2) wetting himself during outing only, DAC rule out incontinence because he knows when to go toilet, I am seeking medical consultation through CC cos MINDS does have medicare and of cos psychologist
If you guys got any info, let me know too...
-choon seng
Dear Seng and all,
i share my sentimentals with you especially when i am in the teaching line now, where we have kids displaying behaviour out of the blue and we just dont know why or dont know what we should do. However, any behaviour occurs for a reason and its true. The difficulties we face is finding out the reason behind this behaviour.
Its pretty hard to find out the true reason why Weizhi has been displaying this wetting behaviour. We can make guesses, assumptions and etc, and yet may not be the real reason for that. There are also underlying reason which we may not know also.
We could make observations in his daily schedule
(1) At work
(2) At home
(3) Medication or Health (bladder??)
Abrupt changes to any of the 3 mentioned-above can be a reason for his wetting.
Austism people face tremendous diffculties in handling changes to their schedule.
We would really require a pyschologist to step in to assist us.
June
Hello,
How about adult diapers during outing? The main worry perhaps would be the impact on him ... will this hurt him & result in self-inflicted injury or wanting to remove the diaper during outings, etc. Not too sure if communicating wif him the reasons & rationale prior to letting him wear can help.
Guess most of us can only play by ear & help to the best of our knowledge. Seeking professional advice may be better as June suggests.
- Wee Choo
Hi June & Wee Choo,
Unfortunately, we only have 3hrs each week to observe which I tried last Sat but didn't manage to figure out anything. Will observe him again this Sat. I spoke to his OT in DAC, she informed that she did not notice anything (including any change of schedule) that might have trigger these behaviour.
I will check with the family to find out more what happened back home. Last Sat, his brother told me Weizhi's portable CD player was spoilt the day before... that could have upset him, but then his wetting, hitting/biting happened a couple of weeks back. Maybe this week he will be ok le...
I think I will try letting him wear adult diapers for outing or when he wet himself again so that he knows the consequences should it happen again. And will then assess further from there.
-choon seng
Hey,
It is indeed difficult to make any plausible hypotheses, since autistic children do not exhibit behaviours for the usual reasons that we are so used to (attention-seeking, etc), what's more a child whose thoughts we cannot reach.
One thing I have been taught to do when investigating behaviour is to note the antecedent (what happened before the target behaviour), the behaviour itself (hit or bite, for how long), as well as the consequences (someone stops him). And then we try to find the commonalities that underline the environment that trigger his undesirable behaviour, as well as the positive experiences that the child seems to get out of the target behaviour. We try to reduce both triggers and rewards, which will hopefully reduce his behaviour. Perhaps his poor bladder control and self-infliction is not linked, or it may be linked only sometimes...so we have to separate the nuances, ie inconsistencies of when he exhibits the target behaviour.
I hope it's not a lot of jargon all at once. It's just my contribution towards a systematic way of addressing the problem. Hope his situation has improved too.
Huizhen
Dear Huizhen,
Thanks for your timely reminder :) How can I forget these that were shared in the previous training... antecedent (trigger), the behaviour itself and the consequences.
Just spoken to his mum. She informed that she has got Weizhi a new CD player and will let him bring down for lesson, so keep a lookout.
She also mentioned Weizhi has been behaving very well since she gave him the CD player... she explained that Weizhi's hitting & biting himself last Sat, after behaving normal for the last whole week at home, could be attributed to one of the staff of his DAC last Sat asked Weizhi what happened to his CD player (it was spoilt on Fri) and immediately, Weizhi started to hit & bite himself.
So we should expect Weizhi to behave back to normal this Sat!
Yeah :)
-choon seng
Hi guys,
Just to keep you posted on Weizhi last Sat.
His got a new CD player therefore he was back to his old self & I finally saw him smile, laugh and to add to it, for the 1st time in many many outings, he didn't wet himself!
Only one moment last sat did he hit his head, bite his hands and shown frustration was when the batteries of his CD player ran flat & he thought his CD is spoilt again! After replacing the batteries he was back again... so silly :)
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and encouragement during this challenging period for Weizhi.
-choon seng
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