Overcoming Behavior Issues: Patrick's behavior.

Patrick has improved so much in the past month. It's like someone took Patrick away and brought him back to me a year later, more mature, healthier, happier. But it all happened in one month, and it happened right here at home.

A little bit of background, Patrick was a super good and happy baby (read hypotonia = happines) up until last winter, when he became a very difficult child. I assumed that because he had learnt to walk, he would be all happy running everywhere, playing at the playground, making friends and learning a lot. There was a lot of running, yes, but paired with hitting, screaming and throwing, every single day, most of the day. 

Patrick's play was very immature, too. At 2 years of age, he didn't know what to do with puzzles other than banging and chewing on them. And that was the case for all of his toys, like cars, blocks, musical toys, learning toys... you name it. Patrick liked looking at books, but he didn't like hearing the stories. His favorite books were the ones with no stories, the ones that are meant to teach children a new vocabulary filled with just pictures of a theme: animals, body parts, baby things... no stories. He didn't like any of the kids TV shows (I didn't see anything wrong with that -until I realized it was because he couldn't comprehend and follow what was going on on TV) and he would still place in his mouth about anything that came across, just like a baby would do when trying to explore. When other kids were around, he wasn't able to join them in their play, rather he would just step back and watch them, or do his very own thing. Now that he was free to move on his own at the playground, instead of going up and down the slide with the other kids, he would just run, run, run... and wouldn't engage.

Patrick isn't a shy kid. He likes people and he is very charming at public places, always saying "bye" with a huge smile to anyone that walks by. So why he won't play with other kids? Why he won't even play with his toys? He would get frustrated VERY OFTEN when he couldn't do something, and the anger would be expressed by screaming, hitting and throwing things at others and me, a 7, 8, 9 months pregnant woman. It was very difficult to deal with this new situation and I just couldn't figure out why was Patrick acting like that.

I began to think about the mean kids from my childhood, that used to hit and bully other kids, that used to get bad grades at school, getting in trouble all the time, and that because of their attitude, other kids feared them, so they almost never had friends. I could picture Patrick becoming one of those mean kids. You somehow think that they are that way because their parents don't pay them attention, or because there are problems in their homes, or maybe, they are just so spoiled that they turn into real brats. But now we were raising one, and I couldn't understand what we were doing wrong.

Just few months before, I was concerned about Patrick being bullied at school because of his developmental delays and his Oculomotor Apraxia, and now it seemed like Patrick would actually turn out to be the bully, which, of course, isn't a better scenario. Where all this violent spirit came from? There is no violence at our home, so where does he learn these things? Are time-outs really not enough for some children? But how can I spank him to show him that hitting is wrong? How can I punish him by not watching TV or playing with X toy, when he doesn't like nor care about TV and has no favorite toy? Giving him the talk of why he should behave well was like giving the talk to a 5 month old. 

I was running out of ideas and patience, but luckily we were already working with the Infant and Toddler Connection, and his therapists had experience working with children like Patrick. They gave me great ideas, we figured out other ones, and all will be talked about in my next post.