I seldom see this kind of family contradiction directly in front of me. At that time, I chose to retreat quietly as a bystander and listened carefully to the debate between the two generations. I didn't stop the two sides, and I didn't watch the excitement there. I just sincerely hope to get some reference information from the dialogue.
"He knows a lot of numbers, but he only looks at numbers."
"He is only a few years old and is already better than many children."
"He loves to talk, but he always tells himself."
"That's because he is having fun. It's normal for children to do this! "
"He doesn't even look at people, he doesn't even scream."
"Not familiar, of course he doesn't look, he will look at me!"
"He always arranges them, and he gets angry if he doesn't do what he wants."
"He's having a good time. Why does it have to be arranged your way?"
"He can't wait in line when he goes out, so he just pushes others away."
"He is still so young because he wants to play too much!"
"Teacher, do you think he has autism?"
"There is something wrong with you. Our doctor there said nothing! "
The topic stopped here. I looked at my mother, then at my grandparents, showing an embarrassed expression. I took a deep breath and there was no way to ask for help. I sighed heavily, lowered my head and said nothing more.
He is Hehe, a little boy who is almost 3 years old. He can talk a lot, but most of them are talking to himself. He often talks about the numbers he loves, and his eyes are only willing to look at them. He doesn't want anything else, and he doesn't like playing with others. He especially likes to sit in the corner and put the numbers repeatedly, looking at the numbers in front of him intoxicated and insisting on arranging them in a certain order.
The words "put 2 after 1, 3 after 2, 4 after 3 ..." come out as if they were made by a machine. After 9, he will continue to pick up 1: "This is 1, put it here, this is 2, put it here, this is 3, put it here ..." After several rounds, there is no mistake.
Whenever I join his game and mess up his arrangement, he will immediately show a look of "Stop fooling around", and even jump on the digital board angrily, forming a big circle with his hands and making a gesture of not letting me take it.
Later, the child suddenly grabbed the genitals, so he grabbed his genitals, but did not express any needs. Grandparents shouted: "He wants to pee, take it away!" "
Only through action can a family member see through the process of their thoughts. The child didn't show any motivation to ask others for help or express his needs. It can be seen that the two elders around him are always around the child, carefully guessing the intention of his words and deeds, and it is naturally difficult for the child to practice expressing his needs.
Grandparents followed closely, and my mother finally told me about her confusion. My mother said that she had done early education for several years before. Although she doesn't know much about special children, she knows very well that her children are different from other children, but the family all say that her children are good at talking and know numbers, and there seems to be no problem.
Later, at the insistence of my mother, I finally took my children to a small hospital near my home to see pediatrics. But pediatricians listen to parents saying that children like numbers, so they write down the numbers for parents to identify. As a result, all the children can answer the questions clearly. The doctor said in front of the family that the child is still young, and it will be fine after a few years to go back to teaching, so that the family should not worry too much.
After that, every time the mother mentioned the child again, she would be blamed by the whole family. It was inconvenient to say anything, so she had to let her grandparents spoil the child all the time. But now that the child is three years old, she still can't play with children of the same age. She is worried that she will not be able to go to kindergarten smoothly, and even no kindergarten will accept him.
Mother said, with tears in her eyes, and asked, "Teacher, it doesn't matter. You can just say, is my child autistic? " What should I do? "My mother was talking excitedly when my grandparents came in with their children. My mother sighed deeply again, turned and blinked to suppress her emotions, and then smiled and went back to tidy the crooked pants for the children.
I have met some professionals who attach great importance to their own evaluation results and think that parents' views are incomplete, may be biased towards children, or exaggerate some problems. Therefore, I believe that what my parents say has no reference value, and I advocate that there is no need to listen to their parents. As long as you do a good job in professional evaluation and determine your child's current ability level, you can begin to intervene.
But I have always believed that rehabilitation education is not a task that professionals can do well alone. After all, children are not always with rehabilitation workers, they spend more time with caregivers, so their state will be directly and significantly affected by caregivers.
If rehabilitation educators don't realize the importance of this matter, they may not be able to effectively convey the intervention skills to their parents.
The growth of autistic children has accumulated the efforts of their parents.
Parents' participation is very important. If family members can have good understanding and cooperation, they can properly participate in the process of rehabilitation education.
So I attach great importance to talking with my parents, and I am happy to guide them to communicate what their children see in their own eyes. Through interviews with parents, we can understand the problems parents hold in their eyes, which leads to contradictions in their thinking. Can we focus on what we should do now and bring more meaningful help to our children?
Therefore, if some family members hold wrong or contradictory ideas from the beginning, which hinders their thinking of facing up to children's problems, although some people in the family can realize that children need rehabilitation education, the effect of rehabilitation education is limited if family members cannot cooperate effectively.
How can a child be so smart and autistic? In fact, every time I hear this sentence, I really want to ask: "Is the intelligence of autism worse?"
Although according to many statistics, about 70% of autistic children will have mental retardation due to neurodevelopmental disorders, this does not mean that all autistic children are not smart, nor does it mean that children who show some special talents must not be autistic.
In addition, it is not difficult to see from Hehe's performance that Hehe especially likes numbers, likes reading numbers and arranging them in a certain order, which is really good for a child under three years old, but this performance does not mean that he is smart.
He only likes numbers, and when he sees other toys, he will push them away directly, or he will only pay attention to the numbers or symbols on the toys. This shows that his interest is very narrow, he will play games in a fixed way and expression, and frequently show rigid and repetitive behavior. Therefore, it is difficult to accept the participation of others. Most of them are intoxicated with their own singing rhythm, and their willingness and performance to interact with others are naturally not good.
However, the elders all hold the child's smart mentality, which will hinder the child's opportunity to receive rehabilitation treatment as soon as possible.
When breaking other people's inner beliefs, the only thing we have to do is to understand each other's anger. I think grandparents also want their grandchildren to be fine, so they will always say that their grandchildren are fine and there is absolutely no possibility of autism. Therefore, if I just say that the child has autism and needs rehabilitation, it is easy for grandparents to have greater resistance to rehabilitation, which will not help.
In order to let children get effective intervention as soon as possible, I hope that through my intervention, children can jump out of family conflicts and receive rehabilitation courses with everyone's support and affirmation, so as not to delay their growth.
So I choose to use other angles to make my grandparents more willing to discuss their children's illness in other ways first. Seeing the child often lying down, grandma lifted the child's body off the table several times and kept reminding him: "Sit tight."
So, I started from this point, as if my elders were concerned. What I want to talk about is the child's weak constitution. When sitting in a chair, the whole body will always lean forward on the table. This situation is mostly due to insufficient trunk strength and simple activity experience.
Grandma heard this, put her hands on her thighs, leaned forward obviously, and her expression immediately turned into concentration and recognition. Grandma finally said a word of approval: "Yes, this is his problem, which is very nerve-racking."
Then, I mentioned some benefits that our games and sensory actions can bring to children in rehabilitation treatment. If children can be interested in more things, they can learn better and have higher motivation to play, so they have more opportunities to practice motor reaction and muscle strength, and then play with children in kindergarten, and their performance will be better.
Grandparents finally smiled, and their expressions relaxed a lot. Grandpa hugged him and said, "My grandson is really weak and prefers to sit and play with numbers."
I continue to share some activities that I can practice at home or in the park. Grandpa mentioned that the space at home is a little small, which is not conducive to activities, so I said that we can come to our institution for classes and we can practice more activities.
After thinking like my grandparents, I just cut into the child's problem from another angle, but the conversation atmosphere was obviously much easier. Finally, my grandfather took the initiative to ask about the class arrangement and proposed to come to class as soon as possible.
This experience made me understand that sometimes family members have different views on whether a child has autism. We don't have to rush to get all members to accept this difficult news at the first time. We just need to explain the problem from a more acceptable angle, so that family members can agree with our views more, and the willingness and cooperation of follow-up rehabilitation will also be improved.
Because Hehe's mother is the main caregiver and knows that the child has a condition, I will discuss some core problems of the child with my mother after class and how to deal with them, so that my mother can take the child forward more directionally.
As for my grandparents, they just accompany me. Every time I come to class, I will see if the children are having fun, whether their strength has improved or not, and whether their sitting posture has improved. So I will share their children's progress with them from this angle. Then when my grandparents and I have a better relationship and their trust in me has improved, I will look at the acceptance of the two old people and slowly mention some deeper conditions of the children to them.
Although they still don't agree that their children have autism, they will also mention that Hehe's response to others is not so good when chatting with others, and they will wait or guide Hehe to express their needs in interaction. I think this is very good.
I'm Mr. Art,
A child occupational therapist from Taiwan Province Province,
I want to share with you a new viewpoint on children's rehabilitation.
I hope today's story can also bring some warmth and guidance to readers' hearts, and I can try to be gentle and kind to these little hearts that need to be accompanied in the future. If you like my article, please pay attention! !