Monday, June 16, 2008

Psychologist

Tomorrow morning we see the Psychologist. It has been going OK, last week was very interesting. I had given Akila a piece of gum as we were walking down the hall to the Dr.'s office. After a few minutes with the Dr., Akila told me she swallowed it and wanted another piece. I told her at the end of the appt. she could have another one. She didn't like that answer and started to slap my hands-she was sitting on my lap.

She kept on insisting on new gum and I said no, which made her very mad. It was good for the doc to see a tiny glimpse of how mad she can get. And it was a tiny glimpse. She continued to slap my hands, ignore anything I said, ignored him when he was trying to get her to settle down. I told her she needed to go sit on the other chair if she was going to be hitting and mean. She wouldn't listen. The doc suggested I stand up, which I did. Didn't help. He then had me step into the hallway until she could calm down and agree to follow my directions. After 4 attempts on her part to have me return to the room, it finally worked. I came back in and asked her to sit on the chair for one minute which she did with some serious attitude and head rolling.

As she was sitting there for her minute, he asked me how often she responds like this, 50% of the time, 1/3 of the time, or what. I said over 80% of the time. He asked what kind of consequences we have tried, time outs, loss of privileges, etc. I said we have tried almost everything to little avail. Time outs don't seem to work very well. He said this week we will work on time outs, because they can be such a useful tool.

Now, understand that I really like this guy and feel a decent connection. But, hello, time outs and FASD don't go too well together. We do them, don't get me wrong. But they by no way seem to help change her behavior. It just gives me, and her a chance to calm down and redirect-sometimes. Anyway, I'm trying to figure out what to say to him tomorrow when I am taught how to follow through and give a proper time out. Barf.

2 comments:

Lisa said...

I think the psychologists mean well, but I wish they would just cut to the chase and stop wasting time. I keep thinking I need to write down every single thing we've ever tried in detail and mail it to them before the first appt. Then on the first appt. fully expect that the info. I have given has been evaluated and if not, show my extreme disappointment in his abilities (lol!). Really, I had one psychologist who literally would shake her head at me sadly if she heard that I hadn't read a book she STRONGLY recommended or hadn't kept a "time out log" like she suggested. Shouldn't we expect the same type of commitment by our selected professionals? I will tell the dr.'s everything I can currently remember doing and it never fails, they look at me and say, "Oh, well, you need to do it like this, that's the problem, YOU need to do things the way I say, not the way someone else showed you". Yep, works every time. Hang in there, I've learned that if you just keep plugging along (trying not to scream in frustration at how slow things go), you'll eventually convince him that you need to move on to more interesting forms of behavior management.

Jo said...

Oh I despise "educated" idiots! Are you sure you didn't accidently take my kid in there with you?