As the title of this post said, Jacob had a class trip today, to the Westfield Heritage Village. I had to work so my wife Shannie was going in my place. And my wife is very skilled in dealing with jacobs behaviour. I'm not going to get into the location of the trip, I'm just going to jump into Jacob's behaviour.
The school buses departed from school at 11:00AM, which of course, threw our class trip schedule out the window. Normally when going on a class trip, we are able to withhold breakfast until we get to the destination. But since they didnt leave until later, we had to give Jacob something to eat.
Well, that didn't go too well with Jacobs car sickness, so naturally, he barfed everywhere. Now this really set the tone for the day. Jacob immediately became grumpy and Shannie quickly sprang into action. She changed Jacob into a fresh set of clothes and tried to cheer him up. The key word being "try".
Jacob then really became moody after not being allowed to go into a restricted area. Normally Jacob doesn't swear, but today was exceptional from the start. After Shannie refused his request to explore the restricted area, with a tear in his eye, he called his mother a stupid "b".
I know, devasting. My wife almost began crying when she heard what Jacob said. Jacobs EA also heard what he said and took over so Shannie could have a second to regain her composure. She quickly took Jacob back to the bus for some quiet time. And she was really calm and surprisingly supportive of what Jacob was going through. He had puked twice, had a meltdown, had immediately noticeable remorse for what he said and was crying all within the first hour of being there.
During the recent ABA therapy sessions we learned that quite often, a child's behaviour will get worse before it gets better. Unfortunately Jacob is going down that very path. This Thursday in our next ABA session, we're going to learn how to deal with certain problem behaviours and this class can't come too soon.
The nice thing is that Jacob is already showing emotional growth since the Spring. He was extremely sorry and he even put himself on a timeout when he got home. Oh the joys of aspergers. Hopefully with all this training and workshops that we've been doing, things will improve even more, because I don't know if I could handle being called a name like Shannie was called. I know we have to sty calm at all times, but we're only human. So the sooner Jacob gets a handle on his emotions, the better we'll all be.
Oh no! Not the "B" word! And in front of everyone! I am so sorry and I know exactly how Shannie felt. I went through that with my son. Fortunately it happened at home and not at school though. At least Jacob realized what he did and felt bad about it. I don't think my son felt bad and he was a little older than J when he did it. He was 10.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that the paths that we've taken are quite similar. I know many NT kids use foul language all the time, but Jacob has never really sworn ever. I shouldn't be too surprised though, because I am a longshoreman after all and swearing at work is all too common. The good news is that he hasn't sworn since and with all the constant therapy he's been going through, it's a good thing.
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