War

Oscar has declared war against me.  Just me, apparently, everyone else is safe.  Why would he do this, you ask?  It looks like it’s all because I make him talk.

Remember how I was bragging last week about how Oscar finally “got it” and could say “I want” X?  Well, Oscar’s made it pretty clear since that day that he does not want to say “I want” X.  He wants to say X and only X and I’d better give him X when he says it or all hell will break loose.   I’ve been all Super Nanny consistency on him from day one and I have not given in, but as you know, I’m not the only authority figure in the house.  Nanny Norma will give in to him when it comes to food.

The rule is that if Oscar wants a certain food he has to say “I want” [that food].  No big deal, right?  It is a big deal, of course.  I know it is very difficult for him to actually say those words and he not only has to enunciate them, which is tough, but he also seems to have a memory retrieval issue so that just makes things more difficult for him.  But, this is not going to resolve itself without constant practice, so I prompt him to practice.  Norma prompts it, too.  I’ve seen it.  It’s just that she’ll give in after a few attempts and give him food.  She remembers Super Skinny Oscar, and she does not want to go back there.

This has led to a fairly big issue in our house these days.  When we go down for breakfast, Oscar now looks at me and points to the door, basically telling me to get out.  Obviously, this is not going to fly, so I give him his cereal [the aim here is to get him to talk, not to starve him into submission] and stand my ground and start with the questions.  Do you want yogurt, do you want toast, etc.   All he will say to me at meal time now is NO.  Well, NO, and then he’ll turn to Norma and say whatever food he wants that I haven’t listed (eg., “No, soup”).  She’ll say “Oscar do you want soup?”  and he’ll say “NO”, not because he doesn’t want soup, but because he knows that he’s supposed to say “I want soup” now.

To get away from this hangup, I let him say “soup, please” instead of the entire sentence, but that just creates the same control issue for him, it seems.  He’s refusing to say that, too.

I had started to think that he was doing this because he really couldn’t remember the words I and want, but that possibility was eliminated today at speech when Oscar said to his speech therapist “I want” X exactly when he was supposed to even before she visually prompted him.  Honestly, it was sort of annoying.  I explained what was happening and she said it was pretty common, especially with kids with oppositional issues (and boy are those showing themselves these days ).

I suspect that this is a combination of him telling me that at home he shouldn’t have to work as hard as he does at therapy, a bit of Norma undermining the message of consistency, Oscar mimicking his sister (who is the Empress of No-land these days) and possibly my pushing him to work too hard at all of this.  I’m not sure what the answer is, but for the time being, we’re going to stick with the consistency approach (and I’m going to push Norma more on that so we’re consistent all day long).  Why?  Because “I want” Oscar to start talking.

Pics to prove I’m not actually torturing the kids . . .

Oscar trying to pull Etta around.  It was a little tougher for him than it was when Hailey was doing it.

Oscar also built a train track and found a big train at kids’ club the other day.  The boy’s an engineering genius.

January 21, 2011 - Posted by Oscar and Etta's mom | Etta, Oscar, Parenting, special needs