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* Puberty Nightmare  *奇蹟後所面臨的挑戰 (BEP) * Challenge from Miracles (BEP) 

Puberty Nightmare (2001)

<published in FCSN Newsletter>

At the beginning of 1999, exhausted by the last twelve months of VH's intensive skill therapy, I asked his teacher which class would be the best to drop in order to reduce my own day-to-day burden.

The teacher said that the complete set of classes is the reason for the miracle of his increased awareness of the outside world. Dropping any of the classes might stop the miracle. So, the miracle is indeed very expensive in every aspect! To keep the miracle going, I was determined to suffer through the experience!

However, something happened: VH entered puberty in 6/99.

I have heard distressing stories about the changes to special need kids when they enter puberty. I kept crossing my fingers wishing this date might never come! However, the day did come, VH developed early and entered puberty at 11and half years old!

Since starting puberty, his attitude began to gradually change, despite my self-denying the fact. Here are some examples of the changes:

1.      In 7/99 his attitude toward orders/commands went from bad to worse. The Marble Award System worked only

         when he was in a good mood.

 2.     His language capability started to deteriorate.

   -    He began to bark at anyone who tried to talk to him and was back to saying "NO!“ without explaining why.

   -    He used to try hard to express himself despite his language problem but, starting in 8/99,  he was back to crying

        and screaming instead of using words when he was not  happy.  

 3.     Starting in 8/99 he lost his smile.

         He used to be a happy child with constant silly laughing.  He no longer cracked even a smile.

         This was very sad for me.

 4.     In 9/99 it was noticeable that his physical strength was improving, he no longer had weak muscle tone. And he

         seemed to somehow understand he was stronger because he started to hit anyone who made him unhappy.
       

He started hitting his older brother and his father, who hit him back to try to teach him not touch them anymore. Then, he discovered that his 4 year old little sister to be a good punching bag too.

The frequency and strength of his hitting increased. And he would try to hit her as soon as he saw her. When I, his mother, stood in front of Wendy to protect her, he hit me instead. His punches got stronger and stronger and was getting to the point where he could do real damage, especially to a 4 year old.

There seemed no way to deter his behavior. To prevent him from hurting her, I had to get help from his big brother to make sure that either his brother or I were always near him when both he and his sister were at home. To protect his sister and in an effort to change his attitude we put some rules in place: 

-  If he tried to hit his sister, either one of us would stand in front of his sister to take the hit from him.

-  When he hit us, we scolded him instead of hitting him back.

-  If he continued hitting us after scolding, we would use techniques learned from Kuk-Sul martial art class to stop him. 

    He knew he could not fight us because we were his coaches during the class!

-   In this stage, he usually cried for very long time to vent his frustration.

    We could do nothing to stop his crying, and had to sit through his crying left with the feeling that we were ogres!

Under these circumstances, I realized that I had to take action before a tragedy occurs.

-         I notified all of his teachers of the private lessons that I might have to give up the classes if his violent behavior
      carried over into the lesson time!

-        I kept calling Teacher Cheuong in FCSN for help.

-        Putting him in an institution is not an option I would ever take.

-        I had considered putting him under medicine control but that is just another form of giving him up.   
     Medicine might turn him into a vegetable or there may be more horrific long term side-effects! 
     However, with his sister's safety in danger, it might have been the only option I had.

Ms. Cheuong advised me to request the help from a behavior specialist. Mr. Mike Wilson, from San Andrea Regional Center. Between 1/00 to 5/00, Mr. Wilson gave me a lot of useful advice. The following actions/reactions are effective with him:

1) Reduce his classes to the minimum maintenance level.

2) I set up a Marble Award System for him on 8/99 and had been gradually raising the bar for his awards to wean

    him off the system. 

    Mr. Wilson told me not to do this, and suggested a change of strategy:

    Whenever he did the work, give him a marble. No matter how small the effort was, if he is trying, then award him.

3) Combine the Behavior Controlling list with Marble Award System. he will get 3 extra marbles if he did not yell or

    hit people that day.

4) Behavior Award System.

    If he earned 10 good behavior tickets in a week, Mr. Wilson would take him out to buy one item he loves

    at the end of that week.

5) He has to describe the activity orally to get a marble. As long as he tries, he gets a marble.

6) Set up prize center.

    He can get one prize for a full cup of marbles. He can pick up any prize from the store and put it in the prize

    center I set up for him at home where he can admire them as much as he wants.

7) Relax the homework from his therapy sessions. 

    It used to be a requirement to complete all homework each day,  now it is optional. There is no way to make him do

    his homework anyway!

   With the above actions in place, he became more manageable but still had a lot of bad days, i.e., he was not
    controllable! 

By accident, I found out that he behaved better whenever he played the piano from 45 minutes to one hour every day.

•         With the addition of piano playing, his violence and bad behavior became more under control stating in 3/00.

•         For almost two years his piano skills were the only improvement, there was little improvement on his other
      evelopmental skills.

With his academic developmental skills seemingly in a frozen state, I decided to work on his social skills. Based on what I learned from Dr. Lee's speech, combined with the book she recommended, I set up play date for him.

-   I asked two very nice boys in my neighborhood to do play dates with him for 6 months in 1999. The result was
    disastrous for these reasons:

-  His speech ability was too low.

    His speaking ability was only around that of a 2 year old and he comprehended at about the 5 year old level.

-  The boys did not have knowledge how to play with him.

    Despite their good intention, the two boys had a hard time engaging him in play.  They were too young to

    understand why he did not respond to them and they became  frustrated!

With no way to express himself, the boy's frustration caused him to lose his self-confidence! He usually enjoyed playing with others, but, after the play date failure he refused to be social, preferring to be alone instead.

Since the play date experiment with the same physical age group turned out to be a bad idea, I made these adjustments:

 -  Researching for books in training conversation skill I found two books, 'Side By Side', which contain some excellent

     ideas and methods in training Van-Hai's conversation skill.

 -   It is import to get a person with the same mental age as he to do the play dates with.

    * It is a wonderfully coincidental that we have a 5 year old talkative child at home, Wendy, who needs a lot of attention.

      She is the perfect fit for the job.

But there is a caveat, he hates to be a charity receiver! 

•         If I told him to do a play date with his sister, he would get very upset.

•         So I told him to be his sister's baby sitter! 

•         The agreement is that he does not have to do homework and he can get a marble if he baby-sits his sister. 

So, in 4/99 he became his sister's  baby-sitter and his sister became his playmate.

The moral of this whole story is to be open for new ways to help him.

Thanks to Mai-Lin who persuaded me to see Dr. Marinkovich where I discovered he has many allergies.

With the doctor's suggestion, I started a brand-new regimen of treatments and diet control in August, 2000. 

With various experiments on diet control, he stopped his violent behavior in January, 2001.

He once again became a nice natured (although still no smill) child by 4/2001.

  Challenges from Miracles(BEP)      

                                    By JS Tarng  5/20/05