Good Morning! It’s two A.M., and I have been rudely awakened. Screech! Screech! Scream to get my attention. I finally get up and go into Jimmy’s room. He is wide awake and wants his tablet. I tell him no and to go back to sleep. It is time to be sleeping, and he screams at the top of his lungs. I tell him to be quiet. He wakes up Janie, and he screams louder, demanding his tablet. I finally relent, knowing that I didn’t put it on the charger and that it would die after about 20 minutes. I close his door, get Janie settled, and go back to my bed. No use in sleeping because his tablet will die, and I will be up again screaming. So I lay there. Yup, 20 minutes later, he screams his frustrated scream and yells mommy. I take his tablet, get him settled, go out, and close his door, and he is silent. I go back to bed wide awake. Waiting for him to screech again, and it is quiet. Whew, he fell back to sleep. Why? Why can’t I go back to sleep? I, of course, fall back to sleep just as it is getting light outside, which is 4:45, by the way.
Now that is interesting. I don’t know if this is just a typical toddler or autistic toddler goings-on. I don’t remember any of my other kids screaming like these two screams. I do remember being woken up in the middle of the night but it was always bad dreams. Now that I think of it I don’t think that they have ever had any bad dreams. If they have they don’t seem to bother them at all. Nice, but interesting.
I always go back to screaming, but it is annoying. These kids have a scream for everything. Happy, sad, mad, glad, fighting, getting along, they have a scream for everything. Even their therapists don’t get it and haven’t seen anything like it. I think it might be my fault. They have learned that if they scream, I jump and attend to whatever they seem to want, even if it is just a reaction. They sure get it, not just from me but from everyone.
This week I am going to work on not reacting to their screams. I know the difference between hurt screams and screaming for attention, so I will practice not responding to their screams. It is going to be so hard. I want to stop them from screaming, so maybe seeing that it doesn’t work anymore will slow it down.
That’s my goal this week.