are your kids hard on stuff? | Autism PDD
I don't buy any toys that break easy or have many little parts but
somehow even the toughest toys are broken within days of entering our
house. Even wood blocks have gotten broken! Our furniture looks like it's
been trough a tornado. My asd son is clearly the main offender but his
sisers are not that far behind. I don't think it is lax parenting, they are
all very tactile and sensory seeking kids.
It is probably fair to say that I am too. My mom was visiting and said:
"You broke every toy when you were kid and I always thought that
maybe you were spoiled. But now that I see your kids I think it is genetic!"
Great.
And it is not just the being hard on stuff - it is the rifling too - there are
constantly chairs pushed up to stuff and my son going through drawers
and cupboards and what not. Even he does not know what he is looking
for. When he was two (before his dx) I brought his constantly going
through stuff up in a parenting group and they just stared at me and
said "Well, can't you just tell him to stop?" Geez - is that what works
with other kids - telling them to stop?! Life would be sooo easy!!
Anyway: Are your kids hard on stuff? Do they rummage around a lot?
My dd is TOO gentle! On toys, on clothes ... as her OT poitned out, heck, her fingernails get really LONG!
My ds (ADHD but NT?) ... is another story! He trashes clothes, shoes, AND toys -- in seconds flat! He sounds a lot like yours! I claim it is like having a pet chimpanzee! ETA: ... Oh, and he VERY MUCH sensory-seeking!
Actually, my ds is not hard on things at all. He is VERY careful with them. It is his NT sister that has to drag out every toy in the world and spread it all over her room, or the living room, or the playroom - or all of the above! And, she breaks things WAY more than ds. The twins that are ds' friends do the same as my dd and we have had more broken toys this summer than we have had in the last 6 years!
I think those moms in the playgroup need to have more children (in order to gain perspective) and also to get a life!
My kids are hard on EVERYTHING! Clothes, toys, bedding, you name it.My son it VERY hard on things in our house. He's very oral and had chewed on my coffee table, taken paint off the wall (not lead paint thank goodness), destroyed the drop ceiling in the basement, etc.. Whenever I go to a store like Pottery Barn I walk through and think of the ways he'd destroy a particular item!! I walk out without buying a thing!! If it can possibly be taken apart, Skylar will find a way to do it. I have bought him toys that were "supposed" to be tough and hard to tear up. Yeah well, they don't know Skylar.
[QUOTE=Julie B.] Whenever I go to a store like Pottery Barn I walk through and think of the ways he'd destroy a particular item!! I walk out without buying a thing!! [/QUOTE]
My son bangs alot on things-sensory seeking/stiming. He has punctured an excercise ball with a pencil jsut to see what would happen -very dangerous! When he has tantrums he is a thrower. The back of his bedroom door is just littered with nicks. He broke my rear view mirror in the car by throwing a sippy cup.
Mason is soooo tough on EVERYTHING...a lot of it is his hyperness or even his mood, but he just seems so much stronger than my other kids were at this age too. 2 years ago we went for Mason's yearly neuropsych test and he was using a little kit that had miniature table and chairs...he picked up the chair to look at it...quote from the report--
"Mason is quite strong. He broke the chair from one of the testing kits simply by placing it on the table."
I always wondered why she felt it necessary to put that in the evaluation?!?
Anyway, he is like a tornado around here! And I would love one of those parents that feel the need to say "can't you stop him?" to come to my house for even an hour and try!! [QUOTE=emerald_521]
Anyway, he is like a tornado around here! And I would love one of those parents that feel the need to say "can't you stop him?" to come to my house for even an hour and try!!
[/QUOTE]
YYYYYYYYYYYEAH. Here too.
I had to laugh when I saw this thread since I chewed out my dd today after finding a huge rootbeer stain on her carpet that she claims to have no prior knowledge of!In addition to my asd 7 yr old Paul he has a 5 yr old bro and a 3 yr old bro. They jockey for position in the "who can break the most today" and "who can damage the most household items today" marathon!
Case in point: has YOUR bathroom towel bar been used to simulate Spiderman swinging from his web? Mine has...and then crashed to the ground leaving a gaping hole!! I have become a world expert in spackling
In fact one day we were talking about what our "jobs" are. The boys talked about their jobs of clearing their dinner plates away etc. When I asked what Mommy's job was the reply was "Mommy fixes walls!!!!!" Out of the mouths of babes!
I keep telling myself "this too shall pass" and someday my house will be too quiet and pristine. Hard to believe it, but I tell myself anyway.
Ummm...ME! I've aged 15 years in the last 4!
We had more destructive incidents with my autistic son than with my younger NT son, but there's no constant destruction, especially not at age 9.
The toys create a big mess, but they seldom mess with other stuff.
Hang in there, micki.
My daughter 6 yrs, used to break everything. It's not like she was trying but on her IEP questions, they made her look like a monster. I can't wait for her Sept meeting with dev. Ped. time can't move fast enough.My son, 2 yrs takes everything apart. He throws all his toys. Chewed his crib and took it a PART. He chewed 2 mattresses. Yes peeled them and ripped the stuffing out. I've had to remove poo so many times from his walls that the paint is starting to peel. He used to have a nursery room but I had to remove everything but a few toys.
I need to buy him another mattress but I'm not sure what to buy.
Oh geez, we have non-stop destruction some days...those are the days I'm extra grateful it's Zach's bedtime.
We're on to our 3rd DVD player this year. Movies are one of Zach's few interests, so we have to keep buying them.
He ripped open the seam in our new couch (he destroyed the old couch). We fixed the rip since it was along the seam, but for about a week he was pulling at the cushions on the couch trying to make another hole. He liked pulling out the stuffing.
He's into every drawer, pulling everything down off shelves, grabbing milk out of the fridge and dropping it down the basement stairs for fun.
He's got to most of the lamps in the house, we go thru a set of earphones every couple of months. Tore all the posters down in his sisters room. Then he wanted posters up in his room, and they stayed up for months, until he finally tore those down.
Julie B., I guess we're lucky since we still have half our drop ceiling in the basement. Mind you he's working hard to finish the job he started.
Opened the computer one day and found a bunch of stuffed animals in it, and to this day we can't figure out how he did that one. Still don't know if that's what contributed to ending that computer's life.
Then there's the minivan...where do I start with that damage? He will dump his drink when he's happy, and when he's mad. I keep it from him, but he'll still grab it on the way out and find a way to dump it, or even better starts shaking it and it lands everywhere. Then there's the gallon of latex paint.
I guess I could write a book on this subject alone.
Thanks micki, for showing all of us we're not alone.
smith22 (and many others)
YOU would understand why, though I'd like one, I'm NOT buying a dining room set (or any other decent funiture)in the foreseeable future!
[QUOTE=smith22]
He ripped open the seam in our new couch (he destroyed the old couch). We fixed the rip since it was along the seam, but for about a week he was pulling at the cushions on the couch trying to make another hole. He liked pulling out the stuffing.
[/QUOTE]
We had our old VCR and I put it in his room a few years ago, so he could watch his movies (and credits) over and over and not drive the rest of us crazy...I would pull matchbox cars, playing cards, dice etc etc etc out of there on a regular basis...until one day I went up there to put a movie in there for him and pulled out a PB & J sandwich!!!! Well that was the end of that!
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