Dh is at work and I need to tell an audience who will understand

[TheArsenicCupCake]

Ds feels embarrassed!! :o

he was talking about a girl at school and got embarrassed.. And then asked what he was feeling!!

And then repeated it lots and lots.. And we wrote down how it feels.

< does a little proud jig and passes cake around>

If it is any help I can tell you how we have been working on it.

Get a piece of paper draw faces and write down the name of the emotion.. Then next to it how that physically feels.. And next to that stratagies for that emotion.

Start with what they already know ( so we started with happy, sad, angry). When you see then feeling that emotion ask them what their body is doing.. So for angry we happen to have a red face with tummy tight, breathing fast, want to hit, written beside it... Then ds chose something from his calm down list to go with it, ( I always add .. Talk about it.. As well.

If you leave big gaps between each face ( going down) you can add things like frustraited, annoyed, worried, embarrassed etc as you go along adding more and more as you see them do it.

ie .. When ds got frustrated at a game.. I said " do you know what that feeling is?" then name it.. And if he is in a good enough mood get him to name what his body is doing.

Hope that makes sense.. And helps :)

That's very similar to how we're working with it, Arsenic. We've developed a Feelings Vocabulary file with descriptions, pictures (we had such a laugh taking pictures of each other in different emotional states!), and ds (when he can) writes about a time when he felt that emotion.

We watch drama on tv and he'll try to work out what people are thinking, feeling, what they're going to do next and why.

Next step we're working on putting situations into a three word sentence of "I feel ..." and practicing saying it out loud.

It's such bloody hard work though, isn't it?

Really glad to come across someone who's going through the same problem, and is making progress.

That's the icing on the cake !!!

In need of 'hope for the future' examples at the moment. So pleased for you and him.

Interesting reading your strategy - with our ds we are fooled by the fact that he seems to know and can name emotions, and we believe he 'gets it' - but his reactions and behaviour show he really doesn't. He can do all the right things with words and pictures but not in 'real life' - now you have given me some strategies to try so thanks again!

Streaky.. It's such hard work! but it's worth it a zillion times over.

Amper.. Took us ages to recognise that ds didn't conect his feeling with the words he was using.
Take embarrassed for example.. He knew the word and would correctly use it ( although not often).. In say a sentance in a story at school etc.. But what he wasn't doing was conecting his emotions vocab with what he was feeling.. that as NT we just take for granted!
His speach and dictionary type understandings of word for emotions masked it actually for a long time.

It was really only when we were stripping his behaviours right down with the behavioural therapist that it came to light... No-one else had picked up on it either.. As he masked it very well.
And i will hesitate to say, there seems to be a marked improvement in frequency, duration and intensity of meltdowns.. Just from one tiny weeny connection that he wasn't making!

Can you imagine .. Feeling things and not knowing why , what that feeling is or what you can do about it.. I'd have a meltdown too!

Just to add .. Streaky .. It's great ( in the nicest way possably).. To know that there are other parents out there who are going through this as well... It's not the normal playground, coffee morning type topic! " it's great that little johnny had a lovely time taking his girlfriend out to the cinema.... Well we spent the evening teaching ds what emotion he was feeling".

Most ( and gladly for them) parents just don't have to explain such basic things.
So it feels a bit lonely and nutty!

Yes, it's nice to have someone in the same boat for a bit of company .

I sometimes wonder what it must be like to have a child who functions like the majority do. How do parents fill their time?!

How does your boy cope with school work? Ds is home educated now (coming up two years ) and we're having real difficulties with English work because he can't answer all the "Why did X do that" and "What would you do" type of questions.

He also struggles with expressing opinions because he doesn't like to be wrong, and it's hard for him to grasp that his opinions are valid even if they aren't the same as someone else's. I can see it's going to present some real problems - in fact it already is.

Well have two NT dc's as well .. They fill my time generally by matting about the latest school gossip.. Although ds1 is a teen and so tends to grunt a lot ( I have threatened him with SALT when he gets to bad:))

ds2 is at MS secondary and sort of copes okay.. As long as it's factually based.. Science, maths, etc
he really struggles with English ! And we are working on people have different opinions :) ( have found talking about art is a good way to broach opinions.
You can either use different critics opinions as an example.. Or use the optical illusion pictures .. The ones where you can see a vase and two vases in the same pic is a nice visual example).