Agressive behaviour

[meea]

I guess what I want to know is what other peoples children were like at 2 years 5 months.My son is as yet has no dx but has been treated for developmental delay from being about 12 weeks old.He has physio, portage,speech therapy has had an assesment with ot but not sure if they are going to continue seeing him.he is also on the waiting list to see a phycologist.He has recently become very aggresive towards us in particular hitting kicking shouting banging his head on the floor or hitting his head with his hand.He is also withdrawn around anyone other than family.The Hv (really stupid women)says that this is all normal behaviour and that he is just attention seeking.Ds2 is my 4th child and it doesn't seem normal to me.

meea - your son is exactly the same as my daughter (my 2nd child). She is displaying some aggressive behaviour mainly due to frustration in not getting her own way. She will throw herself to the floor and sometimes bang her head but doesn't hit herself. However she is also very loving too. If this is your 4th child you obviously have comparisons to make. I guess your HV thinks he is competing against his siblings? When are you due to get a dx?

We have no idea when my son will next see the pead never mind when we will get a diagnosis.
I guess my HV does think that, but considering his problems and the fact that she has only seen him 3 times in his life I don't think she knows us or him well enough to say.I don't really buy the sibling thing as my older 2 are at school all day and my 4 year old is at nursery all day 3 days a week.We have had to move his car seat into the back row of seats in our people carrier as he keeps hitting and nipping who ever is unlucky enough to be sat next to him.I know that children get frustrated but it is'nt that with him he can be happily playing the next he has completly lost it I am finding it difficult to get him to look or listen to me when I speek to him.

Most aggressive behaviour (in SN I mean) is proven to be linked to communication, unless there is an underlying problem related to pain or something. Even then, it would be a problem in communicating about the pain. I have been to 2 lectures, got the supposedly best book and still have problems. I know the priority is to teach better communication or at least simple, functional short PECs etc but its very hard to do. We are about to give it another good go, my DS has very good and constantly improving receptive communication but limited and not noticeably improving expressive communication. The "best" book is called Challenging Behaviour by Eric Emerson.

Does he headbang a lot anyway - or only when something is wrong? If he does it for no reason or an awful lot without feeling pain there could be a sensory problem. DS1 did the most injuries to himself (headbanging 20 times a day- permanent bruising on head) when he was eating peanuts- it obviously did something to his senses. Within 2 days of removing them the headbanging stopped almost completely.

Agree with Davros though- even if sensory problems are making the agression more violent- the most likely trigger is frustration and an inability to communicate. Not being able to communicate something will set ds1 off immediately. Becoming "fluent" in PECS has decreased the self injury and hitting quite considerably. We did have to go on a course ourseleves in the end though- we just didn't get enough outside input to set it up properly at home without that.

Thanks jimjams and davros I think communication could be a large part of his problem he was seen by salt last Friday and she feels he has made progress since his assesment but that he still has significant communication difficulties.He is still on the waiting list and she has been reviewing him even though he isn't at the top of the list as she was concerned about him.Using makaton with him was suggested by his old nursery but when mentioned it to his portage worker she said that she hadn't been doing it with him as his speech was emerging.So much conflicting advice mentioned his behaviour at nursery this morning and she said that she didin't believe he was aggresive.Told her to talk to my youngest daugter who seems to get the worst of it.

That portage worker doesn't know what she's talking about, Makaton will only PROMOTE speech, not interfere with it. Go to the Makaton website, I'm sure they have research articles on there and its also my own experience, not just my DS but from observing many other SN kids. I think you could also use more visual communication strategies, e.g. scheduling, there's lots of books on this and, I believe, its proven to help even verbal children with word retrieval etc.

Good grief- when was this portage worker trained? Signing encourages speech- as does using things like PECS. This has been well documented. Backed up with my experience as well- since introducing PECS properly and consistently since the end of June ds1's language and speech have begun to improve for the first time in 4 years.

Half the portage workers I come across are a complete nightmare.

Ture about word retrieval Davros- as soon as my son has seen a PECS "phrase" he is able to learn that particular phrase. WIthout seeing it it's much harder for him

Whoops p[osted too soon- and his speech is definitely prompted by PECS.

I too have seen incredible results through PECS (through my job as a health journalist) in both 3 yr olds and 15 yr olds (although i know there could be other things helping too)

What are pecs and how would I use them with ds2 he is 2.Glad other people think that signing would help him as when I mentioned it she looked at me as if the idea was ridiculous.I just think that if he has another way of communicating it can only help his frustration.Why does everything have to be so hard we look to these people to help us and just end up doing ourselves.On a bit of a downer today.lack of sleep probably.

Here's the PECS website. Basically the children use pictures to communicate. It's ideal for children with communication disorders as it teaches the idea of initiating communication as well. So to ask me to go out on the garden for example ds1 will go to his PECS baord, take off three symbols "I want garden" (its more normal to combine the I want to one cardn, but ds1's SALT has seperated it on purpose) put the cards on a sentence strip and then bring it to me. Before PECS he would have grabeed me, pulled and/or screamed.

It's an ABA technique and is set up using physical promtps. It is quite a simple technique in many ways, but is also hard to set up if trying to do it alone. We tried without much success for a year or so. Eventually last June I booked dh and I onto a workshop and we haven't really looked back. It suits us well (ds1 can't sign as he can't imitate very well)