Another great day
Dad reports:
Tommy had another fine day yesterday. He, whether intentionally or not, did not bring home his workbooks to do his homework. A consequence should be applied if this recurs. Tommy was pleasant and although he growled at me when I asked, “Did you put on deoderant this morning?” and he replied with a blunt “no” prompting my “Please go take a bath after your snack” bring on his “GRrrrr!”, he still took the bath then bounced around the house cheerily in his pajamas even joking “I took my bath and went back in time!” Because he was out of the bath before he typically gets in.
What have we done differently? Medicine? A minor factor perhaps although I do believe the wrong medicines aggrivate the condition. For the curious, the current cocktail is Wellbutrin and Seroquel but if you are looking for one medicine combination that works for all Aspie’s you aren’t going to find one; each person’s medicine regimen will be different. I think our greatest behavior modification technique for Tommy was to modify Mom’s and, most particularly, Dad’s behavior. Our stressors have not changed. We still have money problems and an endless supply of monkey wrenches for our plans. We are simply handling our own stress levels better. Our responses are more controlled with far fewer bursts of anger and cursing (angry words in a nice tone are still angry words). Yelling has mostly left our household and we are even trying to eliminate the urge to holler through the house for someone’s attention. It may be a call but its still yelling. Overall, we brought calm to the household by calming down.
I’ve recently started listening, once again, to Stephen R Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Much of what we decided to do on our own he re-emphasizes on his tapes. This is not surprising as Mom and I have both had training on his techniques. Time permitting, I highly recommend reading the book. If time doesn’t permit, listen to the tapes while you wash dishes or drive in the car or choose to listen to the tapes instead of watching that re-run you’ve seen 6 times.