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H.A.L.T.

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Your children are spinning out of control. He’s crying and yelling. She’s whining and dragging her feet. The noise level is rising to painful.

It’s time to H.A.L.T. This is an acronym used in recovery programs, but it fits parenting very well. Things are harder when we are Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired.

HALT and take a quick inventory. Is your child Hungry? Do you know why he’s Angry? Is Loneliness the problem? Is she Tired?

You cannot control every situation or always avoid your little one’s discomfort. But this little acronym, HALT, can give you a quick way to spot the problem and diffuse the emotions.

Hunger is probably the easiest one to fix. Start here and make sure everyone’s blood sugar level is up to normal. If not, a snack or meal is the next order of business.

Anger is usually quite easy to recognize. But it may take a little detective work to figure out what is the root of the anger and how to solve it. Giving a positive way to use up some of that steam can be a safety valve to prevent serious damage.

Children may not be able to tell you they are Lonely. They can be lonely even in a crowd, feeling left out or disconnected from you. Give some one-on-one time to ease this.

Tired children and tired adults get cranky. There is a reason that sleep deprivation is used as a torture strategy. As a basic biological need, human functioning quickly declines in the absence of sufficient sleep. Is it nap time? Has it been an exceptionally busy day or hot day? Some extra sleep can make all the difference.

Megan, in TheArtOfSimple.net said, “The best part of applying HALT to our parenting toolbox is knowing what is triggering undesirable behaviors in our children. Armed with that understanding, we are empowered to respond to them from a place of empathy and understanding, rather than from a place of confusion and frustration.”

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Understanding Asperger’s Syndrome

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Asperger’s syndrome, sometimes called nerd syndrome, is a neurological disorder categorized under the umbrella of autistic spectrum disorders.

Autism: An overview

by Marian Wilde , GreatSchools Staff

Asperger’s syndrome has become a controversial diagnosis to describe children exhibiting various difficulties with social behavior. Like autism it affects an individual’s ability to successfully interact with others.

Although children with Asperger’s syndrome (or AS) can have normal or above-normal intelligence, when they start school they often experience difficulty functioning in the social world of the classroom. In fact, it’s not unusual for these children to remain unidentified as having Asperger’s until starting school. The majority of AS children are diagnosed between the ages of 5 and 11.

“As we become more familiar with the variety of differences in our children, a growing number of school-aged children with impairments in complex social behaviors are being referred for assessments and treatment,” says Dr. Mariam King of the Pervasive Developmental Disorders Clinic at the University of California, San Francisco.

What are the symptoms of Asperger’s syndrome?

Children diagnosed with AS generally show normal development until age 4 in speech, self-help skills and curiosity about the world around them.

A concerned parent should look for many, but not necessarily all, of these signs:

Repetitive language
Impairment in the use of nonverbal behaviors, such as making eye-to-eye contact
Conversation that centers around the self
A voice that can be emotionless
Eccentric vocal characteristics
Dyslexia or other writing problems
A tendency to think literally rather than abstractly
Clumsy or awkward motor skills
Inappropriate or insensitive social behaviors

How common is it?

Although scientists have been studying autism since the 1940s, Asperger’s syndrome has only been researched intensively in the past few decades. It was initially described by Viennese pediatrician Hans Asperger in 1944, but it wasn’t until the 1990s that the disorder was widely recognized in the English-speaking world. As a result, there’s a lack of solid data on the prevalence of Asperger’s syndrome.

Our understanding of Asperger’s is still unfolding, with diagnostic criteria only recently being established in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) in 1994.

For many years it was thought that one in 166 individuals has an Autism Spectrum Disorder, a range of disorders that includes Asperger’s syndrome and the more severe disability, classic autism. In February 2007, new data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicates that in many areas of the United States the rate of autism in 8-year-olds is as high as one in 150.

What is the difference between autism and AS?

Read more from GreatSchools.org on Asperger’s Syndrome

 

Stop Interrupting

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You are talking to your friend and your child bursts between the two of you talking loudly.

Want to stop this behavior? Try this silent, but effective way to stop this annoyance.

Explain to your child that you want to give them your full attention. But since it is rude to interrupt when others are talking, you are going to use a silent signal. Here’s how it works.

A parent and friend are talking. Child enters the room quietly. He places his hand on his parent’s hand. This means, “I have something I want to say to you.” The parent places their hand over the child’s hand. This means, “I know you want to talk and I will listen to you as soon as I can.” As soon as possible, the parent politely pauses talking to their friend and pays full attention to the child.

This is so gentle and respectful to both adults and child. It will take a little practice. If the child gets impatient or forgets to wait, just gently tap their hand again as a reminder. Remember that consistency is the best way to build a new habit.

Symptoms to Call Your Doctor About

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When you become a parent, you earn a medical merit badge of sorts. Whether you’re sopping up a goopy nose or extracting a dangling-by-a-thread baby tooth, eventually few things faze you. But sometimes it’s tough to tell what warrants a call to your doctor’s office: Which temperature actually classifies as a “high fever”? What kind of tummy ache means your child has more than your average stomach bug? And when something truly frightening happens — say, your child suddenly breaks out in hives — should you call your pediatrician or head straight to the E.R.?

“Parents should always err on the side of caution and seek immediate medical care when they’re worried about something,” says Anita Chandra-Puri, M.D., a pediatrician at Northwestern Memorial Physicians Group, in Chicago, and a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics. However, to give you more specific guidelines to follow, we talked to top pediatricians about the 12 symptoms that always require medical attention.

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New Kid by Friday- part 5

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Dr. Leman has a technique that he uses for a lot of different behavior problems. This one works particularly well when the purpose of the misbehavior is to get your attention and to control you. It goes like this: 1. Say it once. 2. Turn your back. 3. Walk away.

Telling your child more than once, he believes, just teaches your child that you think he/she is too stupid to understand you the first time. I tend to think it teaches children that they don’t have to obey until you have gotten worked up about it. That’s why counting is usually a bad idea.

Turning your back keeps your child from the reward of your attention. Children sometimes want your attention so much they don’t care if it means being punished. Not giving them attention when they are misbehaving breaks that link. Later, when they are doing well is the time to reward them with your attention.

Walking away is the hardest part of this method. When you walk away your child begins to panic, “Why isn’t mom giving me what I expect?” Dr. Leman says not to even say why you are walking away, just do it and it will result in a teachable moment.

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