A Most Definitely Not Needed Item
July 1, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
Yelling at Charlie is a 100% surefire guaranteed way to assure that he won’t do what I ask him (does it work with anyone, really?). He’s been so sound sensitive these past few months as it is, often putting his hands over his ears and, regardless of muggy June Jersey weather, snuggling the hood of his blue fleece (“summerweight”) sweatshirt over his head. So no buying a mom megaphone!
Andy would like that for himself. He has his own version, one that changes his voice too. Anything to make more noise.
And I have found he is even more sensitive to yelling these day, even if not directed at him.
Same with Charlie—-he gets visibly upset.
Even if I just raise my voice excitedly describing something M gets very upset. Yelling is just a sure fire way to cause a major meltdown that will ruin an entire day. Ugh. Yelling is so not cool.
A raised voice doesn’t agitate Patrick, but he immediately tunes out. Lately background noise has been bothering him though. So if he’s actively listening to music it’s fine but if I’m listening in the truck and he’s trying to do something else…big problems.
I’m not sure how valuable this would be in re: me-to-Eleanor, but I bet that she might find it funny in using it Eleanor-to-me.
Like others have noted, she does not like raised voices, probably since unless she can see our faces and that we are “kidding around”, raised voices mean trouble. Eleanor has a whole repetoire of feather-smoothing strategies for us and is so successful that one of her nicknames is “The Peacemaker”.
Ot comment – I joined the site from the ads – healia. It is a nice place and they reward top 5 posters with a subscription. I got an email last nite saying I get a magazine and chose Fitness. I like these ads better than previous ones.
I don’t have a say over the ads……though I have asked to have some from places like the Judge Rotenburg Center not appearing.
Regan’s comment gave me pause and I’m trying to figure out if Charlie would find it funny to use a megaphone on me, though he might try to use it holding some of his hands over his ears!
I have a 2 yr old that isn’t autistic but he’s likes to do the opposite of what we ask him and giggle, laugh, and run the other way when we ask him to come our way. Yelling at him makes him cry. The only thing that seems to work is counting 1-2-3 and when we get to 5, we always administer a time out without his toys for 15 minutes. That usually takes one of us to sit with him and hold him down for 15 minutes while he cries but it’s not something he likes very much, so when we start counting, he starts acting right. It’s been a while since we’ve had to give him a timeout. I wonder if this works with autistic kids?