Both girls have mimicked his behavior and they get disciplined for it but he doesn’t, or it’s done differently. Kirby does high pitched screams a lot, his outbursts are just normal for us nowadays and many times he recovers quickly but other times not so much. But the girls have both started doing this too, and I can even tell that Monkey TRIES to do it and that it’s not natural for her. But she requires SO MUCH attention and if I give more to any one of them she just acts out even more and then Squishy starts screaming too. It’s COMPLETELY INSANE in our house lately. Seriously crazy-making. Ugh. Maybe it’s just the ages. But Charlotte is exactly right, if it’s not Squishy, it’s going to be something else. At least as the girls get older they will (hopefully) understand their brother a bit more and not try to do things that set him off on purpose. I just pray to God that he doesn’t start being violent during outbursts as he gets older.

He does get OT through the school. Also, his class actually got this new OT room full of brand new stuff, despite budgets being cut everywhere else. He loves it and they’ve seen improvements in areas of attention since then.

He is GREAT at school. He doesn’t have these outbursts, well a couple of times but there was an obvious reason for it. I have been trying to add more structure like they have at school, which is helping, but I can’t control everything the girls say or do. At school they’re all about the same age so it’s going to be different.

He also recently had a few week period where he was having pee accidents in his underwear. I think he was getting so involved in something like playing on the computer or whatever and just either didn’t notice he had to pee or didn’t want to stop – or both – and he would have pee in his underwear many times. He started changing his own clothes after a while, he’d then go through 3-4 changes of pants/underwear a day. We reduced his computer time as a result and it was hard on him. But now he’s fine with it, no more accidents, and he understands that his computer time is directly related.

Here’s yet another issue, ALL he wants to do is go on the computer. All the time. We limit it to 1 hour in the evening after homework and on weekends he can have an additional hour earlier in the day. He’s ok with the structure and accepts it when he knows his limit. But the first thing he asks when he gets out of school is about going on the computer, he rushes through his homework so he can go on the computer, first thing he asks about when he wakes up is when he can go on the computer. He’s completely obsessed with it, but it HAS been a lot better since we put up a big schedule which shows when he can go on it, when we have lunch, when we do X, Y and Z. He loves that and checks it many times a day. But dang, the kid has a real obsession. I think for a while there, his outbursts an stress were pee/computer related.

But again, now it’s something else. It’s like there will always be something that intensely upsets him.