pddnos or something else?!

amother

Sun, Dec 25 2011, 3:27 pm

My son was recently diagnosed with PDD-NOS. We are working with a BSC who has been observing him.

There's this one thing he does that drives me CRAZY and I can't figure out if this is a PDDNOS symptom or something else entirely. I mentioned it to the BSC and she says she'll look out for it and didn't really give me any more info on it so I wonder if anyone has experienced this.

Whenever he does something wrong behavior-wise, ie. hurting younger sibling, coloring on the wall..anything like that and we bring it up to him he completely diverts the topic and will start crying hysterically saying I got hurt, look my hand is hurting or something like that when it has NOTHING to do with what we're talking about! It's like he doesn't even hear us. It is so frustrating and I don't persist because I know he's not doing it on purpose. Ok I'm rambling but I need some clarity on this.
Anyone?

amother

Sun, Dec 25 2011, 3:31 pm

You didn't mention how old he is. My son was diagnosed with PDD and he doesn't do this at all. He is a little over two years old. If I reprimand him, he just looks down or away as if ashamed or runs away to do something else or tries to make the mess worse because he is upset at me for reprimanding him. He used to totally be oblivious because he didn't understand what we were talking about but after intense therapy his cognition and level of comprehension has increased significantly to the point that he usually understands.

How do you know he's not doing it on purpose. My son, as many children are, is very manipulative. He will try to charm you with cute looks or by doing cute things to divert attention or to get what he wants. How can you know that's not what he's doing. It certainly sounds like it. If you are interested, there is a closed private forum for parents with kids on the spectrum.

grace413

Sun, Dec 25 2011, 3:34 pm

Why do you think he's not doing it on purpose? It's a common tactic to attempt to divert the parent's attention from the subject at hand, especially if he can convince you he's injured.

Believe me, he hears you, he knows he's done something wrong and he's trying to avoid the lecture from you. Don't let his diagnosis become a convenient excuse for him to behave badly. Developmental delays do not necessarily mean bad behavior. You may have to refigure what's age-appropriate for him, but even a toddler gets told that it's wrong to hit a sibling or color on the walls.

amother

Sun, Dec 25 2011, 10:42 pm

thats very interesting that you mention that. my pdd 3.5 year old does an almost identical thing. at any point in time either when he legitimately needs to cry or not, he cries "boo-boo". sometimes I feel like yelling "you're crying because you ran towards the street and I yelled at you never to do that again; there is no way in the world you are hurt right now!"

however, in our case, I think this is an extension of his rigidness. he cries so often for no reason at all at random times of day, and before he was diagnosed we always said to him "we dont cry for silly reasons. only crying for boo-boos". I think that after being given that message so many times, he cant get it out of his consciousness that there could be reasons to cry other than a boo-boo.