Thursday, April 14, 2011

Ah Yes, Visions!

Today was a bit of a rough day. I think it's pretty safe to say that about it. Not sure who it was rougher for though -Maya, her TSS, Mandy or me. In retrospect, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it was a tough day for Miss Maya, even though she was the cause of all the issues.

Seems she was more than a tad upset because Mandy's boyfriend, Ken, had brought his 4-wheeler down and was going to take the kids for a ride but things went down the tubes, in Maya's perception of things, when Kurtis was the one who got to go for the "first" ride.

Since I was in the house and not privy to the conversations and the actions/reactions to that bit of news out front, I don't know exactly who said what, but evidently Miss Maya lost her cool and her temper completely and apparently swung at someone (probably Kurtis but may have been Miss Brittany, her TSS) and also, she kicked Miss Brittany.

Not a good move on her part -or as we've been trying to teach her and her brother -"Not a wise choice."

Before she could turn around, Mandy had brought her into the house and plunked her down on the sofa where she was doing the whining cry for the most part. Although occasionally it was a bit of the wailing cry with a smidgen of a tear now and then.

I was in the bathroom at the onset of this so didn't get the full scoop on what had transpired but by the time I got out to the living room, all the things that Maya was supposed to have done were being denied, vehemently, and to each of her denials, Mandy was reminding her that she had seen her do these things and therefore, she was lying and that if there is one thing that Mommy (Mandy) really dislikes, it's liars!

The denials or lies -call it whichever you wish -continued, on and on, for quite some time with no headway in getting Maya to see that her problem now was in the realm where she really needed to accept the responsibility for her actions and to apologize to Miss Brittany for her actions.

She had one excuse after the other for why things had gone the way they did, each one more ludicrous than the previous one too! One reason she acted the way she did was because her "friends told her to do that." Hmmmm. Who are these friends and where were they hiding around our house to be able to give her directives that got her into trouble anyway? (Considering the fact there is only one little girl along our street near Maya's age and with whom she is friends, but who was no where near our house today.

The conversation also delved then into well, who is the boss here anyway and of course, Maya started out by wrongly stating that SHE is the boss. This child has no concept whatsoever of what a short fuse her mother's temper can be on at times and by making that statement, she was running a really big risk there! (For the record, Mandy did eventually get Maya to acknowledge that either Mommy or Gram are the bosses around this place and not her, not her little brother either -although Kurtis rarely tries to exert that kind of authority.)

Then it was back once again to asking her why she felt it was okay to kick Miss Brittany. After being asked if she liked to be kicked or hit and she said no, then why did she feel it was alright to do that to someone else? This time, we were pretty surprised to hear Maya tell us that Mr. McClelland had told her to do that! Say what? Mr. McClelland is the name of her teacher and he sure as heck was no where near our place.

"So, when did he tell you that?" Mandy asked her.

"Well," Maya began, "I had this vision in my head and it was him telling me that."

Hmmmm. Now we're dealing with visions in her head, are we? So much for the run-of-the-mill visions little kids are supposed to have of 'Sugar plums dancing" I suppose.

I have to confess to that when she made that comment about seeing the vision of her teacher that I almost spit my teeth out on the spot and was trying so hard to stifle the laugh building up deep down inside me that there were tears running down my cheeks. Good way to ruin a discipline session is for Gram to totally lose control and laugh out loud, ya know!

We had a little bit of a meltdown earlier this week on Tuesday afternoon when a little girl from Kurt's class and her mother, along with Mandy's friend and her husband, their daughter, son and the son's girlfriend as well as Miss Randi (Maya's mobile therapist) were all here and we were having a bit of an early celebration of Kurt's 5th birthday -which was on Wednesday. Seems Maya got a big streak of jealousy going on when she announced very loudly and sulking/pouting on a big, big level because she believed that it wasn't fair because Kurt got more presents for his birthday than she did! Excuse me? Since when does this child count the number of presents she received six months ago and recall that while watching her brother open about 4-5 gifts anyway? Took a good bit of talking to her that day about her issues, for sure.

Mandy was still upset about her reaction at Kurt's little party Tuesday and when Mandy took her to her dentist appointment Wednesday a.m., she tried to address the issue a bit further with Maya. She was still upset about the whole deal Wednesday evening too because she didn't feel she'd made any headway with Maya about this stuff.

Actually, I don't think her reaction was an abnormal one because darned near all siblings do tend to have a tad of jealousy over things like birthday gifts and Christmas presents and such. Some don't show it outwardly at all, while others hold it in for a long, long time and then cut loose on the adults they believe were responsible for those sins -often many years earlier. (I know this not from my own experience with siblings -as I was an only child and thus have no experience in that respect -but from how my three kids often dealt with what they thought were slights to them at various times over their childhood years.)

But anyway, I think that was still a part of Maya's issue today as we know she is quite jealous of anything at all that she perceives as Kurtis getting one iota more than she gets or got or whatever!

The jealousy thing by itself can be a royal pain to deal with but the bit with the constant lies she dishes out to us, refusing to acknowledge that she did this, that or something else, even when she KNOWS the I have seen her myself or Mandy has seen her or someone else saw an action she chose to take that wasn't anything near to be kosher and yet, she will lie through her teeth and deny ever having done whatever it was that we had caught her doing!

A long time back someone had made the comment to us -this was shortly after Maya had been diagnosed as having autism -that one thing "cool" about kids with autism was that they are very honest, don't lie!

Hmmm. Wish I could remember now who it was that told us that lie!

5 comments:

... Paige said...

my baby girl (believe it or not) can spin some purdy good web, well she thought it purdy good anyway

I don't know who told you that lie, but perhaps they really meant

that they don't lie...Well

Maggie May said...

I think saying that kids with autism don't lie is an over generalisation. Some do & some don't! (Like everyone else!)
Glad the melt down came to a few laughs in the end (even stifled ones!)
Maggie X

Nuts in May

terri said...

Hmmm... so often I find myself missing my kids' younger days. You've just provided a nice reminder of the benefits of them growing up!

CiCi said...

Sibling jealousy is sometimes difficult for young ones to sort through. What I like is how many people are involved with your grandkids like Miss Brittany and Miss Randi.

Anonymous said...

Oh, my grandkids all have elephant memories and keep track of everything, especially what my wife and I do for each of them. And no matter how their mother tries to get them to keep it to themselves, They manage to remind us when it's their turn. The middle child, Maddux, does it the most. We like to take the kids one at a time, and Maddux insists we do exactly what we did when his older brother spent the night.