Wednesday, November 19, 2008

My Ears Are Bleeding

Not literally, but close. Samuel screams. Loudly and high pitched. He can speak in complete sentences, actually when they evaluated him at the doctor he is speaking at a four year old level--yet he screams.

He screams when Makiah touches his blanket. Don't touch or move the beloved blanket.

He screams when you don't give him cheese or yogurt or anything else he thinks he needs from the refrigerator.

He screams when he gets told no. Which is quite often, I might add.

He screams when he can't watch a movie.

He screams when you touch his toys--even though 2.3 seconds ago you were playing together, now you aren't. Didn't you know?

My ears can't take much more. He has moved from telling you what's wrong to screaming and now added stomping his feet. As if screaming wasn't enough, as if we didn't hear him. It's quite a show. Unfortunately it makes me cringe and question my parenting abilities.

It also makes me not what to leave the house with him. Ever. I want him quarantined until the screaming disease is gone. Banished. For ever.

We have tried multiply discipline techniques to get him to stop screaming and nothing is working. Please, if you have any suggestions, send 'em my way. I am begging people. My ears are begging.

On a side note, Daniel is doing so many new things now. He is really improving in his abilities. He still has developmental delays, but he is progressing. He has an appointment with a Developmental Pediatrician in January. I just remembered I never wrote the post about him I was supposed to write. Well, it boils down to this. Daniel has tightness issues on one side of his body. At first we just thought is was developmental delays (DD), but his mama, who has been down the DD path before, felt like it was more. So I began doing research. I found some things that I didn't like. So I went to his pediatrician and she agreed that it was something more, but out of her diagnostic scope. There is a possibility that Daniel has a very mild case of Cerebral Palsy. If that is the case it is very mild because he is hitting other milestones, just not all of them. So we are just continuing with physical therapy for the tightness and delays until we know if there is more. He is progressing so that makes me happy. Right now he is on my lap, trying to help me type.

Potty update: Samuel actually peed in the potty yesterday, so we will see how it goes today.

Have a blessed and happy Wednesday.

3 comments:

Sheila said...

I don't know what to tell you.

I had a friend whose baby used to scream for fun. Especially in the grocery store. You should have seen the looks she got!

The only thing I could suggest is playing a whispering game, where you start louder but then get softer, and if they do it with you they get a reward, like a smile and a laugh and a hug.

Do this constantly, until they understand what you mean by SHHHH!

101 Days!?! That's impressive!

I have a post up today about how to get in the mood--even if you're not! Simply go to http://is.gd/873Q!

Visit To Love, Honor and Vacuum today!

Fiddledeedee said...

Oh, goodness knows, my boy was a screamer. Inside of ANY enclosed space. Especially crowded grocery stores. He had sensory issues.

He has mostly grown out of it. We changed his diet, and that helped. He has LOTS of food allergies.

Hang in there. I think the whisper game is a great idea. I use that one a lot. :)

Boy Mom said...

Little boys are not as able to find the words to express feelings as little girls. They also develop empathy which in developmental terms means the ability to mentally look at a card, identify the color or symbol on each side then look at the side facing you and figure out what is on the other side by walking around mentally and looking at it from another perspective.

This cognitive skill develops more slowly in boys than girls. The inability to express feelings and the lack of feeling words and the inability to empathize with another's feelings all seem to play into the three year old temper tantrum stage.

I try saying how they are feeling for them, for instance, you feel frustrated when someone touches your toys, When we feel frustrated we say, please don't touch my toys I don't feel like sharing right now.

We play lots of sharing games with turns lasting 30 seconds to a minute for each person. We also do a lot of ignoring the screaming and making a big deal of using words. I'm always telling everyone how everyone feels using lots of feeling words and explaining for everyone, Ouch that hurts the kitty how would you feel if you were a kitty and a boy pulled your tail?

The good news is that this is good practice for when their teenagers, boys just don't think in feelings and expressing them the way we girls seem too. I'm still pointing out to my 17 year old how he is feeling, how others feel, walking him around the card to look at things from another's perspective so to speak.

Good luck, you sound like an amazing mama thanks for your comments.