Tuesday

The morning went well. Nan had to go in to work early so it was Dad and I on the front line. All the kids did great and the morning went off with out a hitch.

The behavior analyst Oscar came again today. I was really surprised the M showed herself a little bit. She expressed frustration and mild anger over a few things. She even hit C but it was more of a angry swing with no intent to do harm. Oscar spoke with after and said that what he had observed was attention-seeking behavior. I agreed. Yet, what do we do? I explained that M is fully willing to take the danger to any level, hurting herself and others, to have our attention on her. The whole thing is whack to me. We give her gobs of positive attention to try to avoid her needing to seek it negatively but apparently with a kid like M it isn't that simple. A lot of this seems to be based in her "perceptual difficulties" so the problem is she doesn't see or understand things from realities point of view. What to do? Oscar is still thinking on it.

He is proving to be a really neat guy. He has tons of experience. He works for the school board in our county and worked for the local juvenile psychiatric center before that. I was amazed at what all he picked up on in relation to M in only a few hours and with her having pretty normal behavior. He discussed CPI (crisis prevention intervention) with us, which he used to teach. C's teacher told me a year ago that we needed CPI training to keep everyone safe during M's rages. He also showed us some techniques.
All the kids were for real acting during his visit. He asked if this was typical for them and I said yes. He thinks E is great. E is just such a personality, he is the funniest kid. E said to Oscar "That my Mommy. Me Evan." Then E roared like a dinosaur. Yes they were all their normal selves.