The terrible twos are the terrible twos for a reason. Children are just learning about how the structure of life works. Their desires become more complex. For instance, they become picky eaters, they only like their favorite toys and are unwilling to share those toys, they are impatient. On top of all of this, two year old children do not have language complex enough to communicate their developing complex desires. What was once just crying for either the bottle, diaper change or sleep, becomes shouting and screaming and kicking and hitting and running away and even biting in the grocery store, at preschool, at the park, and sometimes even animals. However, if you are a lucky parent, this isn't always the case. For instance, my parents always tell me that my brother was a happy baby; he was docile, calm and always had a smile on his face. But that's not what this story is about. Before my brother, my parents had me, a typical "opinionated" two year old with a healthy set of lungs and quick legs. Naturally enough, my mom loves to laugh at my stories of my more "opinionated," stubborn children, like one of my current clients.
I should first note that not all of my clients are diagnosed with autism. Some of my clients have cognitive disabilities (or develop differently in regards to cognition), physical development difficulties, or flexibility issues. In most cases, the "opinionated" two year is the one with flexibility issues. As an inflexible child and sometimes an inflexible adult, I have struggled with inflexible children. Inflexible children tend to want to be in charge and play the way they want to without any interruptions. As an older version of these children, I'm prone to the same expectations. When working with a child, I expect the child to follow instructions appropriately and to be okay playing with whatever toy I think is appropriate at the time. However, the "opinionated," inflexible child doesn't normally see eye to eye with me on listening to instructions or even playing with the toys I think are most appropriate at the time. I'm sure it's not difficult to imagine the difficulty I encounter with the little versions of myself.
After nearly a year of working with children, I think I figured out how to work with inflexible children. Scenario one: the "opinionated" child gets upset when presented with a new activity. Solution: put the opinion to work. Give the child the option to make choices and select what he or she would like to do. This presents the opportunity to practice communication such as pointing, sign language, or verbalizing. I think communication is the best way to combat this inflexibility. Even if it isn't necessarily appropriate, like getting in and out of a car a thousand times or jumping on the bed or eating the 20th cookie for the day, at least it's better than an aggressive behavior and the child practices communicating. Scenario two: the "opinionated" child doesn't like sharing, nor watching someone play with a toy inappropriately according to the child. Solution: it is a variety of steps. First let the child play with all toys freely. Then see if the child will let someone else play the same activity next to the child. The following step is to see if the child will allow integrative play such as constructing a lego tower together, pretend cooking together, and putting a train track together to play trains. The last step is turn taking. In this case, someone else taking a turn for even a second can count as a turn. The point is that the child appropriately attended and engaged while someone else took a turn. Sometimes this last part can be a challenge and can seem to take a life time to achieve, but it is so exciting when it does happen. This has worked for me in the past and I hope it can work for other children.
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