Adventures in Expressive Language

Simply put, expressive language is the ability to express wants and needs. Though Mowgli possesses some expressive vocabulary (particularly as it pertains to popsicles - "I want purple popsicle, please!") as well as some of the language forms and concepts, like many children with ASD, he struggles with language processing, and the finer points of pragmatic and social language. When coupled with his difficulty self-regulating and his cognitive rigidity, language arguments, or in other words, conflict that begins with or is driven by language, cause him the most stress and disruption. And without the expressive language necessary to work through the issue, Mowgli seems compelled lately to resolve all issues the same way - with relative levels of physical aggression and/or self-injury. Most of these events can be broken out by level of severity for greater simplicity in explanation.

1. The Displeasure Punch: This involves a minor displeasure such as "No, Mowgli, you've already played enough computer for today" followed by full eye contact, a grunt, and what appears to be Mowgli combing his own hair with his knuckles. This is purely a self-injury shot across the bow, and is actually sort of funny to watch - he's preparing us for something worse, his version of "I better get my way or else" - a standard tantrum behavior for children. We usually laugh these off and refuse to give in because it isn't healthy for him to think that he can manipulate us with such a, quite frankly, lame ass effort.

2. The Hug and Scratch: This is extremely devious. It usually occurs in the morning when he doesn't want to get ready for school. He'll lean in to Amy as if to hug her, and then once he has her locked up, he scratches her neck or back. Again, we try not to react to this behavior because it's bullying, and there is really no mystery why he's doing it - he doesn't want to go school. Message received.

3. The Alligator Punch: This is usually the next stage of anger after the Hug and Scratch. If he doesn't feel like he satisfactorily made his point with the scratch, he makes two punching fists, but then comes at you with both fists clapping together in front of him, like an angry sideways Pac Man. We usually just dodge this and ignore it - again, there's no great mystery why it is happening.

4. The Shake and Bake: This is where it starts to get a bit more serious. These are the instances where he can't get his point across, we're struggling to understand him, and he's simultaneously being told to do something that is not preferred (pretty much anything that doesn't involve playing on a tablet). These are the instances where his front brain (where anger resides) takes over and you might as well be trying to convince a cat to take a bath. And since we don't have the ability to freeze and reverse time (yet) there's no going back at this point, and there isn't any way to diffuse it, except walk away and let him left/right, left/right, left/right the beejesus out of his head until he decides that he's made his point. Redirection and calm is only attainable if he decides that it is, there's nothing we can do to change the course of events, so distancing ourselves becomes the best option. Which brings me to...

5. Defcon 5 - Total Annihilation: This is what happens when a pig-headed gentlemen such as myself decides that he is going to directly confront Mowgli during a Shake and Bake situation, and compel him to act "appropriately". It took a number of these events for me to learn my lesson, but realize that I'm 25% Trunfio - my grandmother's uncle once found himself stuck in a cage with an angry, hungry bear (he was a zookeeper) and rather than flee the cage, decided to fight it. That said, the last time this happened, which I realize now will be the very last time I ever confront Mowgli and try to calm him down from a Shake and Bake, it ended this way:

That's a full length mirror. He used his head to break it. Before everyone starts gushing about the "poor child", recall that this is SELF injury - I didn't throw him into a mirror - he walked down the hall, grabbed it with two hands, lined it up, and drove his head through it. Our immediate instinct was to make sure he was okay (which he was) and remove the glass from the area.

After thinking about it for quite some time, I realized that smashing the mirror was his only way to express total frustration and anger. He can't yell at me, or tell me why I'm being unfair, or how he wishes I would just leave him alone. He can't do any of that. So he does what he can to get the point across. I got it now buddy, I hear you loud and clear.