Does anyone know...

[JungleWoman]

... If homeowner's insurance can cover the cost of replacing carpets or flooring or SHEETROCK in the event your autistic child destroys them?

Hey all-- I know its been a while-- Im having a sh*tty day with Aaron.

I am at my wits end with him perpetually destroying the house I spent 1500 hours building.

Anyone been down this road??:(

[Mother's Heart]

hmm. I definitely will be interested in this answer! I'm only halfway down the road...got the destroyed carpet/sheetrock etc. Not the repairs/payment though.

[peglem]

Got the destruction- planning on someday replacing the sheetrock with plywood. It doesn't sound like something homeowner's insurance would cover though.

[milivica]

Awww JW, geez I'm sorry about all this. I don't think home owners insurance would cover it, however, if you're good at lying let me tell ya I once considered trying to report vandalism, which my insurance does cover, back in the day with Vince (and those days were not too long ago).

I can try and tell you cheap ways to do stuff. I'm about to carpet my basement, I do all kinds of DIY stuff - dunno that I do it correctly but I do it cheaply.

If you expect to have ongoing carpet problems go with carpet tiles, they're awesome and there are lots of sites that will send free samples, they come already padded. Not lush and plush by any means (if you want $$$ stuff then yes you can get them lush) but they get the job done for way way cheaper than carpet - if you get a stain, hole, damage, you replace the damaged carpet tiles and your whoooole carpet isn't ruined (or forever having places with potted fake plants covering problems). You install so no cost there, and if a few get wrecked you replace them.

Also love interlocking glueless flooring, also very cheap finally, very cleanable and durable, and just put a big sale throw rug in the area your furniture is. If you have a wee house like us, it's easy too to get a throw rug that will cover the entire sitting area as though it were wall to wall carpet. Try flooring liquidators online, though, they often have a minimum to order.

Holes in walls...dunno about using plywood, never thought about it. Sheetrock isn't too bad cost wise, holes aren't hard to fix but I KNOW I KNOW it gets incredibly frustrating to have your child systematically and with a care-free abandon of responsibility and bills kill your home, and you have to fix the same types of destruction over and over and over and over - which while you are doing so just gives him more free time to give you more to do, it's hard. He will not do this forever, doesn't help to hear that now though.

Also, totally ask his RDI consultant for ideas - RDI should be able to hold up to all questions and problems. I've not had a situation yet the consultant couldn't give me answers to, some common sense that I should have thought of, some I'd have never thought of yet totally logical. What Stage is he in? I know he's way younger that Vince, and he just started Stage 2 not long ago. We do lots of 'we' things, we do things together in such a way that he can remember the activity (such as repairing holes in the sheetrock) as a single collaborative event. When he's a part of the 'fixing' of the problem, the problem stops. But it's not enough for Vince to be my helper only, or work in a parallel way with me. He has to be a full participant - imagine 3 girls jumping rope, how the do that with 2 twirlers and 1 jumper, how they interchange roles, at all times they are equals, no 'helpers'...even if one kid just learned, and is the 'apprentice' she would not feel herself having a lesser role even if she felt the other girls were more experienced.

Hope that all made sense. I'm sure sorry about your lousy day.
Mili

[Mother's Heart]

when my son had ortho surgery I took a brainstorming suggestion somebody on here made to somebody else about protecting the walls from aggression and used it in our situation. He was to have both lower legs casted for a couple of months and I had to set him up with a bed in the living room up against the only semi-undestroyed wall in the house. (crayola/ink doesn't count as destroyed you know) I don't know why it mattered to me that I save that one last bastion of civilized living but I didn't want him to break that wall. So...I put up those puzzle mats (you know the cushioned foam interlocking squares) behind the bed and as high as I felt he could reach with his legs. Surprise, surprise it worked! Although this was a temporary solution, he was only there for 8 months so I didn't permanently attach them to the wall...but you could. Unbelievably there were NO holes in the wall when he left that space. It also worked out because I could attach his communication board to the mats.

Doesn't fix the holes that are already there. I'm all for having the kid help repair the wall...but he may be too young for that yet. I don't know if that would result in fewer future holes or not.

And it has improved for us, but there are still days.....


and the carpet....Man! what a hopeless battle!

[JungleWoman]

Thank you everyone-- sorry about the big gap in my attendance here-- been working nights a lot. That will change come december WHEN I QUIT! MUWHAHAHHAHAHAAAAA! We are having another baby :D (yes, the fact that I am completely insane has crossed my mind and I am resigned to it now LOL)

Anyway, Aaron is a good boy-- he is just SO wild sometimes. He'll drag things along the wall and pull the paint and texture off. I patched the wall behind the front doorknob *really well* and he found it and punched it thru immediately and started eating the spackle *yum*

He likes to go into my oldest son's bedroom and take off his diaper and pee all over the carpet and then smear poop on the walls. Its pretty sick. Im SO tired of it!!

I dont know why its taken until THIS WEEK to start RDI, but this is the first thing Im asking his consultant-- HOW DO WE POTTY TRAIN AND REIGN IN THIS KID????

He does get disciplined-- a little trick Temple Grandin suggested and boy does it work. But he's a bit slower learning than the others, understandably.

Mili, I know that RDI doesnt like to use absolutes or the word 'no'. Have you found the replacement techniques compatible with helping vince? My fear is that definate boundaries will be gone, and I dont want that.

[JungleWoman]

Carpet is the DEVIL!

We are going to have the carpets replaced with hardwood in the next year. Lumberliquidators.com has great *no, AMAZING* deals on prefinished wood flooring.

Our dining room table is hard wood. It takes a fine beating and it still looks decent! And if someone pees on it, it doesnt take professional cleaning to fix it!

[milivica]

He does get disciplined-- a little trick Temple Grandin suggested and boy does it work. But he's a bit slower learning than the others, understandably.

Mili, I know that RDI doesnt like to use absolutes or the word 'no'. Have you found the replacement techniques compatible with helping vince? My fear is that definate boundaries will be gone, and I dont want that.

Ahhh, Temple Grandin, who I once considered an outstanding success in terms of what I aspired to for my child. Watch out for her parlor tricks, they could backfire - no function to them. Like me (but unlike her I'm working on it) she is a perfect example of all skill no function. While I admire her innovative originality of design, admire her multitude of abilities, and enjoy her on a personal level I can tell you she has no idea what she's missing, and is settling for less than the feeling of fulfillment when you can share emotion with others, and they can share with you. But she has some really great parlor tricks for sure, and has made a good living with them and remained independent, can manage without having to really interact emotionally with other humans but coexist in a parallel way instead. If she got a taste of what I have these last 2 years with RDI, if any aspie did, there'd be no turning back. There's nothing like sharing emotion, sharing abstracts, showing your kid a cool critter cause the enjoyment is watching THEM enjoy, not cause I enjoy ramming as many facts about the critter as I can down them (ok fine, I still enjoy that as well).

Ok, what you asked about RDI - absolutes and abstracts. The absolute/abstract comparisons are my verbiage, I didn't get that from RDI (gosh I don't think I did anyhow). I didn't know RDI doesn't like to say 'no'. Since there needs to be development in learning things that are 'inferred' maybe that's why, you know the way people don't 'say' what they mean, they use declaratives like "say, do you smell that, that's odd" instead of saying, "quit farting". 'No' is just such a lazy but easy way to redirect a kid. It's so negative. I'm sure I say it without realizing it, but there are a zillion ways to teach boundaries (rather than get a kid to memorize them, which means you need to include every potential detail of how your 'no' could be misunderstood - ie. fecal smearing on wall is not ok, then he does it on your bedspread). It's friggin hard! I can't recall a day going by, that Vince as a tot and little kid didn't do things almost daily that made me feel doomed. Nothing was sacred, nothing was respected, it was very hard.

I would say though that for sure, RDI does not like to teach skills but instead like to develop FUNCTION in the child so the skills come naturally. Example, when a child learns to gain information from your face eye contact comes naturally vs. giving the child m&m's every time you say "looook at meeee" and the child does. The result may be the same in 'behavior', the child will give direct eye contact when spoken to, but the RDI child will gain information from the face/body language. The skill based child will not, will just do what they have memorized just as I still do. I am overall comfortable looking at eyes now, but can't say that I get any information from faces yet. But I will!

There are certain development that has to happen both physically and neurologically (mile stones, that kind of thing, just like with nts of course) for that pee and poo issues to stop and the potty training to happen. There are many ideal ways to stop fecal smearing the RDI way, and potty train, and the consultant should know your child's development well enough to be able to guide you - doesn't mean it will be immediate, but does mean you'll be teaching him in the most productive and least negative ways to stop smearing and get potty trained.

HAVING SAID THAT, let me type one of my favorite parts that I struggle to remember and practice from not RDI, but a book The Siege, page 112-113 in my copy. The parts I underlined were most powerful to me, I typed the paragraphs before it, wasn't sure how much you'd need to read to really feel the impact of what the mother said. I think the mother that wrote this had 'old' wisdom, please read it all. Remember also, there was no treatment of any kind in her day, yet, I find truth and logic and sense in her words (and fail to follow them often, driving myself to an early grave on occasion I think - who doesn't!) :

There were only a few things we had to be strict about, so we could come down hard on those. For the rest, she could do as she liked. Since she could understand so few prohibitions at this time, in fact, I do not think she understood any - we were glad to keep them to a minimum. They concerned almost exclusively damage to other people's property - extended to her own if the situations were too similar to expect her to distinguish them; for example, she was not allowed to tear her own books or any others. I did not, in these early years, say or suggest "no, no" for a whole range of behavior that might well have been limited. I let her eat snow. I let her splash through puddles. She was an unusually healthy child and I had worse things to worry about. I let her soil herself, though to keep her socially acceptable I moved fast to clean her up; by the time she was four her natural fastidiousness allowed her to make very few. I did not try to force her to the pot, guessing it would be useless. Characteristically, she developed her own strange controls; by the time she was four she was holding her urine all day, to empty it into her bath. It seemed to cause her no discomfort; after a while it caused me none.

I did not try to modify such behavior because it did not seem important to me. What was important to me might have seemed equally unimportant to another mother; it was important to me that Elly should not disturb me at night or wake me early in the morning. Since this is not something one can effect with hand slapping and "no-no," I made use of every expedient I could think of. I put animal crackers in her bed for her to find when she woke up. Later (for she was four before she climbed out of bed and five before she opened the door) I went to the length of locking our bedroom door when she got into a spell of waking us at six-thirty. Not that I approved of locking a little child out; I did not, and least of all Elly, whom I had spent years teaching to want my company. The point is something else; it goes beyond what a specific behavior should or, ideally, should not be limited, or what methods are justifiable in limiting it. The important thing is not what the child should be allowed to do, but, rather what you can stand. For beyond the importance to the child of any specific prohibition, even if it affects such potentially sensitive areas as toilet training or exclusion, is that which is of the most crucial importance of all; that the people who live with the child must not be pushed beyond what they can endure. People can stand most things if they have to, but no one can stand everything. Other mothers might have got up cheerfully with the child at 6:00 a.m. and balked at the puddles. If so, they should have done what they had to and gone guilt free. What is important for the child is not that it be liberally treated in this or that aspect of its behavior, but that its mother and its family do not fall apart. If they go under, the child goes too. For every family the last straw will be different. What ever it is, from smearing food to being followed into the bathroom it must be eliminated, firmly and with no sense of guilt. That is what discipline is for. Any child would sense the firmness and find security in it. An autistic child will go further and, once the firmness of the limit is appreciated, will welcome it as an essential part of it's routine.

I hope that helps. I felt much more 'self love' after reading that, instead of feeling like I can't hold a candle to other moms, why am I getting angry or being selfish or whatnot. No one can stand everything...your limits - sometimes they can't wait for 'function' to be learned. I could explain how I potty trained Vince, and to be honest it was fun...but I'm not effected by puddles and poop, I have so many critters using my house as a toilet, I'm very good at fast and proper clean up with my laboratory of pet enzymes ready to handle anything that comes out of my kids anywhere. He enjoyed his pee training (poop is another story, I wouldn't do what I did again, it was not fun for him, I accidentally made him withhold, it was awful poor kid).

Let me know what you think of what that mom wrote.
And oh BOY (or GIRL) congratulations on your pregnancy!!!!!!!!
Mili

[JungleWoman]

Mili,

Thanks for your reply. I understand where that mom is coming from, completely. And I think we can all testify to that mom's feelings at one point or another. Aaron does the waking us up thing, he screams in the middle of the night in our bedroom, he does the poop thing, he eats dirt if we let him outside. I simply have no releif. My hardest thing right now is caring at all.

I think i have become numb to the fact that if I try to repair something or clean something, it will just happen again, so who the hell cares anymore?*though I dont let the poop and pee stay on anything*

I just want to be left alone to have some time to myself. I know that having 4 kids, that is simply not possible. But I think that if I had 4 kids and no autism, I probably wouldnt feel like this.

I am kind of irked at the RDI lady for dragging this out for so flipping long. I hope this will work. I tell you one thing, watching that Dr Gutstein talk on the videos makes my head feel like its filling up with oatmeal LOL! Only because you can tell he's reading a teleprompter, and second, he doesnt follow the outline thats occasionally put up on the screen.

She wants to drop off a DVD on technique on Friday. Hopefully that will give me a bit more insight on this. I just feel so helpless right now-- like nothing is going to get better, so why try? Im just tired and worn out. Thanks for talking to me :) Im glad I stopped by.

[milivica]

My only 'fear' with RDI, is that it cannot be any more effective than the consultant. That is why I treasure ours so very much. She is a real true modern day pioneer, going to IDEA seminars and speaking to lawyers to see how much legally can and cannot be done at school, she seems to try and consider every facet of life the child has, and you have with him/her.

I swear JW, there were times I'd think I'd love him to go to foster care for just a week, and I'd imagine them giving me some kind of medal of honor for putting up with it for so long. Hmmm, no ego here aye? And I most definitely have wondered, not so much how my life, our lives would be with no autism in it. I dunno that I've ever been happy about the trade off of being a much better mother and much better less trivial person because of what I've gone through with him. Cause autism has made he and Carmen suffer, I can't say I wouldn't do it all over again without autism if I had the chance, and be a quirky soccer mom with not even a pinky toe in the 'other' world, the world I used to see from the outside as a parent would walk by with their 'different' child in the grocery store, and I'd say a silent prayer for them, and thank God for it not being my kid. And feel guilty for feeling that way, cause I was glad it wasn't my kid, and I wasn't 'that' mom. Welp, I'm THAT mom.

I remember ladies here telling me things would get better, and sometimes I felt like they didn't realize what a Demon Spawn I had. Yup, I thought that word in my head when I'd look at him sometimes. I'd post all my bad thoughts here, I knew it was wrong of me, but just had to confess what a creep of a mom I was. Or something like that. So I'm so glad you're here, and I hope you say what ever you want to, uninhibited by any worry about what you sound like or what others will think. I mean, posting here on many many many occasions was honest to God what held me together, not just the posting, but all the ladies here, I swear. At the moment of crisis it wasn't instant healing or anything, just some comradory or something, having the ladies here who DO know my feelings, even if they're not in my life, in my home, scraping my kids crap off my walls, they did experience the same feelings I felt.

I have no idea if any of this is making you feel better, but I sure hope it is. Aaron WILL be fine, you will see. Keep going on the RDI path. If the woman the school trained is not doing right by your family, then get another if need be. But for now, take a break from caring about Aaron at 18, or 13, or at any time in the future. Pretend for one afternoon they are someone else's kids, and just have fun - if you can let go like that for a couple of hours. That helped me at times. Keeping Vince completely out of the house was about the only way I could destress. If Aaron likes stimming outside, or with water, or whatever...let him. So what. Can't be productive every moment, no one expects nt kids to, let him do what ever his 'thing' is that requires the least of you - just a few hours - don't write me in a month and say it's not working and he keeps knocking to come in :eek: .

Hey, ya know what Vince said to me the other day...this was amazing. He had fooled me about something, intentionally. So that was cool enough, but then when I said something like, "why would you do something like that?" in an upset tone, he pointed at my face and said "Haaaa! Tricked ya! I could see it on your face!"

There is no way you could have ever convinced me that someday my flapping, rocking, nonverbal 5 year old would say that in 6 years. I was, when he was 5, still hoping just to find out what his favorite color was so I could at least paint his room a color he liked. Aaron WILL develop, he will do so just as your other kids are. He will. Until then, target the things that really make you overwhelmed, and eliminate that. Maybe leaving the house to a park or even your back yard an hour a day, with a sprinkler running for the kids to play in, will give you an hour of peace from house destruction. You have to do something to get your priorities kind of like when a guy almost dies of a heart attack and from that point doesn't get stressed like he once did. Do lots of praying, you are very spiritual I remember, draw strength from God, draw strength from the sources that most do that for you. Let Aaron eat a twinkie, then crash from the sugar high for an hour, get some unstressful time for yourself. To be completely honest with myself, had I had the attitude I do now, and had I been able to have examples of how to stay calm and happy during pandemonium, I would have never been as miserable and overwhelmed as I was. The answers were always in me as to how to cope with 'autism' and the destruction it wreaked on my house and heart, I just didn't know how to access the answers. Make a plan, several coping plans.

What's your plan?
(I didn't want you to procrastinate)
Mili

[Keggy]

Hey JM... I think its funny when you say you are having another baby and ... well we are so uised to it.... lol
Congratulations! How many does this make? Is it 36?

BTW... I would bet your homeowners does cover it... but I would be very careful calling them. Where I live they are dropping everyone like houseflies. There was only one insurer that would carry us, and we only had one claim years and years ago for about 700 bucks. I hear they keep records of when you call and it counts against you.

[frogmama]

Matthew ate the corners off of my MIL's new walls in her basment, little gouged toothmarks from about 3 1/2 feet up all the way to the floor. I was so embarrassed, but instead of getting upset she LEFT THEM THAT WAY! For the next 5 years, until she sold the house, she said they were her reminder of Matthew. I really love my MIL... :)

Just the general mess of Matthew is what drives me nuts, papers shredded, rugs flipped over, video tape pulled from videos, cracker crumbs, clothes dropped all over. He is not bladder trained yet, so there is always a faint pee odor in his room, no matter how often I change sheets. It just wears on you sometimes. Sigh. But then he sits on my lap, and squeezes my cheeks and gives me a big kiss, and I forgive him for another day.

[mrsjerome]

I thought my son was the only one that ever played and smeared his own feces. Now I read this post and see your boy does the same. My son is an adult now and all those years I thought he was the only one that ever did that. For potty training I regimented my boys. What I did was put them in training pants and jotted down the times of the day they would go . I did this for a couple of weeks . When I made this record I just went back and tried to put them on the pot at the time they were going. My autistic son was trained at the same time his younger brother not quite a year younger was. I had very good success with the both of them on the urination part. The younger one trained much sooner for the bowel part. However when I started with the older boy in training pants This was when he started the playing and smearing with his feces. He even did this when I would put a diaper on him for the night . I was able to get him to use the toilet at times but a lot of times would just have to watch him like a hawk. I was not always able to catch him at it because their were 2 younger boys that had to be taken care of too.
Once my husband and I both when grocery shopping and left the 3 boys with my Dad. We weren’t gone very long and when we returned my poor Dad. He had Nick in the bathtub trying to clean him up . He had feces all over himself. The bedroom walls and bedding and floor was just oh my a sight. I felt so sorry for my Dad trying his best just to clean him up with my son just giggling. He did eventually get out of that habit. Several years later at one of the places he stayed. They would just put these big Mitts on his hands making it impossible for him to dig into his pants. You know this worked and in a little while he never did that again.
Another thing he used to do was because he was so mobile and agile, he would climb up on the window sills. Then he would chew on the wooden sash. He was able to do this on just about every window sill in the house. This couldn’t have been too good for him for I don’t know if there is an ingredient in the varnish or stain that could be toxic. He also liked to put everything into his mouth be it dirt, sand, twigs , leaves, just anything. I still have an old sewing machine cabinet to this day that shows the embedded little tooth marks from him .
Hope things turn out for you . Things are bound to get better. It is so much better with the treatments and such in this day and age than it was for my son and me back then. I know how frustrating times can be but eventually the outcome should get better for you.
Best Wishes for you and the new baby
Mrs. J.

[JungleWoman]

Thanks everyone :)

Its just been so taxing lately. I just have no energy or motivation to do ANYTHING anymore because it all gets destroyed to the MAX within minutes. It really sucks.

But I remember when my oldest son bit around the windows too LOL--- he was just about where Aaron is developmentally.


It just wears on you sometimes. Sigh. But then he sits on my lap, and squeezes my cheeks and gives me a big kiss, and I forgive him for another day.

I totally know what you mean-- Aaron will do that with me too.

Keg-- yeah, I think 36 is about what I have now LOL!

Mili, I have a relatively small house-- everything will be Ok, I know it will be-- but yeah, its nice to know others that have this occasional FREAK OUT LOL!! Im not sure what my plan is yet, but I will get back to you on it.

Thanks all :)