"MIRRORING"

Mirroring is a term used when a person copies another while in a social interaction.  This includes body language, tones of voice, gestures, attitude and other aspects of communication.  My daughter has taken on some of these mirroring situations.  She copy's gestures and attitude of my sons autistic traits.

This is hard to deal with when I am teaching my son not to do something.  I have to show him something like a social story to explain why he shouldn't do that, like hit his sister.  My daughter understands why she should not do something wrong.  Since my son has a harder time to understand these situations, my daughter thinks it is okay to keep wrong doing.  She thinks, if he can do that so can I.

What really grinds my gears is when one tells the other to do something they know is wrong.  They think that by telling the other that they won't get into trouble because the other one did it.  That's actually smart thinking but they are both in trouble.

Some days I have to lock myself in the bathroom to shave or shower and I can hear both kids outside the door telling one another to "Kick the door."  I have real trouble getting away for just a couple minutes to get something done myself.  They are always fighting over me.

We used to have this really loud flushing toilet.  When Dane was very little he would scream, even in a dead sleep it would wake him, and come to the bathroom door and do a bicycle kick.  He has kicked doors so hard that he broke the trim off one of them.  This was way before he was diagnosed with autism and we didn't know what to think.  He taught his sister how to do this.  I am in the bathroom and they are outside kicking it down.

We changed the toilet a while later.  I sort of broke the insides trying to fix the loud noise.  I was trying to make it quieter by replacing the insides of the old tank. I guess it was a blessing because our new toilet uses a lot less water and Dane doesn't freak out over the sound of the flush he once did.  Sometimes he misses out on flushing it and throws a tantrum trying to flush it over and over while the tank is refilling.  I wish he could understand that some things he misses out on and other things he is too little to do himself.  Either way, he needs to control his emotions and get over something he wasn't involved in.  He needs to understand that is the way life is.  Sometimes you can do it, sometimes you can't.  Get over it already and move on.