Latest / Beautifully Complex / 273: Getting Stuck in a Loop with Sarah Wayland, Ph.D.

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273: Getting Stuck in a Loop with Sarah Wayland, Ph.D. · Beautifully Complex

0:03
Distracting yourself with something you really like is a great way to self regulate.
0:09
Right, you'll be experiencing something that is unpleasant and you'll think, ugh,
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you know, if I could just go listen to my favorite song or something
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like that. Autistic people do this too, But what they do is they
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get kind of stuck, because if they pull away from it, then all
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those unpleasant thoughts may start flooding in. Welcome to the Beautifully Complex podcast,
0:32
where I share insights and strategies on parenting neurodivergent kids straight from the trenches.
0:38
I'm your host, Penny Williams. I'm a parenting coach, author and mindset
0:43
mama, honored to guide you on the journey of raising your atypical kid.
0:48
Let's get started. Hey, everybody, welcome back to Beautifully Complex. I
0:57
have my friend and calling Sarah Whyland here with me. If you have been
1:03
listening to the podcast for any amount of time, you have probably heard an
1:07
episode with Sarah. I haven't counted. I don't know how many that you
1:11
have done with me, but it's been at least it does and I would
1:14
say, if not more, always great conversations, always enlightening, and so
1:19
today you're here with me to talk about kind of getting stuck in a loop.
1:25
And this seems to me something that happens with some autistic individuals. And
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we'll give you some examples. And Sarah's gonna let us know what the heck
1:34
do we do when this happens? How do we help our kids when this
1:36
happens? But first, Sarah, introduce yourself. Let everybody know who you
1:40
are and what you do. Okay, Well, I'm I'm Sarah Wayland and
1:44
co founder with Penny Williams of The Behavior Revolution, and I also have my
1:51
own business called Guiding Exceptional Parents, where we do relationship based dynamic intelligence RDI
1:59
with parents of autistic kids. And I recently co authored a book called is
2:07
This Autism? And I think that's me? And you're a mom to nerd
2:13
divergic kids, I am. I have two boys who are in their twenties,
2:15
so one is twenty six and the other one is twenty two. Yep.
2:21
And my kids are almost twenty two and twenty five, so we're very
2:24
much kind of in the same phase, in the same timeline, the same
2:29
zone of young adults and trying to figure that out because man, it's so
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much different than I was when we were young adults. I think there's an
2:38
extra layer of complexity for our generation of parents trying to figure this out.
2:44
Yep, it can be really tough. But let's start talking about this stuck
2:47
in a loop. Do you want to maybe start with an example? Yeah,
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okay. So my younger son was at a school that's entirely for autistic
2:57
kids, and one of one of his friends did this thing where he looked
3:00
up every single parent who was in my son's classroom and sent all of them
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text message and said Hi, I'm so and so and started up these conversations
3:14
with us. And so he's a nice kid. So I was like,
3:16
okay, I can, you know, talk to him about stuff. But
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he would do this thing where he would send me a text message and he
3:25
would say, what happens when I send too many text messages to people and
3:34
I blow their phone up? And I would write back and I'd say,
3:39
well, probably they might block you if you do that, and he would
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say, do I get my phone taken away from me? Do I lose
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privileges? And I had this whole set of things that somebody had clearly told
3:53
him it would happen, if he blew up other people's phones. And so
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I wrote back and I said, well, that's something that could happen if
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the adults in your life feel like that's appropriate. But then he would just
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keep asking the same question, like over and over and over what happens when
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I blow people's phones up? And this would repeat even within you know,
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an hour period. But then like two days later, I might get another
4:19
message what happens when I blow people's phones up? With too many text messages?
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And I was like, I've answered this question like probably about twenty times
4:29
now. I think you know the answer, because when you ask the question,
4:32
if I say it the wrong way, you correct me. And so
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I was like, what is this about, Like he's and he's clearly upset,
4:43
right, Like he's clearly upset that he's going to lose phone privileges,
4:46
and so he's stuck about the fact that he's doing this thing where he blows
4:53
people's phones up. And by the way, this was the thing happening at
4:55
my son's school where a whole bunch of these kids like just decided they needed
5:00
to send like I am really not exaggerating, Like one time he sent me
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forty icons like emojis in a row while I was with a client and my
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phone was going bing bing bing bing bing bing, and I was like stop.
5:15
So anyway, he was clearly upset about the possibility of losing his phone
5:19
and clearly processing what that meant, right, and so he just kept asking
5:25
for like, what's going to happen, What's going to happen, What's going
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to happen. He's clearly very anxious about it, and this behavior. He
5:32
had a few of these loops that he would get stuck in, so the
5:36
phone blowing up was one. He would do some inappropriate things with some of
5:41
his classmates, and then he would write me a note, So, what
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happens if I say inappropriate things to classmates Z? And I would write back,
5:48
Well, classmates Z might decide they don't want to talk to you anymore.
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But anyway, he would do that. He would ask the question he
5:57
clearly knew the answer, and he by the way he sends me questions that
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he knows I know the answer to all the time, Like I live outside
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of Washington, DC, between DC and Baltimore, and he loves airplanes,
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like loves airplanes, and so he asks what airport is near Hailthorpe, and
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I would write back Baltimore Washington International, and then he'd write what airport is
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near? Jessup, Baltimore Washington Airport. Right, So he'd say these things,
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so that was also a loop he would get going on, like asking
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these questions about airports and what was near those airports that had a different feel
6:36
to it, that had a sort of I'm thinking about airports and I really
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like airports, and here's somebody who actually knows these answers, so I can
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engage in this topic kind of a feedback look of almost right, Like he
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just wanted the feedback of well to share that experience about getting excited of which
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airports were ware or something. Absolutely, and I think it was how he
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connected with me, right, I think that's how he connected And it was
7:03
actually because of him. I started understanding that we do this thing to autistic
7:09
people where we ask them questions and then we ask them to answer them.
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So a lot of ABA is like based on I'm going to ask you a
7:18
question that everybody knows the answer to, like what color is your shirt?
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And then we asked them to answer the question, and so we teach them
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that that's a pattern of conversation that they're supposed to have, and so then
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they think, oh, that's how I connect with people. I ask a
7:35
question and that person answers, and we can ask questions and get answers.
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And that was a real eye opener for me. So I actually started,
7:44
you'll appreciate this, peny. I started using declarative language with him, so
7:48
I didn't ask him questions. I would just say I'm excited that my son
7:54
is graduating. You know. In two months, he never ever responded.
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He did not know what to do. When I just made a statement like
8:03
that, he never responded. So I learned that to get a response from
8:07
him, I really had to ask a question. But he did like connecting
8:11
around the topics he was really into. So that was one kind of loop,
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right. That was the I want to share something with you, and
8:22
the way I do it is I ask you a question and you give me
8:24
an answer that I know the answer to, so it's not outside of the
8:28
framework of what I expect to hear. So I feel comforted by that predictable,
8:35
right, Yeah, But then there was this other thing that would happen
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where something bad was happening and he felt upset and then he would start asking
8:46
questions that he already knew the answer to, but he didn't like the answer
8:50
necessarily, and he'd get kind of caught in that loop, and that had
8:54
a different feel to it. This went on for honestly a couple of years,
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and at some point I was like, what is going on with this?
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Like, how can I help him? Because he's clearly upset, and
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I want to help him feel better, and at the same time, I
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don't want him blowing people's phones up with a thousand emojis. And so one
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day he wrote to me and he said, you know what happens if I
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send forty emoji texts, Sarah will stop responding to you. That's right,
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That is correct. Well, actually I didn't do that because I know that's
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upsetting. So I know it's very upsetting to send something and not get a
9:35
response, right, And so I wanted to figure out how to acknowledge his
9:43
pain right in a way that maybe would help him feel better without excusing the
9:50
behavior, right. And so he texted me one day and he was saying,
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you know what happens when I sent person? He always had person like
10:00
you would get real focused on one person. So what happens when I send
10:03
this person too many messages at once. And so I wrote back and I
10:09
said, you might get your phone taken away from you depending on what the
10:13
adults think. And I said, did this happen? No response, And
10:18
so then I said, I'm really sorry that you're worried about your phone getting
10:24
taken away to you respond and he wrote back. He wrote back and he
10:28
said thank you. He felt validated. Yes. Yes. So now what
10:35
I do when he does this is I say, like, I try to
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figure out if there's something driving it. Sometimes I just can't know because you
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know, he's not with me, so I don't know what's going on.
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But I'll just say, you know, he'll say what happens when, and
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I'll say, sounds like something bad happened. I hope you're okay, right,
10:58
And he does doesn't respond, but he also doesn't keep going with the
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loop. Right. So that was a big realization for me that, you
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know, people autism have different communication styles. Yeah, And I realized that
11:15
that was his communication style. He was telling me I'm upset and he wanted
11:20
me to help him feel better, and I wasn't actually helping him by engaging
11:26
in the loop, Right, I had to look at what was underneath the
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loop. But for most people, they wouldn't recognize what you recognize, right,
11:35
Right, most people wouldn't understand that he's stuck in a loop. He's
11:39
worried about something and he just really needs some validation and to feel seen her
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and underside, right. Yeah, and because the behavior on the surface is
11:50
kind of frustrating and off putting, right, So, you know, he
11:54
was lucky that you were on the receiving end of that and knew to sort
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of dig deeper and figure that out for him. Unfortunately, not every adult
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will. But look how long it took me, right, it took me
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a year. It took you a long time. So how long will it
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take somebody who doesn't understand any of this? You know, exactly like the
12:13
real world that we live in, those neurotypical expectations can be really challenging when
12:18
you have this sort of stuckness. Yeah, So there are other kinds of
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loops that people get stuck into. I think we We've interviewed Kim Clary a
12:30
few times, so she's an autistic ot who I just love Kim. She's
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really insightful about her experiences and she talked about getting stuck in a loop.
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She gets stuck in loops. She definitely gets stuck and she needs somebody external
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to help her get out of them. So her husband will say, like,
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he'll see she's stuck in a loop, and he'll say, Kim,
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you're stuck in a loop. So when she talk to me about was working
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on a PowerPoint slide and she'll get stuck, like rearranging one element on the
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slide. I think we all do that a little bit. I was gonna
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say that perfectionism. Yeah, so she'd gets stuck. But what happens is
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she kind of gets stuck and then she's moving it back and forth, and
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he's like, m this isn't feeling like you know, design consideration stuff.
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This feels more like she's stuck in a loop. And so he say,
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Kim, that looks like you're stuck in a loop. In five minutes,
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I'm going to ask you to stand up and go get a drink of water.
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And so she would ignore him and just keep messing with it, and
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then in five minutes he would go over and put his hand on her shoulder
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and he'd say, Kim, you need to get a drink of water,
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and she'd be like, right, right, I'm stuck in a loop.
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Okay, I got to get up and do that. And so I asked
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her about that, and she said that the key there was to give her
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something else to think about and do. Right, so when she was stuck
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on the thing, it would not help to talk about the slide and the
14:05
composition of the slide or whatever, like you needed to say, hey,
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why don't you go get a drink of water. She also said she needed
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the gentle touch to kind of pull her out of the loop. And that's
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obviously not going to be true for everybody, but that for me was very
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helpful to hear that. I have a client who he gets stuck in a
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loop, and his is kind of a motor. He gets stuck, so
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he uses an alternative communication device. It's an iPad and he uses touch chat
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on there, and it has icons on it, and he'll go to push
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the icon and then he just gets stuck and he pushes it over and over
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and over and over and over and over and over, and it's saying the
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word over and over and his favorite button happens to be no. And so
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his mom would say, so do you want a sandwich for lunch, And
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he'd go and hit it and it would say no, and then he'd get
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stuck and it was saying no, no, no, no no. So
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this happened for a long time with him, and after talking to Kim,
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I was like, I told his mom, I said, I think he's
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stuck in a loop and I think he needs help. And so she would
15:13
go over and just move his hand away from the AAC device and then ask
15:18
him again, you know, do you want a sandwich? And you know,
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sometimes he would go back to no, and sometimes he would just nod
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his head right. But he needed external physical redirection in order to keep from
15:35
being stuck like that. Yeah. Later, so he has learned to communicate
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now, so this is a few years ago that that happened. He now
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can communicate by writing with his hand on a whiteboard using a marker. And
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we asked him about this. I was like, what was going on?
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And he said two things. He said one was he really doesn't have good
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motor control. His motor control is really pretty faulty. And so he said
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a lot of times when he was going for no, he really meant yes,
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and his hand would hit the wrong button. And then he would want
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to try to hit the yes button but he couldn't make it change. Wow,
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poor guy, Right, yeah, Like how frustrating would that be,
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just thinking they should meant yes and no on opposite sides of the screen.
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So yeah, accidentally say the wrong thing. But yeah, right right,
16:25
Well, I mean, part of his deal is he's actually extremely thoughtful,
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and so his mom had a pretty big vocabulary list on the touch chat.
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You know, yes and no. We're right next to each other, like
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you said. And it turns out that that is not the greatest way for
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him to communicate that with a bunch of buttons like that, But the complexity
16:45
of his thinking means he wants the option to express himself clearly like that.
16:52
Yeah. The story about Kim reminded me that sometimes we need a physical break,
17:00
not just a mental break. Like sometimes you can say, well,
17:03
it's time to do something different, but changing your thinking when you're still sitting
17:07
in the same place, looking at the same thing can be a lot harder
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than if you stand up and just start walking away or tell yourself to do
17:15
something different. Then you have that physical movement to help you with changing your
17:22
thinking too. At that time, you know, Brenda Smith Miles. When
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I interviewed her for one of our past summits, she talked about in the
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rumble rage cycle when she would see a kid starting to rumble, and I
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do think the repetitiveness is sometimes a rumble. Then she would say she would
17:41
give the kid an erin to run. She was a teacher, so she'd
17:45
just say, hey, you know what I need, missus, you know
17:48
Bluefeld in room twenty to get this stapler, And she'd give the kid a
17:52
stapler and the kid would run the stapler over to her and that was like
17:55
enough to sort of shake it up. So I think you're exactly right,
17:59
Like it's just changing the environment gets your head sort of out of whatever stuck
18:04
place it is, you know, is in I think about that because I
18:08
get stuck in that way. Sometimes I have a lot of things to get
18:12
done and I just want to get it done, and sometimes I can't let
18:15
go of something right. I keep working on it, and I'm really bad
18:18
about getting up and taking a break physically moving away because I want to be
18:25
efficient. I want to get things done right, and it's like right,
18:27
I mean, it's so bad that I work with my therapist on like trying
18:30
to get myself to move out of my chair for my work day at least
18:34
like once or twice. Right, So I think, you know, it
18:37
can happen to all of us, but when you have like an autistic brain,
18:42
I just get stuck more easily in those loops or on a particular thought,
18:49
you know, And I feel like there's got to be some anxiety at
18:55
play at least sometimes in some of these situations for sure. As well.
19:00
There's there's a lot of reasons for the loop that are different, right.
19:03
So we talked about being upset and anxiety. Right. The other thing I
19:08
didn't talk about. I talked about it a little bit is that, you
19:12
know, distracting yourself with something you really like is a great way to self
19:18
regulate, right, And so you know, sometimes you'll be experiencing something that
19:25
is unpleasant and you'll think, ugh, you know, if I could just
19:27
go listen to my favorite song or something like that. Autistic people do this
19:33
too, But what they do is they go to the things they're really interested
19:36
in. Right, So if they're into k pop, then they might go
19:41
and listen to a bunch of K pop and you know, do research on
19:45
you know whatever. But they get kind of stuck in that because if they
19:48
pull away from it, then all those you know, unpleasant thoughts may start
19:53
flooding in. So it's a way to help fill their mind with something that
19:57
is pleasant for them, which can be frustrating if you're around them, because
20:02
they're like, do we have to talk about K pop one more time?
20:06
Like? Really? But I think it's important to think, like, let's
20:08
underneath this. Are they sharing a passion with me and they want to share
20:14
it or are they trying to self regulate because they're upset about something else?
20:18
Right, same behavior, very different underlying sources, and you really have to
20:22
be a detective to try to figure out what's going on there. It can
20:26
be used as an avoidance tactic too, I would assume, maybe not even
20:32
consciously. Absolutely, the child may not be choosing to argue with you about
20:37
the answer whether or not the phone's getting taken away, Right, they're just
20:41
stuck and it's happening. But it could be an avoidance of reality, or
20:45
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22:42
and I'm not sure this is a really valid thought, but I'm just going
22:45
to talk it out. Is like they're trying to create their own bubble of
22:51
safety. Almost. Yeah, So like if I keep listening or talking about
22:56
kpop or I keep asking this question, I don't have to face that unpredictability
23:02
or whatever is going on. I don't have to face the truth that,
23:04
yes, my phone's gonna get taken away or something like that, or that
23:07
I annoyed my friend. I annoyed my friend so much that she is now
23:12
going to block me right right right, Which is what happens to this kid
23:17
is people block him because he's really sometime, how do you get through the
23:22
day if your phone never stops singing? Right right? And like I said,
23:26
he gets real focused on like one person and then he'll do this and
23:30
then they block him, and that's devastating because it really is the ultimate you
23:36
know, cut in the relationship when somebody blocks you like that, which is
23:40
very upset and no control. You have no control at that point, like
23:42
you can't repair, you can't do anything about it. It's directly and you
23:48
didn't make the choice. Oh my gosh. So many texts from this poor
23:52
guy, like if person Z blocked me, can I ask them to unblock
23:57
me? That's I get that question a lot, and I write back I
24:02
said, well, sure you can ask, but they don't have to.
24:04
That is their choice. Friendship is a choice, which you know is not
24:08
a fun message, right, yeah, but it's true. You know.
24:11
The other one I wanted to mention that I've heard there are two other situations
24:17
where people get kind of stuck in a loop. So one is stemming,
24:19
you know, so if you're stemming, like I'm just thinking, oh,
24:23
here's one like my son when he's self regulating, he'll go in the backyard
24:30
and he'll just start pacing back and forth, back and forth. He'll pace
24:33
pace, pace, back and forth, back and forth. Actually, and
24:37
this happens with my son too. You know what I just realized he has
24:40
another one he does, and this is definitely a loop for him. We
24:42
have a neighbor cat named Joe Bob, and my son adores Joe Bob.
24:48
He adores Joebob, and sometimes he'll just come in the house and he'll say,
24:53
he has this phrase, what is the Joe Bob doing? Now?
24:57
Penny, you know my older you know, he can have a full conversation
25:03
with us or whatever, but that phrase what is the Joe Bob doing?
25:07
Over and over and over again, and he started irritating himself with it.
25:12
He'd come in and say, what is the Joe Bob? Yeah, I
25:18
am not asking a question about Joe Bob not asking, and so he'd get
25:22
mad at himself. Actually, I would try to shift it a little bit
25:26
and I'd say, you know what our cat is doing? So? And
25:29
then I'd talk about our cat, because he definitely loves cats, like that's
25:32
definitely one of his big interests. And so that kind of got him out
25:36
of the loop about Joe Bob and into talking about you know whatever our cat
25:41
is doing. So that thing where a stem can kind of morph into a
25:48
loop that you're stuck in and you can't get out of it, even though
25:51
you desperately want out of it. So that's a thing that can happen.
25:56
And the other one that happens. I don't know how to talk about this
26:00
one, but like listeners may or may not know this, but my father
26:03
is autistic, and he's in his eighties and he's living alone, and sometimes
26:07
he gets anxious about stuff. He's definitely got some anxieties. And whenever he
26:14
gets anxious, he has these certain go to topics that he will just talk
26:19
about, and one of them for a long time. So my mom passed
26:23
away during COVID and it was after a very long illness, and he was
26:27
obviously very anxious about that because they had a long and wonderful marriage. And
26:33
when he would start talking about something that he would get upset about. He
26:38
had decided that this guy had hacked into his computer and I Bobby. So
26:47
Bobby had hacked into his computer, and he was convinced Bobby was a North
26:52
Korean spy and they were spying on his computer. It's eighty seven year old
26:56
guy, right, And so whenever he would like something in motion would come
27:00
up about my mom, he'd start talking about Bobby and he would just talk.
27:04
He'd say the same exact, you know, description of what was going
27:10
on and what Bobby was doing, and if I tried to interrupt it,
27:14
he just had to start over and go through the whole thing again. Yeah,
27:18
it was just like and it was. It was definitely a loop.
27:21
And in fact, when I told him, I said, this feels like
27:22
one of your loops, he was like, it's a loop. That is
27:26
a great word for this. And I can't get out. He can't and
27:30
he gets frustrated with himself. But here's the crazy thing about Bobby. He
27:34
doesn't talk about Bobby anymore. So my mom passed and for the next year.
27:42
This is crazy. He told me this story about how he had this
27:47
dream that he was trying to solve a cryptographic puzzle. Right, so there
27:52
was this string of characters and he was supposed to solve the puzzle and he
27:56
would solve it, and then he'd just get another one that was a little
28:00
bit longer, and then he would solve it, and then he'd get another
28:03
one that was a little bit longer. It's a recurring dream that was happening
28:06
over a year. So I went to visit him and he's like, I
28:10
have this recurring dream. I can't get out of it. And every time
28:14
I solved the problem, it just gets longer and longer and longer. And
28:18
I was like, that is a metaphor for how you were like trying to
28:22
help mom. Like you were trying to help her, and everything you did
28:27
nothing worked. Like you would figure something out and something else would happen,
28:32
and you'd figure that out and something else would happen. And so we just
28:36
talked about it, and I went to visit him again a few months later
28:40
and he said, you know what, I'm not having that dream anymore.
28:44
I'm not it's done. I haven't had it in a very long time.
28:48
So something happened and he was done with the dream and that loop was gone
28:53
from his life. And I've actually had clients, autistic adult clients who tell
29:00
me like they'll get stuck on something like why did this happen? Or why
29:03
do people do this thing? They get very stuck on it, very stuck
29:07
on it, and then some insight comes in or something happens and they're like,
29:14
Okay, letting it go. Mm hmm. Somehow it resolves. Somehow
29:18
it resolves. I don't and that one I wish I could tell you what's
29:23
going on. I think with my dad some of it was just him saying
29:27
it to me and us talking through it and being able to really talk through
29:33
it. So anyway, those are all the kinds of loops I could think
29:37
of when I was thinking, there are so many loops, right, so
29:41
many, and I think too like visualizing a loop, like I'm just visualizing
29:48
like a ring of fire and you're in the middle of it, right,
29:52
how do you get out? There's no break in it. How do you
29:56
get through that wall? Yeah, you have to create some sort of break
30:00
right, right, So sometimes you might need somebody to bring some help,
30:03
maybe to pour a bucket of water on a patch of it so you can
30:07
get through, right, or maybe they can instruct you on how to kick
30:11
the dirt on the fire and put it out so you can get through,
30:15
or you know whatever. There's such an interplay there between other people, Like
30:22
every loop that you've described either involved another person or it only resolved when it
30:30
involved another person. Yes, So yeah, there's some dynamic there that's interesting,
30:34
Like at first, like the stuff I was talking about the beginning,
30:37
or like that's a little like not something I've maybe experienced in myself, but
30:42
some of this other stuff I was talking about, I bet you can relate
30:47
to it, right, And so it's something that's part of all of us.
30:52
Yeah, yeah, right. I think that's important to remember too.
30:56
I will share that, you know, when I was talking about Kim and
31:00
her husband would gently touch her on the shoulder and say, hey, you
31:03
need to go get a drink of water. Right that that was very gentle,
31:07
right, And he wasn't commanding that she do it. It was a
31:11
hey, you might think about this, right. So none of these these
31:17
ideas that I was offering as ways of helping the person get out of the
31:21
loop involved saying you are stuck in a loop. Get you know, just
31:26
get over to state the obvious. It's not helpful, right, Well,
31:29
it isn't working. And I think it's important to remember that usually the person
31:34
understands they're stuck in a loop, yeah, and they want out of the
31:38
loop. They just don't know how, right. Even younger kids can recognize
31:42
when they just feel stuck. And like when you were saying that your son
31:48
would get upset with him when he was halfway through repeating himself like that shows
31:53
that it wasn't really within his control. He wasn't choosing to be repetitive to
32:00
annoy people. He wasn't having any fun with it either, right, He
32:04
was clearly like physiologically stuck, right, And I think it's important to make
32:08
that distinction that, Yeah, this is biology and neurology that's at play here.
32:15
It's never a choice. If someone is truly stuck in a loop,
32:20
right, they're not choosing that, right. The stem situation is one that
32:25
is a little murky on that front, because the stem feels good, right,
32:30
the stem feels regulating, But the fact that it can morph into a
32:35
loop like that's tricky to navigate. So I have found just talking afterwards about
32:43
you know, how to know and I will ask, I'll say, are
32:46
you stemming? Are you in a loop? You know, I'll just ask.
32:50
And my older son is definitely more prone to getting stuck in that than
32:53
my younger son getting stuck in a loop like that. It's tricky. It's
32:58
tricky for parents to navigate, you know, Penny. I just thought of
33:01
something as we were talking. That story you tell about your son Ricochet when
33:08
he was really really little and he went into the good will store, the
33:14
good will store, the epic meltdown. Yeah, and at the end.
33:17
Remember he was like repeating. Remember he was in a loop. Yeah.
33:22
I described it as like as it was like a record stuck in a scratch.
33:25
He just kept repeating the same thing. And he was calmer at that
33:30
point, Like physically he was calmer, he was quieter. Yeah, but
33:35
he was in that point of meltdown where there's nothing you can do about recover.
33:37
Yeah, it's interesting. I hadn't thought about it in that way and
33:40
where he ended that loop so quickly. I'll tell the story because people probably
33:45
are not following our conversation here, but he was. I would say seven
33:52
or eight, we had an epic snowstorm twelve inches twice in one week,
33:58
which does not happen here. Nobody can function here with that kind of snow.
34:02
We were snowed in because we lived at the top of a mountain.
34:06
We had no water, we had no heat, We had a gas fireplace
34:08
and that was it, and no electricity and we were stuck there for a
34:14
week. So we finally got out. We actually went to a birthday party
34:17
at Chuck E. Cheese because another kid had had an invitation go out like
34:22
two weeks before, and I was like, oh, yes, let him
34:23
do something because it's pretty boring in the house. We have no electricity for
34:28
a week, right, Like, it's not fun, it gets old.
34:30
And so we did that and everything was great. He had a great time.
34:34
He was able to participate, you know, he just wasn't struggling with
34:38
that. And then we decided that we wanted to go out to dinner,
34:43
but we still had about it. It was like four o'clock in the afternoon.
34:45
It wasn't dinnertime, but we had literally been boiling snow to cook our
34:51
on our gas cook top for this week, and whatever we could find that
34:55
we had around in the house. And so I was like, some somebody
35:00
else needs to cook a meal and it needs to be tasty, and that's
35:02
what I wanted to do. So I was like, well, let's just
35:05
pop it in the good will store in between into the thrift store because I
35:08
wanted to find some picture of frames to paint. Thinking this would be totally
35:12
innoculous. We had done Chuck e Cheese, he got fun stuff there.
35:15
We had gone to Target. He spent his allowance, he got a lego
35:19
set, like he had gotten a lot of stuff. So I did not
35:22
see this issue coming. And on the way into the stores. We're walking
35:25
in. I said, you already got a toy, You've already had lots
35:30
of candy. If you want to get a book, here, you can
35:31
each get a book. And they were excited about that. He went and
35:36
he got a book, and I was just like standing in an aisle waiting
35:38
for everyone to come so we could leave, just randomly in a spot.
35:43
And there happened to be a broken remote control car on the shelf next to
35:47
where I was standing, and he decided he'd want that book. He wanted
35:52
this remote control car. And he was fixated on the remote control car.
35:55
It's only a dollar. I'm like, but it doesn't work right because I
35:59
just want to be rational and practical, and I'd already said you get a
36:02
book, you don't get a toy. But it's only a dollar. And
36:06
look, I can make it roll. And he's in the floor, you
36:08
know, roll in the car and it's wobbling. I'm like, no,
36:12
we have to stick to what I said. I made a lot of mistakes.
36:15
This was early on. We got to stick to what I said.
36:17
You can have a book or nothing. He starts having a meltdown because all
36:22
he can think about now is that stinking toy car that doesn't even work?
36:27
And all I can think about is I'm not going to give in, because
36:29
if I do, it's going to keep happening. And it was full meltdown
36:34
in the floor, hanging from my coattails, trying to prevent me from walking
36:37
out. Finally got out the door. He kept pushing and shoving and punching
36:43
me, and I was trying to just get to the car, and my
36:46
husband and my daughter were already in the car because they were like, oh,
36:49
no public display of madness. We're out of here and mom can deal
36:53
with it. And so it took a long time to get him in the
36:57
car. And we finally get him in the car and he's sort of screaming
37:00
and kicking and screaming and kicking, and then it just like the temperature goes
37:05
way down and he just keeps repeating, I want the book, I want
37:08
the book, I want the book. I swear. It was like a
37:12
hundred times the same rhythmic pace, which I now know the rhythm is regulating.
37:19
And we ended up finally being able to communicate with him and say,
37:22
hey, do you want a snack? And he did, and we got
37:23
h something to drink and a snack, and we just kind of sat in
37:25
the parking lot for a bit until he recovered. But like, it's interesting
37:31
that the loop that he started fixating on was the toy, but in the
37:36
end, when he was clearly in a verbal loop, it was about the
37:39
book. Yeah, And I don't know what to make of that, but
37:43
that's the whole story. I tell that story a lot because it was the
37:47
turning point in me understanding that not all behavior is willful and chosen. Yes,
37:54
and I didn't know that before that moment, but clearly, when he
38:00
was just repeating that phrase, it was so clear that he wasn't in control.
38:05
Like my husband and I grabbed each other's hands and we both cried.
38:07
My husband never cries. Like. It was just clear that, like all
38:12
of the struggles this kid is having, he can't help. Yeah, and
38:16
we don't know how to help yet either, So that is our loop.
38:22
I never thought about it that way. Yeah, hard stuff, man,
38:24
hard stuff. But I think it's important what you said, like he couldn't
38:30
help it. Also, it was regulating for him, that piece of it.
38:36
Yeah, right, because it's rhythmic, right, it's rhythmic, and
38:38
so yeah, it's such a complicated people are so complex. Goodness so complex,
38:46
so complicated, I know, and like it's a hand your dealt and
38:52
you have to accept it. And that helped with that piece too. I
38:53
think that experience we learned a lot in that thirty minutes. It was literally
39:01
a turning point. There's still a lot to learn, and lots of different
39:06
things were going to come out of the woodwork and other struggles and stuff,
39:08
but like, that was the point at which we could let go of that
39:14
sort of societal understanding of ADHD and behavior, even though I didn't know nearly
39:19
what I know about behavior now. It was the point at which I was
39:22
like, Okay, my kid cannot control what just happened. And then after
39:29
he's completely calm, there's a long period of kind of silence where he's just
39:34
numb, and then he starts apologizing and crying, right, and then you're
39:39
for sure you know that it wasn't intentional, it wasn't a chosen behavior,
39:45
right, none of it. He didn't have the skills yet, his nervous
39:49
system was triggered, you know, all of the things. I was very
39:54
inflexible, even though I wanted him to be flexible. Right. You know,
40:00
there were certain I don't want to say mistakes because I had no better
40:04
and I don't want other parents listening to call the mistakes for themselves. But
40:07
there were things that in hindsight, I could have done differently that probably would
40:12
have been more helpful. And they're not necessarily just giving in and saying okay
40:15
and buying the toy. Clearly that would have been the easiest thing. And
40:21
now every time I tell the story, I'm like a freaking dollar, like,
40:23
why didn't you just pay the dollar and let him have it? Let
40:29
him win that one? Right, But had to learn those lessons. My
40:32
friend Monica Werner always says, show me a kid who's stuck, and I'll
40:36
show you an adult who's equally stuck. Yeah. It's on the same sort
40:40
of lines as ross Greens, which is, you show me an inflexible kid,
40:44
I'll show you an equally inflexible adult, right, exactly. Like he
40:47
talks a lot about how we expect flexibility in kids, but we do it
40:51
very rigidly. We're completely inflexible about asking for flexibility makes so much sense,
40:58
right, knowing say that out on, he is spot on. Yes,
41:02
Well, we are out of time we are, but I really appreciate this
41:06
conversation because I did not know about getting stuck in a loop. We had
41:10
actually had a question from one of the members in our membership about a certain
41:15
situation and Sarah replies and says, oh, stuck in a loop and explains
41:21
it. I'm like, wait a minute, that's brand new information for me.
41:24
We should talk about this on the podcast, and that's why we're here.
41:28
But yeah, like we always are learning more things, and I think
41:30
this is really valuable stuff for the parents or even educators who are listening.
41:36
Yeah, so thank you, thank you for sharing your wisdom with us.
41:39
Again, most I do want everyone listening to know to go to your parenting
41:45
ADHD autism dot com slash two seventy three for episode two seventy three. I'll
41:51
have links there to Sarah's website and social media and all that good stuff so
41:55
that you can learn more from her as you go forward with your kid.
42:00
Oh, thank you. Yeah, thanks for the conversation. Always fun.
42:05
I will see everybody on the next episode. Take good care. Thanks for
42:08
joining me on the Beautifully Complex podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please
42:14
subscribe and share, and don't forget to check out my online courses and parent
42:19
coaching at PARENTINGADHD and Autism dot com and at The Behavior Revolution dot com.