Parenting Severe Autism

EP 75: Morning Reset, Calmer Days, Regulating A Dysregulated Home

• Shannon Chamberlin • Episode 75

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We share how escalating anxiety pushed our family to the edge, and how a simple morning reset brought peace back. Clear boundaries, a 20-minute quiet window, shifting behavior and energy fast. Also another item on the daily menu during the Summer of Hell.

• closet destruction, failed fixes, safety locks
• meds context
• behavior as communication
• mapping triggers
• the non-negotiable
• visible changes in anxiety, cannabis dose, and attention loops
• family roles, energy, and being the calm leader
• practical steps to observe antecedents and set boundaries

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SHANNON CHAMBERLIN:

Hello and welcome to the Parenting Severe Autism Podcast. I am your host, Shannon Chamberlin. I'm so happy that you're here with me today. Happy New Year. I hope everything is going well for all of you. In this episode, I want to start by sharing, of course, some more of the stories of our summer from hell. It was really quite something. And afterward, I'm going to share a story of recent events around anxiety, behaviors as communication, compatibility and change, desperation as a result of a dysregulated nervous system and energy, family guidance, healing, and how introspection led me to a new, but not really new, understanding of our son's needs for routine as a means of providing security and how it helps transition to a more peaceful household flow. Quite a thing that we recently went through.

SHANNON CHAMBERLIN:

Please remember, you can always support this podcast and help me keep it free for those who need it by donation through Buy Me a Coffee or a Membership or anything like that. I do have private episodes coming out that are only available through the subscription membership. Like I said before, I've got more recorded than I've got released right now, but they're coming and they're always going to be labeled the tea and then the name of that episode. Any products that I use that work for our family and specifically for our son, I will always provide links at the bottom of my show notes. Sometimes I'll mention products and sometimes I won't. And if you are curious and you don't hear me mention products, you can always check the links in other episodes. I'm not really all that organized on all of that because, as you know, this severe autism lifestyle just kind of eats up all the extra minutes in the day. And sometimes I just can't seem to find the extra minutes to really apply to the end of the show notes, but I'm trying to get better at that for all of you. I know a few of you have already been benefiting from the vibration plate and a red light that I talked about in my last episode. I hope you guys are enjoying those. Please send me your thoughts in an email. You can always reach me at contact.parentingsevereautism at gmail.com. Most importantly, keep listening, keep sharing, and keep kicking ass as the superhero that you are.

SHANNON CHAMBERLIN:

One cute little thing I want to say. I think I completely forgot to mention this from when we lived in Wisconsin. Before he lost his vocabulary and his skills at the age of 15, he went through this little phase where he would indicate that he wanted to watch TV alone. And I would say, What do you want to watch? And he went through this phase where he would say, breaking news. And I don't know where he got that, but obviously that's a thing that they say on the news, you know, breaking news. But I think it's from a movie or a game where he picked it up. We just thought it was hilarious. He always wanted to watch breaking news. And I was like, Really? He says, Yes. So I would turn on the news for him. I don't watch the news because it makes me angry and depressed. So I haven't watched the news in years, but he used to always want to watch breaking news. And I think he was going through a, you know, I want to be a man phase. That was kind of around the same time where he grabbed his dad's robe that one day and started tying it up on himself and stood up extra, extra tall. And in a deep voice he said, Rosie, because that's one of my nicknames in the house, you know? Yeah, so it was back then. I just wanted to share that. That was super cute back then.

SHANNON CHAMBERLIN:

So back to the summer of hell, one of the things that we dealt with that we didn't realize how damaging it was until it was, you know what I mean... Was that he was constantly wailing and making these hornet nest sounds. That sticks with you on a really deep level. It got to the point of where I could hear a lawnmower in the distance and think it was my son about to attack me or something. I mean, it really messed with my head. It messed with his dad's head. You just hear him coming and he actually still does it. He just hums and he sounds like a mad hornet's nest. But back then, when we first moved here, it was a very new behavior. And we tried to accept the way that he was communicating. You know, like that's just something he needs to do. But it really messed with us on a deep level and made us feel uneasy and unsafe. Very strange. But this was constant, especially when he was in bed, when it was time to be either going to sleep or actually sleeping or waking up. We would prefer not to wake up in emergency mode, but we always heard this because again, his room is right above ours, and he was always in his room wailing or humming this hornet sound. Anyway, that's just uh one of those little PTSD things that just sticks with you. It's so minuscule. You think that it doesn't mean anything, but it still, right now to this day, creates anxiety inside of my body. So I just wanted to mention it because I'm still very aware that I'm dealing with that.

SHANNON CHAMBERLIN:

So when we moved here, obviously I've mentioned this before. I know that it's a big change. It was a big change for all of us. None of us wanted to come here. But one thing I tried to do out of respect for my son's needs is keep everything as consistent as possible. I know we're in a new house and all that stuff, but at least we're with family. But you might remember from many episodes ago, I told you about how our son and I would work together on doing his laundry, and he was learning to hang his clean clothes in the closet, and we worked together on putting away his pants and his underwear and socks, and everything was organized. Well, in that closet, he had a bunch of hangers for his shirts, a shelf above for his turtlenecks and sweaters, and like an entertainment center type thing below that held his pants, socks, and underwear. It used to be an entertainment center for him to have his game system on where we lived previously, but we didn't have it set up like that in the house that we lived in at that time. So I just stuffed it in his closet. He had a really big closet and he seemed to like it. He likes to be able to see all of his clothes. He could see everything, he can put it away himself, and it gave him a sense of accomplishment and security, I think. So I tried to keep that idea consistent in this bedroom that he has now. It's a much smaller closet, but I still made sure he had hangers. He has the shelf above, of course. And then instead of the entertainment center unit, I put this little two-drawer set. So that was supposed to hold his underwear, socks, and pants. So basically the same setup so that he would know where everything was at. Everything looked the same pretty much. And I did that on purpose, just to give him a sense of consistency and to try to show him, like, see, we're in a different place, but everything is still the same for you. Your life hasn't changed that much. You can still see where all your stuff's at. You're still in control of all your stuff. So to thank me for being considerate of his needs for consistency and security, he decides to start taking his hangers out of the closet three to four times a day. First, of course, he's gotta take all the shirts off the hangers and throw those everywhere. Then he takes all the hangers off the rod and throws those everywhere. And then he runs through his show of all the other stuff I've already told you that he does all day long. It's just part of the menu. And I will come into his room or walk by his room to go to the bathroom and see that all of his clean clothes are all over the floor. All of his hangers are also all over the floor separately. At first, I tried to be understanding and try to figure it out because I am always trying to just understand why. Why are you doing this?

SHANNON CHAMBERLIN:

And you know, I've recently learned as a side note here that if you're in a relationship and you overlook red flags because you want to try to understand the person instead, um, that is a red flag, and you should get out. That means you're in a bad relationship, it's not safe for you, and it's gonna end up being a toxic relationship. So I thought that was really cute when I learned that because I learn about this stuff in relationships, and I realize that all these things that are flagged as red flags and abusive and all that stuff, if it were in a partner, those things are what's happening coming out of my child towards me or towards his dad or towards the whole family, you know. So man, it really messes with my head sometimes because yeah, yeah, he's abusive. It's emotionally abusive, mentally abusive, and sometimes physically abusive.

SHANNON CHAMBERLIN:

But when the child can't communicate, the behaviors are the communication, right? So you you have to try to understand, right? That's how I feel. So I want to know, I want to understand. Since he can't tell me what's wrong, what's right, how he's feeling, what he's thinking. I have to try to decipher these behaviors. I'm doing my best to be compassionate and huh, gee, I wonder why he wants to take all his clean clothes and throw them all over the house all the time. I wonder why he wants to take this perfect organization that I worked so hard to achieve for him and destroy it multiple times a day. Gee, I wonder what's going on in that little head of his. What's wrong?

SHANNON CHAMBERLIN:

And so, okay, I'm gonna pick up your hangers and I'm gonna ask you to put your shirts back on your hangers. Well, he would get pissed off at that, and he wouldn't even hang his clothes back up. I tried to make him be a big man. If you're big enough to destroy it, you're big enough to put it back together. You already know how to hang up your clothes. I know that because we used to do it together. So now if I want to see his clothes not be in the laundry every other day, and he's not gonna hang them up, guess who gets to do it? I do. In addition to all the other stuff I have to do for him. So this is every day, three to four times a day. Hangers on the floor, shirts on the floor. I stopped trying to understand after a couple weeks, and I'm starting to get mad instead. Now I'm making him pick them up, and I'm standing over him and making sure he puts them in the closet, and I'm purposely handing him his shirts and making sure that he hangs them up, and he is fighting me every step of the way. Crocodile tears, yelling, stomping, hitting himself, and all I want him to do is stop destroying the closet because I don't want to do the laundry every day. So that's my answer to his behavior. Then he answers back with finding dirt, like finding ways to make his clean clothes get dirty and throwing his clean clothes into wherever he can to make it more dirty so that I will not put them in his closet. And then he starts not only throwing the hangers across the room, but breaking them as well. They're all plastic, half of them are broken every day, about four times a day. So little by little we're getting rid of hangers. So for every hanger that he broke, I think I took away another hanger, you know? So we're down to like four hangers in his closet.

SHANNON CHAMBERLIN:

In addition to that, now he starts taking the two drawers underneath, and he takes that entire unit and throws it across the room every day, three to four times a day. And a couple of times he threw it at me. And he tried to take it out of his room and throw it down the stairs. I was over it. I was so over it. I was so freaking mad at him. I didn't understand why. And I never did understand why he did that. You know, I felt like he was doing it to me. It seemed like everything he was doing, he was doing to us. And since I'm the one that does all the laundry and all the organization, I felt like it was personal. So my answer to that was I went on Amazon. I'll put a link in the description down below because this really was a nice thing. I ended up buying two more of these recently, but I bought a soft box, like a hanging softbox shelving unit. And I think it has like four shelving areas, four cubby holes in it. It's got side pockets on both sides where I could stick belts or extra socks and you know, whatever. And it ended up being really useful. It holds all the shirts, all the pants, all the socks, all the underwear, and there's still room for more stuff. And then all his bulkier clothes go on the shelf above. So I did away with everything. I took the drawers out, I took the hangers out, and I was like, okay, this is what you get now. And I did it as lovingly as possible. I organized everything really nicely. I just didn't want him breaking hangers and throwing his clothes all over the place and throwing the hangers all over the place. I didn't, I didn't know what else to do. So I did that. And then you guessed it. He picks the whole fucking thing up and throws it across the room. He couldn't get the hangers off, but he just ended up trying to destroy it the best that he could because the hangers wouldn't come off of the rod, but he got all the clothes out every time. I mean, he just did everything he could to destroy it and make me work hard.

SHANNON CHAMBERLIN:

So my answer to that was I went back on Amazon and I got a new door handle for the closet with a fingerprint lock. That was pretty beautiful. It does have a key in it as well, and it's like, I think it's rechargeable. It's got this little port in the end of it, and you can just recharge it when you can't get in the closet. So I'll put a link to that as well. That was really useful. We got into a bunch of different lock mechanisms. Um, this is the first one that I started with. So it's nice and sleek looking. It's just, it looks really nice, and it's got this electric blue light up thing on the fingerprint thing when you put your thumb on it to open it. So I got that. I programmed my fingerprints and my spouse's fingerprints into the doorknob, and then my son could not get in. He could not open his closet at all. And that was my win on that. The thing about it, that whole experience, was that my stressed-out spouse was almost like another child to me because he made it very difficult to enforce these things. And, you know, it's like when one person shoulders all the burden of things like laundry and organization, the other person or spouse tends to exhibit a lack of empathy and understanding and value of implementing these things, in my opinion.

SHANNON CHAMBERLIN:

That actually leads me into the story that I mentioned earlier in the beginning of the episode. So, as you know, we had a King Kong incident several weeks ago. Our son's birthday was December 19th, and it was shortly before that, just like through what, three or four days before that, where he got into this King Kong. You know the rest of that. So you know that his birthday sucked. He was terrible on that day. And this is January 10th when I'm recording this. So we've been on something new for three days. So it went all the way from about December 15th to January 6th, I believe. Okay, just hell the whole time. I got really worried about him because he was okay immediately after, but then by the time his birthday came around, he was no good, and he's been no good. And we even went for a walk about four or five days ago, and I told him on the walk that he has been absolutely terrible. I told him how long he's been terrible for, and I I let him know I'm very disappointed in you. Um, I've tried everything by that point. I tried everything. I tried to reason with him, I tried to understand him, at least to the best of my ability at that time. But here's what was happening. Every morning, he would wake up and instantly fall into this rut of anxiety, sadness, and anger. And he would instantly project that onto us. We try to get up earlier than he does, but you never know. And he would just come in and and not let up. So he starts getting extra cannabis. That's the first thing that starts to happen. He normally gets 10 milligrams in the morning and 10 milligrams in the afternoon. And he was starting to get up to 20 milligrams in the morning, 20 milligrams in the afternoon, and 20 milligrams before bed. It was bad.

SHANNON CHAMBERLIN:

It got to a point where my spouse just a few days ago was like, you know what? I wish I could just take him out in the wilderness and do a detox again from all the electronics like we did before, but also all the meds. And I kind of lost my shit on that one because I was like, Are you serious? All the meds, you want you want to detox him from the meds, really? He's like, Well, they don't seem to be making a difference. I very calmly and quietly reminded him that, well, he's not attacking me anymore. He hasn't attacked me in a very long time. So there's a benefit of meds. He hasn't eloped in quite a long time. There's another benefit of the meds.

SHANNON CHAMBERLIN:

Um, I thought it was a stupid thing to say, and I understand, again, like I said, this is a story of desperation as a result of a dysregulated nervous system. It's my spouse and I who are dealing with dysregulated nervous systems and anxiety because of our son's anxiety and behaviors as communication. So then we're putting out these energies. You remember what I said about how I came back from the campground and my energy was different, and it seemed like in response to that, my son was acting better, right? So I'm also trying to figure out like really just one exposure to King Kong made all of that go to shit because I still feel that my energy is good. And I don't understand now why he is reacting every day to something, and I don't even know what it is. It can't be my energy. So, you know, there's all of this stuff that's going into my introspection, and while all that's going on, I'm trying to decipher everything in my head. I'm still watching this kid's behavior.

SHANNON CHAMBERLIN:

And it got to where he's constantly wringing his hands, shaking. He won't stop shaking and twitching and humming and just just fucking constantly. I mean, if you watch South Park, you know that kid tweak. It's like him. Except he's on that kid's on coffee. Well, that's yeah, that's what my son reminds me of at this point. And I looked at him one day and I was like, dude, I told my spouse, look at his face. He's got brown circles. He's got like a a raccoon mask on his face, big brown circles all the way around his eyes, like you see in the movies when people are mentally ill. I mean, I just started getting so worried about him. He's getting vitamins, he's I you know, I just I'm like, what is going on? It got to that point where my spouse was having to yell at him constantly. I mean, there was no calm communication. He just was begging for please yell at me, it seemed like just yell at me, yell at me, yell at me. And I just couldn't take it. And I know my spouse couldn't take it. He doesn't want to yell at his son all the time. Nobody, nobody wants to live like this. I finally just was like, look, something is really wrong. So we started, I, I started dissecting the day from the time he gets up to the time he goes to bed. First thing I've noticed is that the grandfather has not been going outside. Jacob has not been having the house to himself. I know I mentioned this before. It's a constant. So there's number one. Number two is that he constantly has access to us down here. Number three, I noticed that he's been having these gluten-free donuts from the store every morning for many months. I don't like it at all, but I guess it was making him happy. And then his dad felt that he didn't really have to cook for him. It was just a guy thing. And I asked when I got home from the campground if we could reduce the intake of the donuts because number one, I want to save money. It would stretch the donuts another day if he had two instead of three every morning. And I could take that money and put it towards real food because I need to cook real food. I need Eat real food. I don't want this shit in my house all the time, and I don't want the kid eating it all the time. Even though it's gluten-free, it's still garbage. So that was not happening. And it's funny because our son just started not eating them. He started only eating two. He would get three on his plate from his dad. And first of all, he wouldn't sit down at the table and eat for hours. Like two hours would go by, and these donuts are on the table, and he was avoiding them like there was a bee on it or something, and he was gonna get stung. He was making himself nervous by not going to the donuts. I don't, I don't know, but that's what was going on. That's what I was seeing in his body language. And, you know, just sweating and shaking and getting angry and telling us he's not hungry. And then when he did finally sit down to eat them, he would eat two and leave the other one. And then he gets angry when he leaves food on his plate. Because I've always told him, you don't have to eat everything. If you get full, I can save it for later. And he seems to have this idea that it needs to be hidden. I don't know where he got this, but I think he might even be throwing food in the garbage to avoid eating it.

SHANNON CHAMBERLIN:

But anyway, I'm looking at all this stuff and I'm like, okay, you know what? Complete change. So I'm going to reassess his needs and see about changing the routine to see if I can change his energy and his behaviors and his anxiety. And maybe I can facilitate some healing for all of us if I just take control of this situation more than I had before. Instead of just saying, get out of the kitchen and let me cook, how about we do it my way again? And that's the end of the story. So I believe, I mean, it's only been three days, so knock on wood. But here's what happened. I told my spouse, I don't want him to eat donuts anymore. I would like you to tell your dad to give Jacob the house for 20 minutes every morning. The first 20 minutes, as soon as he knows Jacob is awake, I want your dad to go outside. And I want him to stay away from Jacob for 20 fucking minutes. There's no reason that he can't be out of the house. He's got a garage he can smoke his cigarettes in if he doesn't want to be outside, outside. But my kid has needs and I have needs. My needs are that my child's needs are met because that will cause him to be more calm and feel more secure in his routine. And I need that for myself. And obviously, my spouse needs that too. So I said, I am going to make I have this uh like makeshift oatmeal. It's it's rice, it's kind of like cream of wheat or farina. He loves that stuff. I make it in many different ways for him. And I just said, I'm I'm gonna start cooking his oatmeal for him in the morning. He will not have any more donuts. He's not eating them anyway. This is what's going to happen. So this has been happening every morning for three mornings. He wakes up, I give him his medicine, I go upstairs, I give him his cannabis. I then tell him, I love you and I will see you in 20 minutes. And already at this point, he's in a good mood because the grandfather is out of the house when he gets up because we already set that in motion. So he's in a good mood. He can see he's got the house to himself, he's got me, I'm giving him his medicine, and I'm telling him, now I need you to sit down and relax for 20 minutes and let your medicine work. I'm gonna go have coffee and I'll see you in 20 minutes. And he's like, okay, and he's happy. And I lock the door down here. He comes down each day. He has come down one time and tried the door, it doesn't open. He goes upstairs. When that 20-minute timer goes off, I open the door, I go upstairs, and he is happily watching whatever he wants to watch on TV, which is really nothing, but he's got control of the remote. He's happy, no one else is in there, and when he sees me come up the stairs, he's very happy to see me. He's laughing, and I ask him if he would like some oatmeal, and then he puts his order in.

SHANNON CHAMBERLIN:

So the first day, I said, Would you like some oatmeal? He said, Yes, syrup. I said, Okay, oatmeal and syrup. Do you want apple? He said, no, just syrup. I said, okay, oatmeal and syrup. He said, apple is gross and no peanut butter, he says as I'm cooking. No peanut butter, just syrup. I said, okay, no peanut butter, just syrup. He says, peanut butter, choke. And that's his word for gross. Yeah, because he'll say, oh, McDonald's, that's choke, you know, because he he threw up on McDonald's overexposure many, many years ago, thanks to his grandparents. So that's how he says gross, and then throating is puking. Yeah, because he he would say, Oh, I'm throating. Um, and that's how that's how he says puke. So anyway, that first day, he just had syrup. I put a little butter and a little sea salt in there just to flavor it up a little bit for him because it kind of enhances the sweetness of the rice. And I gave that to him and he was very happy.

SHANNON CHAMBERLIN:

And then the next day, we went through the same routine and I asked him, Are you, do you want me to make you some oatmeal? And he said yes. And I said, Do you want some apple? And he said, Yes. And he says, and peanut butter and syrup. Said, okay. So he's got these one-word things down. We're doing pretty good with that for communication. So he got cooked shredded apple with cinnamon and peanut butter and syrup inside of this oatmeal on the second day.

SHANNON CHAMBERLIN:

And then today is the third day. They went to the store yesterday and picked up a can, a couple cans of peaches. So I asked him this morning, would you like some oatmeal after the 20 minutes was over? He said yes. And I said, Would you like peaches? He said, Yes. Of course, then he ordered syrup, and then he said, and peanut butter. I was like, Well, I don't know. I don't I don't know if peanut butter is gonna go well with peaches and peach juice. Um, do you want peanut butter or peaches? And he said, Peaches. So he got that with some cinnamon today, and he was very happy.

SHANNON CHAMBERLIN:

And then within an hour after he eats that, I cook regular breakfast of meat, eggs, and a starch. He's well fed, and I'm making sure he gets his vitamins with his meals. I'm just making sure of all this stuff. So this is the third day. The brown circles around his eyes have begun to disappear by day two. And I'm still trying to make sure, I'm still trying to work on some consistency with the vibration plate. But the most interesting thing about this is not only have the circles started going away, he stopped doing the shaking and the sweating and the anxiety, he has stopped needing as much cannabis, believe it or not. He's back to the 10 milligram dose.

SHANNON CHAMBERLIN:

But the biggest thing is that he doesn't come down here and mess with us at all. He has no interest in finding his dad or me unless he wants to just come and say hi and get a snuggle instead of coming down here and getting in our faces and shaking and constantly muttering the same thing over. I love you, I love you. I don't feel good, I don't feel good. That's all it was. Negative, negative, negative, I'm sick kind of shit. For weeks it's been going on. And this is the third day.

SHANNON CHAMBERLIN:

Normally he'll finish food and he'll either put his dishes in the sink or he'll bring his dishes down here with his dirty hands, grabbing the doorknobs, grabbing everything, and come in here shaking with the plate or bowl in his hand. I'm done. I ate it all. He says, I ate all of him, whatever it is, it's a him, and he ate him. And he'll stand there and sometimes he'll say, I want more in the best way that he can. And he's just shaking. And it's like, oh my gosh, dude, stop, you know. He couldn't even put him in the bath to get calm for all of these weeks. Now he's happy. He's not chasing us down, he's not telling us when he's done eating, which is like he's never done that. Never. This is new. This is the biggest thing he is done performing for our attention. And it seems to be just because he's got 20 minutes to himself as a man in the morning, and he's got a real meal coming instead of donuts. And he seems to have developed a sense of security, and it's helped us transition to a more peaceful household flow. And it's just, I mean, super simple, right? But super effective.

SHANNON CHAMBERLIN:

Hopefully that made sense. I um I'm still very close to it, you know. And when you're too close to something, it's hard to see it, it's hard to describe it, it's hard to explain it, it's hard to make sense of it. But I was hoping that I could convey this to you because I guess my point is that when your child is exhibiting behaviors, it can be hard to decipher that as communication because it's so easy to get our own nervous systems dysregulated by that kind of behavior. And there's no way that we can help another regulate themselves if we are in fact dysregulated. So the family guidance was just simply us communicating to the grandfather. And the phrase that I used and I told my husband to use with him is this is a non-negotiable. You must give the child 20 minutes. 20 minutes is all he needs, non-negotiable. That alone has given my spouse and I enough space to regulate our own nervous systems again and stop acting and thinking out of desperation, which was the result of being dysregulated for all those weeks in the first place. We're putting out those energies, he's feeding off of these energies, he's already a mess, and then he feeds off of what we produce because of him. It's just a vicious cycle. And now we're healing as a family unit. Simple, simple changes.

SHANNON CHAMBERLIN:

I think that I really th I was telling my spouse this morning, I really think our son prefers to be taken care of in a more hands-on way. And that's not great for anyone because we don't have any help. It's just us. But honestly, I don't mind. It only takes 10 minutes out of my day to make him that little oatmeal. And it takes about 20 minutes altogether to make him the donuts. I mean, they're frozen, you gotta thaw them out. We put them in the little toaster oven, we have to wait. It involves two or three trips up and down the stairs. It's pretty involved and it's not really worth it. I don't mind putting in the 10 extra minutes in the morning to give him a good start and to make him feel cared for. He seems to derive this sense of security from having a warm cooked meal with love from a human that he's attached to. And I think that him always having those donuts for like the past eight or 10 months for breakfast started leaving him with a feeling that created anxiety, a feeling like I am not being cared for, I am not being taken care of, this is bullshit food. I don't know how to say it. I don't want it anymore. You know, he even started choosing different donuts at the store, and they're donuts that he doesn't like. To me, that's communication. That's him trying to say, I don't want to do this anymore. And it worked out perfectly with my timeline because I don't want him to do it either. I want him to eat real food, you know? It's the little, little things like that that can get overlooked as a quirk or trying to be difficult or something like that. But if you're able to step back and really observe the entire process, what happens before that behavior, what happens during the time of that behavior, what happens after that behavior, what happens to you, and what happens to your kid? It's different, but it's related. And who's around? Is something happening? Is it a dog barking across the street? What is going on? Something is happening. It's not for no reason. I swear to God, none of this stuff is for no reason.

SHANNON CHAMBERLIN:

Yes, I believe he is a mirror. And I told my spouse, hey, look, I think his anxiety around this whole situation is heightened when he gets around you because you have not had a chance to regulate yourself. And now you are not able to read his signals. You are simply in a reaction mode. You are negatively reacting to his negative behavior, and it's a vicious cycle. And I think that you can try to look at yourself a little more deeply and realize that he is a mirror because we talked about how his behavior was so much different, and he was such a grown-up compared to what he was before I went to the campground. When I got back from the campground, he seems so much more grown up. He doesn't need me to come in and tuck him in at night anymore. I didn't do it for eight months, and now he'll come and see me and ask me to give him a hug and a kiss. He'll say, Come here, you and he'll go to bed. And he doesn't fret when I don't come into his room and tuck him in. He still wants his dad to do it, but there have been a couple times where he put himself to bed, and that's been really nice. So anyway, I just asked his dad to understand that just like with the dog whisperer, when the owners of the dogs would freak out inside, suddenly their dogs would freak out on the outside and attack or run or whatever. And then the dog whisperer would just be able to walk, you know, 30 dogs at once with no leash because he's in control. He knows he's confident, he's calm, and he is the alpha. He needs his dad to be the alpha male. He needs to know his place in the pack. And he, in my opinion, felt that there was no pack leader just simply because of the donuts, really, and the the grandfather not giving him a chance to acclimate and us not taking control of the environment.

SHANNON CHAMBERLIN:

Whew! That was a lot. I hope that you were able to get something out of that because I think it's a really valuable lesson that we are currently learning. I hope it can transfer to you guys. It's a lot of work every day. Hang in there. You're a superhero.