What would you have done?
I'm a father of a 9yo girl, diagnosed with ASD and I really think she displays PDA behaviors.
I'm a psychologist and parenting councilor myself, I know about the importance of attachment and security, polyvagal states, etc.
And I find myself utterly dazed and confused in some situations with her, having no clue how to handle them. I'd like to describe one such situation from last night and get your perspectives like what would you have done.
I am aware that every family is different and every child is different and taking that into account while asking this question.
My daughter takes her sweet time getting ready for bed: brushes her teeth after some reminders and then she arranges the dolls on her bed. Recently she took to some specific arrangements which kind of feel OCD like but I'm not sure that's the case.
Anyway, it takes her a couple of minutes to have everything in order both because it's very specific and also she just takes her time, she's doing it whole dancing and having the time of her life not having a care in the world that it's getting later and later.
After she finishes this bed arranging she climbs into bed and kisses many of her dolls and there's a whole Spiel here until I can cover her with her blanket and give her a kiss and a hug.
So yesterday we got to the point where I could finally kiss her good night around 10:00 p.m. I was already exhausted and hadn't a lot of patience but I waited and did it and then I went to the living room to have a little bit off time with my spouse.
I put on an episode of Seinfeld to clear our minds and in like 10 minutes into the episode the daughter comes into the living room asking to be with us.
She really likes to sit down with us and watch TV together even though she doesn't really understand what's going on because it's a foreign language for her at the moment.
At first I was like "no I'm sorry, you have to go back to bed it's our time now and it's late" and she was like "but why can't I just be here with you a little bit, I will probably doze off while watching it with you and I will go to bed immediately after you finish watching TV". So I said "fine you can stay here as long as soon the show finishes you go back to bed".
Lo and behold episode is over and she's not going back to bed she lies on the sofa saying "I'm going to fall asleep here", obviously she is not going to fall asleep there and I'm telling her "I'm sorry but now you have to follow through on your promise, go back to bed I'll come with you I'll cover you that's fine but it's time to go back to bed" and then she starts to follow our dog around saying "I just want to kiss her good night" but this is another thing that takes forever, it's not like a kiss goodnight for the dog it's like 10 kisses and then 10 more Etc, it's always taking more and more time and again not listening to us when we tell her "I'm sorry you did promise something and we allowed you to stay here but now you have to keep your end of the bargain please go back to bed", she's completely ignoring us to the point that both of us got very very angry and told her that she's ungrateful and can't be trusted and that's really not cool and I don't remember exactly what happened but I think I just eventually took her and put her in the bed and that's how she went to sleep. which by the way took some time in which I stayed and hovered around her room because she always asks us to be there so she won't feel alone.
And of course that's just one example of her doing things in her own time not caring about how it affects everybody else, for example in this case all the mess disrupted her brother who was trying to fall asleep at the time and of course it made us feel very very bad.
So again my question here what would you have done if you were in my shoes at that situation. what has worked for you i'm open to listen to everything.