SPD Grandparents Perspectives

by Don
(Ohio)

I am a grandfather of a 6 year old boy with SPD. I am trying to help my daughter-in-law and son in how to approach relatives and close friends about SPD, plus, I am still trying to fully understand that this is a real problem that cannot be handled as was done in my generation.

Intellectually, I understand, I've read the books and the websites, but emotionally it is difficult. I'm sure the problems there are well known to you. The skepticism, lack of knowledge and the thinking that SPD is just some problem with the parents not disciplining a kid who manipulates situations, and uses his parents, is probably a very common problem for SPD families.

Where can I go to communicate anonymously with others (relatives of SPD kids, not the immediate SPD family) to gain a better, well rounded set of answers on specific methods for the relatives from their point of view to use when dealing with SPD kids? Methods that move relatives and parents closer together in acceptance and uniformity of approach to managing the problems of the SPD child?

Is there a good book that specifically addresses how to bridge the generational gap and find common ground between SPD parents and older relatives? That details specific methods and approaches to use that somehow allow a bridging of the gap between old and new approaches to what was called a discipline problem earlier and now is really SPD?

The problems for others outside the immediate family are many; we don't want to override parents unless they say we can when our grandson is with us. We don't want to be subject to an out of control kid or manipulative kid without knowing what is acceptable to the parents for us to do.

In our case, he is very smart, and as such, he is even better at seeing how he can be in "control" of situations, where he sees attention (even negative attention) as control, and so he works that when he gets bored or when things aren't going the way he wants and he isn't the center of attention.

I advocated to my Daughter-in-law that for best results, she needs to get into the shoes of the skeptics in our families first, so that they see that traditional methods of discipline have been tried without success, and that she understands their point of view. Then, and only then, will most people be more receptive to understanding this problem and the best approaches.

I know this adds to their already heavy load in dealing with this day in and day out. But they acknowledge that without coming to terms with the divergence between generations and outlooks, there will only be the two obvious answers of

1. trying to distract the SPD kid towards some more positive activity a tiring task, indeed and

2. avoidance of the problem by less contact, which no one wants to happen.

In both cases, the problems are being circumvented and/or ignored.

But perhaps I can do some leg work and come up with something they can then integrate with their approaches and move forward with on their own.

Any comments are welcome.