DS wanting me to draw pictures for him CONSTANTLY

[tantrums]

All weekend, my DS, who is 6 has been NON STOP wanting me to draw things for him. It's quite honestly making me absolutely bonkers. The requests are constant - I can't get a break. I keep telling him I will do ONE later - say after lunch. I tell him I'll do one and he says "no do THREE". As I'm doing one - he says "just two more PULEEEEEZE~!!!!!". This has been something he has gone through in the past and even then, I never quite knew how to handle it. This weekend is more pronounced then it's ever been. The picture just get thrown out - except one which he insisted we tape on the ceiling over his bed to protect him when he sleeps.

 

Any advice on how to handle this one would be greatly appreciated!

 

I'm guessing throwing the crayons out the window would not be the route to go although that is exactly the urge I've been feeling since about noon yesterday! It's icy and nasty out so no getting out of the house to get away from it to distract him.

[MomWithOCDSon]

All weekend, my DS, who is 6 has been NON STOP wanting me to draw things for him. It's quite honestly making me absolutely bonkers. The requests are constant - I can't get a break. I keep telling him I will do ONE later - say after lunch. I tell him I'll do one and he says "no do THREE". As I'm doing one - he says "just two more PULEEEEEZE~!!!!!". This has been something he has gone through in the past and even then, I never quite knew how to handle it. This weekend is more pronounced then it's ever been. The picture just get thrown out - except one which he insisted we tape on the ceiling over his bed to protect him when he sleeps.

 

Any advice on how to handle this one would be greatly appreciated!

 

I'm guessing throwing the crayons out the window would not be the route to go although that is exactly the urge I've been feeling since about noon yesterday! It's icy and nasty out so no getting out of the house to get away from it to distract him.

 

Wow! Honestly, this sounds like standard OCD behavior, and he's enlisting you to join him in it! By being so specific about how many pictures he needs you to draw for him, and then counting them down, he's indulging a compulsion, but he's holding you captive to it, as well. Whether you realize it or not, by complying, you're aiding and abetting the compulsion.

 

We've been through this a lot with our son who was first diagnosed with OCD at 6 and now, at 12, we're exploring the possibility/likelihood that it is actually PANDAS. In either case, the OCD-like behavior is one we've dealt with a lot, and sought help from therapists through CBT (cognitive behavior therapy) and ERP (exposure response prevention). So I can tell you what the purely therapeutic answer would be: don't do it. If you feed the compulsions, they will literally grow, become more frequent and more ferocious.

 

At my son's age, we just flat out tell him that we can't always control whether or not he allows the compulsions and obsessions to dictate to HIM, but that we CAN determine whether or not we allow them to dictate to US, and we're saying "No!" But at your son's age, it might be kinder and calmer to try drawing some boundaries that give him some of the attention he's seeking while, at the same time, not literally feeding the compulsion. Maybe something like, "I'll sit down and draw you ONE picture, but then I'm done for the next hour."

 

That's another "trick" or strategy we learned from CBT: delay acquiesing to the compulsion, and it will sometimes evaporate on its own, especially with young kids because their attention is usually fairly easily drawn elsewhere. So if he demands that you draw another picture, who him a clock and say something like, "I have something else I have to do right now, but if you'll wait 10 minutes and you still want me to draw a picture for you, then I will."

 

Maybe something like that will help? Good luck!

[peglem]

Wow, I didn't know this happened to anyone else. Frequently, when my daughter does this, she wants the same thing drawn over and over as well- I must have drawn a couple hundred thousand moons during that phase. Then we had the whale phase, the care bear phase, the faces phase, veggietales, oh, and the snowman phase. Sometimes its drawing on balloons. Sometimes we tried hiding all the markers (my daughter can't use crayons- can't modulate pressure well enough)- and sometimes it worked. I know we're not supposed to give in to this...but ###### ensues for a very long time if we don't. Distracting sometimes works, or repeatedly doing it "wrong" several times.

[momto2pandas]

My ds started doing this to us at a VERY young age, before he was one. His first sentence was "Mommy draw a buff doo-doo." It didn't really bother us (he was a difficult baby, so anything that pacified him was good) so we drew many thousands of buses, even though it puzzled us since he never kept the pictures. Eventually we figured out that he must have been studying HOW we were drawing them, because one day he picked up a pencil with a perfect hold and started drawing them himself right down to the details of the drivers, vehicles, etc...when he was 14 months old. He had a babysitter at the time who was an art education student and who thought it had something to do with feeding his photographic memory - he was storing all of those details about HOW to draw, or something like that. He has done it periodically since then, as well, with different types of objects, but never as severely as he did during that time.

 

Truly bizarre how much these kids all have in common.

 

 

All weekend, my DS, who is 6 has been NON STOP wanting me to draw things for him. It's quite honestly making me absolutely bonkers. The requests are constant - I can't get a break. I keep telling him I will do ONE later - say after lunch. I tell him I'll do one and he says "no do THREE". As I'm doing one - he says "just two more PULEEEEEZE~!!!!!". This has been something he has gone through in the past and even then, I never quite knew how to handle it. This weekend is more pronounced then it's ever been. The picture just get thrown out - except one which he insisted we tape on the ceiling over his bed to protect him when he sleeps.

 

Any advice on how to handle this one would be greatly appreciated!

 

I'm guessing throwing the crayons out the window would not be the route to go although that is exactly the urge I've been feeling since about noon yesterday! It's icy and nasty out so no getting out of the house to get away from it to distract him.

[tantrums]

Well it helps to know I'm not alone here! My DH was distracting him with board games for quite a while while I was downstairs (we have a bilevel home). He then came down and joined me - paper and crayons in tow. I was busy ironing dresses and taking pictures for ebay. I actually put him to work looking for any flaws - he came in handy there! LOL!

 

But man! I wasn't even all the way up the stairs when I was done when the paper was thrust in my face! I've already tried delaying and limiting, which I do stick to. But it doesn't stop the constant asking and whining for it. Right now he is on superheros. Then it will be different people for a while (rock stars, indians, etc...) then pokemon.

 

To make matters worse today, my mom was going to come take him Christmas shopping for the day and it was too icy. He did NOT handle that disappointment well. At 6, any kid would have a hard time with that. I shouldn't have told him she was coming but hadn't thought to check the weather forcast.

 

Four hours till bedtime...

[peglem]

Four hours till bedtime...

 

I find myself doing that, too!

[tantrums]

Sad really. Isn't it? And that only means once he gets INTO bed... 6 hours until he's asleep