Stop Banging...

As well as his love for cars, Reuben likes to "fix" things.

One Christmas a couple of years ago, we thought it would be a great idea to buy Reuben a toy work bench with toy tools.....Oh, how we are regretting that decision now!

From that day forward Reuben feels the need to fix everything in sight, whether that be a door, radiator, chair ,wall and basically anything that is in our house.

He will grab his tool kit and start fixing. This "fixing" involves lots of banging, pulling and turning of things. But it got to a point where Reuben was doing more damage than good. Things were getting broken, scratched or damaged. So, I made the decision to put away all the tools and the work bench and move them all into the garage to play with in the garden when he goes out there.

For the next few days, this was great as Reuben would play with his cars or some other toy in his room. But that soon changed. Reuben discovered anything could be used a a tool or just to bang!

By anything, I mean bricks,magic wands or bits off the farm. Basically anything he could bang something with.

We have now reached a point where as soon as Reuben gets back from school, he gets his bricks out and starts "fixing". The constant banging is horrendous. Our house resembles something of a construction site.

Reuben will get up fairly early in the morning on a weekend, so I will bring him downstairs for his cup of tea and  breakfast and put the television on for him. As soon as he has eaten his last bite of breakfast, off he goes to start building, fixing and generally banging. The problem with this is not only is it largely annoying, he also does it all on the landing in front of every ones bedroom doors.

So, me bringing him downstairs to keep him quiet while everyone else in the house can have a lie in, he is constructing away and waking everyone up!

Last weekend, Reuben was making that much noise with the sheer force that he was banging his bricks that I simply could not take any more and took the instrument that he was using for the banging off him. As you can probably imagine, he went berserk. He ended up having a complete meltdown for around an hour.

This behaviour has got me to thinking, Is this more than just playing at building or is it Reuben getting some sort of sensory stimulation from it?

I started to observe him more and noticed that Reuben bangs everything, all the time. He can be standing in the kitchen talking to me and he will have a car in one hand and a brick or something in the other and be banging them together. When he is sitting watching television, he will be sitting on the sofa with a couple of objects banging them together.

It is really hard not to get cross and stop him from banging things together but it is just so annoying.

The question is, what do we do about it?  Reuben has been under an Occupational Therapist and she has said that his does not have SPD (sensory processing disorder) and has now discharged him. Besides which, technically we are not funded to have an OT as Reuben attends a mainstream school, therefore does not qualify for funding for one where sensory issues are concerned.

We have a multi agency meeting at Reuben's school coming up so I will be mentioning this constant banging there. But going on recent concerns with Reuben, no one will have a clue why he is doing it and no one will want the responsibility of the problem.