dealing with your hyperactive and very compulsive child

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Hi, recently I have learned that I might have asperger's syndrome, and seeking for diagnose at this moment.

I have 3 years old son, who doesn't speak other than "no", and is hyperactive and compulsive. He can't stand it when I tell him not to do something. He will just start hitting me or just lay down on the floor and give a good tantrum. I suspect ADHD but also think that it's a normal kid behaviour of his age.

My problem is that when these things happen in public space. At home I just leave the situation. But in public I can't just abandon the scene and pretend like nothing happened. And with too much sensory input plus my kid crying very loudly trying to hit me or rolling on the street because i didn't let him jump into the road, is like worst receipt for meltdown. I get compulsive desire to yell at him or hit him to stop what he is doing, which I neither believe in child's education nor it is legal in the country I reside in(welcome to Scandinavia). I usually try my best to avoid such a situations but it happens almost daily. In worst case when I don't find any solutions which would be letting him do what he wants to or tame him with sweets or toys, I just put him on my shoulder, and flee the scene. Even that I believe locals take it offensive and maybe some day I will have to face authorities for how I deal with my son.

Does any of you have experiences in such a situations? How do you deal with them?
Any comment or reply will be very much appreciated. Thank you.

If my son had a giant tantrum on the sidewalk or in the grass, I sat down beside him until he was finished. If he had it in a store, I would carry him to the sidewalk and sit down beside him until he was finished. If he tried to jump in the road, I carried him to a safe place and sat down beside him too. If he tried to hit me, I would hold him down and say "NO HITTING" then let him go. If he still tried to hit me, I would hold him down for a longer time like 60 seconds.

Good luck to you, it's difficult to keep calm!

I stopped taking my son out when he wouldn't quit acting up and not listening to me and whining. I tell him I won't take him out for a while if he does this and I have always left him at home after that with his dad. Occasionally I will take him out to see if he behaves and I remind him again he won't go out with me for a while if he doesn't listen to me and I tell him what not to do and tell him how to act.

This was how I handled it because it's not fun having a tantrum child in public and then I get upset and overwhelmed, especially when he doesn't listen and he acts up and is running around and then screaming when I hold him and I am more relaxed and not have my energy drained when I am out alone with my daughter or by myself. My anxiety is probably the reason for this and it increases when he doesn't listen and starts asking for things he wants to get and then having a fit about it so I always tell him I won't take him out for awhile if he does that and I always remind him to be a good boy and I tell him the rules or else I won't take him out for awhile again. Harsh probably but my anxiety makes it very hard for me so i do it this way.

I'm NT and of fairly normal intelligence. My husband is an aspie and a genius. Our 15 month old is NT and a genius.

My husband has a tendency to panic when our son does gross and/or very dangerous things, which, like you said, kids will do. Since my son is NT, he has picked up on that and exploits it. So he'll act up MORE when my husband is in charge, to "test" him.

I basically have my husband talk to our son as if he's autistic. Calmly say no, you can't do that because x, y, z. You can do a, b, or c instead. Since he's so smart, he won't listen unless you don't tell him WHY he can't do it and redirect him.

I wish my son could understand what I am saying to him, too. I don't know if it is brain damaged parents(autistic father and epileptic mother) or growing up in 4 languages. He certainly does not appear to be autistic judging from his social skills and interests in other kids, but doesn't seem to understand spoken language as a communicating method.

This reminds me a lot of one of my boys.
I could "dump" the whole story here but don't have the time right now and anyway your situation might be different, so I'll ask some questions instead:

I understand he does not talk except "no", but what about verbal understanding? My son (almost) doesn't talk either but I can tell from his reaction that he understands simple words like "drink", "jump", "put this in the bin" etc. We've been working to introduce more words and it seems to be working, slowly. There are also words that I know he understands but sometimes/often chooses not to do what we want from him, like "give me", "put it back", "no" etc. Repetition and patience helps. Does your son have "passive" vocabulary like that?

How do you talk to him? When I first became a father I found it very difficult to talk to my baby daughter at all, the typical "baby talk" that most parents do just felt wrong to me (I'm not much into small talk in any case, it's usually either deep & meaningful - for me at least - or hello-goodbye minimalist politeness). I would just play with her without words a lot of the time. BTW she's now speaking 2 languages just fine, but probably thanks to my better half rather than myself. By the time my 3rd kid (the one who is now 4 and mostly nonverbal) was born, I had overcome my problems with baby talk, but had a lot less time for it because of the 2 (now 3) other kids.

Who else is living with you / present around you and him? Are they relaxed / stressed / what? How do they interact with him? In our case it's 2 parents and 4 kids, so there's a lot going on all the time. That can make it difficult for the boys to calm down sometimes. I used to drive them to forests and middle-of-nowhere places with nobody around a lot, and take them on long walks, just to get them to relax a bit. It helped a bit but now we're mostly doing other things. I guess the general question here is, what makes your son relaxed?

I would assume that your kid does understand you, even if he doesn't obey or respond. Bi-lingual kids speak later than kids with one language, and then they're able to speak all the languages. It's thought that they're sorting out all the words- like English with English, Spanish with Spanish and so on and that's why it takes them a little longer to talk. I've always suspected that this is also why a lot of autistic kids talk later. They're sorting out other things.

Can you give him more things to do so maybe he'll be less likely to act up?

Good to hear back from you.
Some ideas...

If you're doing the housework and looking after the kid, perhaps you can let him "help"? My boy loves doing that, of course things take 3 times longer with his "help" than without, but it's a shared activity, makes him happy and I guess he also learns something from it. Whereas if I try to prevent him from "helping" (a.k.a interfering) he'll get annoyed and I have to fight him off all the time and then deal with his bad mood afterwards.

If your partner is trying to work at home while your kid is around... I've been in her situation and I would say no wonder she is stressed. My solution was to rent another small place nearby, it was well worth the price. Or perhaps you could arrange to be outside with your son during her work hours? Cycling maybe... though the cold climate may limit your options a bit. In my case, I eventually went back to being a regular employee after being self-employed for a few years, that solved the "noisy home office" problem and also helped me generally because being self-employed was just getting too damn lonely after a while, especially as we'd just moved to a new (for me) country recently and I didn't know a whole lot of people yet.

Re. speech - we're in the same boat, we're a bilingual family but all our kids started talking later than other kids from bilingual families that we know. With my younger boy right now, we've abandoned sentences for now and are concentrating on single words. We make an effort to name whatever object he is touching / playing with ("Shirt! Spoon!" etc) and also name his actions ("jumping! running!" etc) again and again and again - it's an effort but we're seeing some improvement now after only a few weeks of starting down this road.

BTW

Sorry to hear that, sucks...
I get migraines sometimes, but no meltdowns, so can't really advise about them.
Yeah kids aren't easy, but worth it, hang in there!

If you have a counselor that you think understands you pretty well, it might help to invite your wife to sit in with you. Sometimes counselors can explain things in ways that the NT partner can understand.

Our son is still co-sleeping with us. This morning I woke up with my aspie husband practically in tears, saying in a far away voice that our son was shoving him out of the bed. Our son was laying sideways in the bed with his head in my husband's back and his feet in my face. My husband had been afraid he was going to roll on our son and kill him, so he had maneuvered himself into a painful pretzel position, dangling off his side of the bed in his sleep.

This is just an example of NT wife + NT toddler + poor tired aspie dad. My son bullies my husband and ignores him when he's freaking out. I can quietly tell him the exact same thing my husband does and for some reason he listens to me. I don't know if it's a NT versus aspie thing or if it's a little boy versus dad thing. I can remember my autie little brother never listening to me, but he would listen to our older brother. Who knows.

It sounds to me like your wife needs to help you make some techniques to lower your stress so you won't meltdown, and increase your effectiveness, which should improve your son's behavior. I mean, to some extent. Little kids are going to be trying. That's their job.

My 18 month old daughter started hitting my wife in the face.
I will grab the hitting hand and just hold it still until she looks at me and even though she may not know the words, I briefly explain why we do not hit people, and then I release the hand. When she does it again, I hold the hand that did the hitting for 10 seconds and add a couple seconds each time she repeats.

My kid is crazy animated and holding still is the last thing she wants. Seems to work so far.

Try to limit his sugar consumption.

Anachron - I have a 4yo boy with similar issues, here's one thing that works for us most times:
After I've prevented / stopped him from hitting, I gently take his hand, bring it back to whoever he was hitting, and touch / stroke that person lightly with his hand. While doing this I say words like "caress", or "this feels nice".

I used to use your method exclusively, but he's getting older and stronger - one day he'll be stronger than me (sometimes he already is, when I have my hands full with the other kids) and then it won't work anymore.

YMMV.
The general principle is to switch the focus from what is forbidden to something that is desired or encouraged.
While the details vary, I've found this principle to be very effective.