How do you discipline a child with Aspergers ?

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Has he been evaluated for oppositional defiant disorder? Does he self-harm frequently? Do you teach him about safety? I know that seems like a stupid question, but Aspies lack 'common sense' and need to be told common sense things outright. Or maybe he is sensory-seeking and doesn't really feel pain as such.

Its far more harmful to add negativity to an already negative mindset than it is to engage in negative self-talk in the first place.

This child clearly has enough reasons in his life to make him feel like a loser- he doesn't need his parents giving more reasons at the time he shows them he is the most vulnerable to such things

Well, Triangular Trees, what I don't mention in my post is the constant positive statements that he hears from his parents on a daily basis. We spend so much of our time telling him what he is good at, or how he handled a situation extremely well, etc. That's why the negative self-talk is so perplexing. He does not hear this from us. And, he is almost perennially cheerful in his demeanor, seems very happy otherwise.

So what would be done if working with him calmly and quietly for years (and I'm not exaggerating here) doesn't work? Do you allow a child to further spiral into negativity because you don't want to yell at him? I agree, yelling usually isn't the answer, and it isn't used often in our household. But I've read and reread the comments on this very forum from various people on the spectrum who are depressed or suicidal, and it's fear that this may happen to my son that scares me into doing whatever it will take to help him realize that talking negatively about himself is not a good thing.

All of this is wrong.

These things your talking about do not work trust me it does not all it does is cause tension between the child and parents. Because the child feels disrespected and thus is insulted. If I felt my parents had disrespected me I got angry and chances of another melt down sky rocketed, because I had been disrespected. I was put in a group home they disrespected me and it turned into who could yell the loudest. Any time you provoke a physical negative response you did something wrong let me explain. If you go so far as to say provoke them into breaking something then you need to ease up remember these are not NT kids, also countering the breaking of the item with more negative response like yelling only cause more problems.

Don't ever do punishments when they are angry, because when anyone is angry they are not thinking clearly. I know in my case punishments given to me when I was angry only resulted in another meltdown, because it was too much the handle. It was like I am angry still angry for what ever reason and now your dumping all this fuel on my fire and you really expect calm down. Its like someone just cuts you off and you have an accident and crash into another car and the person who you hit comes and screams at you for crashing into you. Imagine your mad you were cut off and had a wreck and society expects you to keep your cool when someone comes yelling at you. For an child with aspergers they need to be allowed to handle one thing at a time give them to much and its like the blow a fuse.

My theory is this: he doesn't really understand why the statements bother you, as a result it hasn't been a priority to him, so he hasn't been motivated to really work on it. Kind of a "yeah yeah yeah you don't like it, but it's tough to control and I don't see what the big deal is." When your husband got angry, it registered with your son how important this is to you. It wasn't so much the yelling that worked, but seeing an unusual level of emotion. He doesn't ever want to upset you, but it's difficult to understand sometimes that things one person doesn't find important, someone else actually does.

I have never forgotten the night when I was a teen, and my sister had not come home by the time she had told my mom she would. I couldn't sleep, and got up. I found my mom on the sofa crying. Worried sick and crying. Until that moment I had not realized that curfews were more than one more way a parent controls a child. Seeing my mom like that drove home how a curfew violation affected her. It's one thing to be told; another to see.

You never know what makes something click with someone. We just keep trying.

If you haven't recently, do engage in a discussion with your son about WHY he uses that phrase, if he really means it, or he picked it up, or if he really isn't sure. See if you can get a clue into his actual level of self-esteem in these situations. Words don't always reflect actual feelings in kids. It's good to check in periodically and sort out the difference.

Sometimes in the moment I have to use the hated, "I say so." But it is really good to go back and breakdown the situation later, when the emotions are calmed. I would be really interested to know what your son was feeling at that moment, why he was so insistent that he wanted to walk across the glass. The conversation will also explain your reasons for not allowing it. When you do this, you find out a lot of interesting things about your child, and sometimes you can work together to come up with ideas on how you can handle things with him.

it really doesn't matter how many positive statements he hears at other times. Those are other times when he isn't putting his most vulnerable thoughts on the table And they certainly aren't times when he's telling you he thinks he's an idiot beyond any possible doubt. What he's hearing when he tells you he's an idiot is your yelling which is the same thing is saying "Yes your an idiot, we agree, now shut up"


And I must admit i'm utterly amazed that you seriously think making him afraid to share his concerns will stop him from thinking negatively rather than increasing his negative feelings and making him afraid to share those negative feelings with people who can help him feel good about himself


I was a suicidal child - its only the attempts from when I was 14-17 that can be attributed to my meds. The attempts started at 8. You know what started the attempts 95% of the time - being yelled at. My life was miserable enough without my parents adding to the misery and showing they didn't care about me. And of course, if you truly have read all those statements about aspies engaging in suicidal attempts than you should have also read how many of them did so immediately after their parents yelled at them or because their parents treated them in a way that they felt was unfair or cruel.


If you don't want your son to be suicidal than the last thing you would ever consider doing is yell at him when he lets you know he's vulnerable to feeling like he's a stupid idiot. If you want him to be suicidal than you'll have no problem reinforcing to him that he is an idiot which is what you are doing when you yell at him for saying he is one. Your son is letting you know that he feels worthless and you think responding in a way that shows you agree is going to help him stop feeling worthless rather than making him feel like he's even more worthless than he already thinks?

its utterly ridiculous that you care more about masking the signs than about doing anything that will help stop him from feeling in the ways that bring those signs about. Yes yelling at your son will get him to stop - because he'll end up being even more depressed than he already is since not only does he know he's an idiot his parents behavior will now show that he is 100% correct in thinking that he is an idiot and that he's likely an even bigger one than he previously realized

But keep yelling at him. Then when succeeds in suicide at 15 you can tell yourself that at least you got him to hide the fact he was depressed from everyone in his life rather than let people such as you know he needed help dealing with the stresses in his life. But don't you dare even consider blaming him for that suicidal act- because he's showing you right now he needs help and all you are doing is telling him he's right to think negatively about himself and should be afraid to let anyone know that he has those negative feelings because having a negative thought is like swearing . That makes you and your husband responsible for him killing himself, not him. He's asking for help and your doing your best to make sure that not only does he not get help but that he becomes afraid to ask anyone else for help as well. If he doesn't commit suicide it will be a miracle given how his shows of vulnerability are being treated. most likely it will only be because his attempt failed and not because he didn't try.

These are difficult and emotive topics, and i usually avoid the angst of these topics, but i too have an opinion and an AS son.
My AS son likes to spend time with me ( his AS father ) and also his non-AS mother at her house.
When he is with me, there is control of the environment, activities, rigid adherence to made plans and time keeping.
he seems to thrive in this AS "friendly" environment.
I rarely have the need to dicipline him, and when i do he cries and we hug and make up almost immediately after the event and there is no lingering angst.
My, AS father however was a tyrant and he did physically punish me, and if he applied same these days it would be considered abuse, regardless, i no longer speak with him.
My son ay his mothers does tend to play up and become distressed, so much so that she will call me to come and pick him up when she cant handle it. There, is , in my opinion, too much activity, to many people comning and going, too many toys being shared and not returned, and too many plans made and then broken. an AS nightmare. He has started to hit her now too.
my feeling is, if hit ;an AS child will learn to very quickly lose any fidelity toward you as a parent, this will result in summary withdrawal of feelings and rejection of parent. If you dont punish, it leads to more bad behaviour.
my answer?
i create an environemnt that is AS friendly.
i punish and hug within 5 minutes.

I know that sometimes my husband and I have been almost too gentle, too quiet and too patient (seems like that shouldn't be possible?...but I think it is), and our sons have failed to grasp the gravity of the situation or how much we wanted a change in their behaviour. Which was of course, our fault for not expressing our own feelings clearly enough. I think it is good sometimes for the child to realize that mom or dad are upset, frustrated, worried or confused...just like them. My mom used to lose her temper and yell all the time, so I just learned to tune her out after awhile, but my dad almost never yelled and when he did, I knew it was serious and time to really listen

I also think that it may be a good idea to replace the negative self talk with something more positive and to try to address the feelings behind it. Your son may still be saying those things to himself, but in his head now instead of out loud. One of my sons sometimes says things like "I wish I was dead" when he is really upset about making a mistake. My first instinct was to tell him to never, ever, ever say such things...but then I realized that if he is thinking it, it's far better to talk about it. So instead we told him to always come to us with those kind of feelings, and we talk together about how precious he is to us, how everyone makes mistakes, all the good things he does etc. and also have him practise better things to say to himself, like "It's ok to make mistakes", "There is no such thing as perfect" etc.

I'm wondering if it would be helpful to have a third party talk to him about this too (counsellor, other adult that he trusts). To help him to understand that hitting is not a good choice when he is angry, and to explain to him (in a non shaming/judgemental way) about the social and personal ramifications of hitting someone else and especially a woman. He might not listen to it coming from you, because you are the one his anger is directed at, but he needs the pertinent info about how his behaviour would be viewed by others and what the consequences could be in the future, as he grows bigger and stronger. Has anyone besides you talked with him about how unacceptable hitting his mother is? Again, in a way that would not make him feel worse about himself, clearly he is feeling pretty bad already, just to make sure he fully understands why it's such a poor choice for venting his anger.

Really good point about the AS friendly environment. Of course, us parents have our own flaws and may not always be able to provide what we can see our kids need, but it's still important to understand how ALL those factors affect the child, and work on mitigation as much as possible.

I realized a few years ago how "quiet" my house had become. No TV, no music. My son needs it this way; my daughter is the opposite. Sound calms my daughter; stresses my son. It's been interesting trying to accommodate those polar needs. I tend to favor my son on it, because he is AS and my daughter is NT, but it's always a struggle to find that right balance.

While I am totally sympathetic to the point you are trying to make, it is also possible (likely, to be sure), that the parents have already "checked in" with their child and determined that these are just phrases, NOT warning signs. Kids can be overly dramatic; parents do figure out the difference.

I got really freaked out the other day when my NT daughter, who I do believe is prone to clinical depression, said, "I wish I had died before today so I would never have had to live it." I eventually sat down with her and asked her why she said that, and what her feelings were about her life, and her desire to continue with it. Turns out a friend of hers had made up the phrase, and her little click thought it was a very good way to express how horrible a day was going. They all use it. She told me that she certainly didn't really wish to be dead. I explained why it had worried me, why I hoped they would stop speaking like that, and asked her to come up with something more appropriate. But I also told her that if she ever really did have such thoughts, to please feel she could talk to me. She just thought the whole conversation was weird, she was that disconnected from the potential meaning of what she had been saying.

I know parents do manage to ignore real warning signs, and that point is certainly worth asking a parent to look into. But I think it is harsh to ASSUME the parent is ignoring a valid warning sign, when the reality with kids is that they don't always mean what they are saying. They tend to lack the art of subtlety at certain ages, and don't understand nuances of meaning. Odds are good that a child saying, "I'm so dumb" simply considers it a good way of admitting to a mistake, "dumbness in the moment," without meaning to say that this is his assessment of himself overall.

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Of course, us parents have our own flaws and may not always be able to provide what we can see our kids need,
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its an interesting observation, the focus has shifted from a naughty child to a parents ability to do same (parent).
i am fortunate i have one son(AS) i am AS and what is normal and environmentally safe for me, is also same for him.
i dont anticipate having the decribed problems, but if or when i do, i can deal with them from an AS perspective, which may be lacking in these cases.

No he hasn't been tested but i was thinking the same thing i thought that went with the aspergers... He used to self harm, biting himself, but not lately... We are conctantly teaching him about safety but he gets it at the moment but then does it again ... it seems like he has high tolerance for pain when he falls and hurts himself, he doesn't really react like he has been hurt...