Narcissistic Daughter

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Thank you all sooooo much for your highly intelligent and honest replies. My boyfriend (who is a special ed teacher) says that my daughter's yelling, hitting and sometimes cursing are all learned behaviors. He gives the example that in school these bahaviors are almost non-existent. "Why is that " ? he asks. He says because she knows by now those types of behavior will not be tolerated at school but has been condoned (mostly by my family ignoring them) at home. It gets tricky because she can have a meltdown at school but he believes that is the time when her impulsivety comes into play. I do know that hitting, yelling and cursing is not inherent in ADHD or Aspergers. There are many children who have both of these and do not hit and curse. I realize now I have to limit her contact with her father who unknowingly reinfforces her behavior whenever she goes to spend time with him. I guess it's time to roll up my sleeves and try some hardcore CBT with her. Wish me luck.

I understand where your boyfriend is coming from but if he has Sp Ed background he should know that is quite common for our kids to hold it together during school (follow rules, not act out) but once they come home and they release the need to "hold it together" it can cause some emotional backlash. SO, your daughter most likely is not maliciously betraying you by acting out at home and I would be very careful about treating it as purposeful. It's just that home is a safe place where she can let her guard down and allow the frustrations/emotions of the day come out and deal with them.

I agree with mama to grace...plenty therapists has told us that with our kids they use up all their inner strength to hold it together at school and the moment they are home and feel safe they 'let it all out'.....
You say that hitting, yelling and cursing is 'not inherent AS'...BUT it could be if this was part of a meltdown!
With my son I so often saw that when he yells or curse and I say "hey mister, what's up?", then he will brake open and start telling me how awfull his day at school was exct...this type of behaviour is almost like a parameter of how he is doing....But he also needs to realize that this is not exceptable and need to learn more appropriate ways to deal with this.
Tiffmom...have you read "handling the explosive child" written by dr Green....? This was very helpfull for us.
I aggree...she doesn't need more labels: Identify the behaviour....is it effective or not and help her replace it with more effective ones.
I also don't fully aggree that this behaviour is just learned...yes maybe her pathelogical behaviour was reinforced by your ex...but some is really part of AS....

I disagree that hitting and yelling are learned, given that those are the natural and instinctive behaviors we see in most toddlers. It is just that most kids quickly learn to control those impulses as a result of the influences around them. So you daughter maybe failed to unlearn the behaviors, but she most certainly did not learn them.

You see these behaviors at home and not at school because, as the prior posters have pointed out, AS kids run on so much overload that they have a limited ability to control their impulses, and they tend to exhaust that ability while at school. Home is and should be the safe place, where they can finally let loose a little and react as they need to. Not to say hitting should be allowed, but to say you need to recognize it is happening in a response to a need, and the best way to mitigate the hitting is to respond to that need.

One of the best tools AS kids have for releasing stress is stims, so give some thought to what stims your daughter favors and how they have been treated in the family. My son is a pacer, which is no mild activity: he is up and over furniture, banging into walls, and yelling. But this odd behavior centers him, and when I encourage it I see much better impulse control in the rest of his life.

You need to teach your daughter effective tools for dealing with her issues so that she stops defaulting to the immature ones of hitting and yelling (Although a little controlled yelling should be allowed; it is quite effective).

This is the age where she needs to work on seeing the signs of frustration build up or overload in herself, and take responsibility for entering a self-mitigation process to abate it. It is a long, slow process that will take a lot of help and support from you, but it is critical, and this is the time to do it. Make it clear to her that this is what is going to be expected with her, but that she will have your support every step of the way. Please don't see all this solely as a behavior/discipline issue; I really don't think that is an accurate assessment.

Handling a child as a teacher and handling a child as a parent are completely animals. One can be top at one, and a failure at the other. Your boyfriend knows what it takes to keep a child on track at school, but that information may or may not have anything to do with what goes on at home. In this case, I think he's off the mark. In fact, we've all battled teachers who wanted to tell us we just aren't being strict enough at home, or we must have done something wrong, and you know what? When I bought into that, everything got worse. What worked was doing what I've posted here, completely turning the conventional wisdom on it's head and figuring out my unique child.

Forget the blame game. Pay attention to your daughter, see what makes her tick, and then teach her tools.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I agree with Mama to Grace. It is important to understand that sometimes the difference in behavior between school and home is becasue they do instinctively know that at home they will be loved unconditionally so they can let it all out. This is a common scenario. BTW, I have heard more than once that so and so is a Special Ed teacher so he or she MUST know better than a mere mother what is going on. NOT TRUE! A common theme on this board is how LITTLE Special Ed and other teachers involved with kids with different abilities really understand about kids with AS. To the OP, I am not saying that your BF in particular falls into this category but please don't just assume that because he is a Special Ed teacher that he knows more than you do about your daughter and consider that his opinion is just that, his opinion. It may be slightly more informed than some but it may not be correct where your daughter is concerned.

My son, now 11, went through a phase very similar to what you describe...at least, we haven't had an issue with violence for over a year now.

In large part, his problem had everything to do with having Asperger's, but little to do with what was happening in the moment. Good testing helped us discover that his understanding of social speech was far, far behind his ability to speak - so he was only understanding about 70% of every interaction in both directions. To him, the world became an incredibly frustrating place where nobody said what they meant, nobody kept to their word, and bad things happened to him arbitrarily.

He was (and still is) unable to interpret touch, so unless touching had a well-defined context or was from someone he trusted, he had two choices when touched: assume it was benign and accidental, or assume it was purposeful and threatening. He learned quickly that if you assume all touch is benign, kids figure out you're an easy mark...so to him, every touch, even if it was just someone bumping him in the hall, was something he reacted to with fright-or-flight mechanisms.

It's no wonder, considering these two things, that most interactions with him at home involved rage, tears, threats, etc.

I don't think it's just an AS thing to hold it all together at school and then release it at home where you know it's safe, this happens with other people too with other disorders.

On Dr. Phil there was once a mother who had anger issues and she always took it out on her kids and husband but at work she had better self control so she didn't do it there. She said to Dr. Phil she couldn't control it and he tells her she can control it or else she be doing it at work too and he told her what a coward she is. I thought he was so wrong there and ignorant because he was too black and white. It took me a while to realize it's not black and white when people do certain behaviors elsewhere but not in certain places. Just because that happens doesn't mean they can do that everywhere. Maybe it's true to an extent because what if the parents wouldn't put up with it at home either, then what? Will the AS child have better willpower at home? I have noticed this in myself too because I would wonder if I can do this at work, why can't I have better control at home? Why do I act so different around people and then act differently around certain people? I swear there is something inside me that switches and my behavior changes naturally. My mother describes this behavior as being literal because aspies tend to change personalities around people like they might act different in school than they do at home and they may act different around each parent like with my ex aspie mate, he was more calm and less manipulative and less ODD when his dad was home but when he be away from home for work, he be this bully and be hitting his mother and controlling her and threatening her to get his way. But he didn't do that with his dad around but yet he couldn't seem to figure out he can't do that in school either despite the fact that he always got in trouble for it, he didn't do it at my house either so this is all a mystery to me. I keep thinking he can understand or else he be doing it at my house too and not in school because he kept getting into trouble. So whatever is tolerated and put up with, that tells us it's okay to do it and it encourages the behavior.


I also put it this way, some women don't have the willpower to quit smoking but then all of a sudden they do when they find out they are pregnant so they quit cold turkey with no problem. It was like something ticked in their brain and it gave them that willpower all of a sudden. Brains do strange things. Same thing happens with disorders based on the environment.