Punishment Options

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My girlfriend's son, Billy, is a 10 year old aspie. They stay at my place on the weekends and at grandma's house the rest of the week.

Towards the end of the school year, he always has issues. In his mind, summer is right around the corner and he is just done with school. Had enough, doesn't care anymore. I remember being like that myself.

However, he has been getting mouthy with one of his teachers. Usually twice a week, he will get demerits. This past week, he received them, one, for screaming at his teacher that she was stupid and needed to leave him alone, and two, for arguing with his teacher over doing some school work, then calling her stupid.

First time he gets demerits, he loses computer privileges for the weekend. Second time, he loses PS3. Third, he loses TV. This past weekend, he got demerits three times and lost all three. This will always result in a stressful weekend with him throwing tantrums about having nothing to do, and mistakenly believing that he is somehow the victim. If he does well and doesn't get a demerit during one day, he receives one hour of computer time back.

This past weekend, I woke up, came out, and caught him on the computer. I was LIVID! Especially when he refused to get off, so I turned it off and his character on an online game he was playing died. He threw a major fit, screaming that we "just didn't understand how terrible it is having nothing to do". He also went off when he asked me "Don't you care that I have nothing to do?" and I replied "No, I don't, because you did this to yourself and this punishment is designed for you to have nothing to do!"

I am thinking, as punishment, of deleting one of his characters on the online game for his defiance. What do you think?

Also, having him whine and kvetch all weekend is getting old and making living with him stressful. I have a VERY stressful job, and I need the weekends to relax. Any ideas? We just can't get it through his head that these punishments are the results of his behavior.

Yes, I have an idea. Let your son relax and play on the computer so he has something to do and you dont have a stressful weekend. And if he is getting in trouble because the teacher harasses him until he blows a fuse then get the teacher to back off.

I hate to sound rude but you remind me a lot of my mother and that isn't a good thing. You have to realize that however much stress you are under pales in comparison to the amount of stress your child is under. Your child isn't acting up because he thinks it is funny. He is acting up because he is under enormous stress. He is always stressed out and that is putting him very on edge and that is making him act out. Taking away his entertainment and making him miserable isn't doing anything to help solve the problem, it just makes it worse because it just stresses him out more. If punishment worked then you wouldn't be here asking for more ideas on how to make your child miserable.

Perhaps if you just backed off and stopped looking for ways to harass your child he would act out less.

In other words, let him be a brat, do what ever he wants, never discipline him, so he can grow up to be a burden on society. Sorry, can't do that. I love him to much and he can do better than that.

And in my defense, I am brand new at this whole dad thing. I have never had a child before, and I "inherited" a 9 year old aspie who has been allowed to do anything he wanted for most of his life, as grandma was always willing to sacrifice long term development for short term peace and would often override mom.

I am here to learn from others who have walked the path I am now walking. I am asking about this particular punishment because I don't want to do something that in his mind may be too drastic. I don't know how he thinks, since I am not an aspie.

I'm curious...have you and/or your girlfriend sat down when everyone was calm and asked him about the situations leading up to his mouthing off? I'm wondering what the triggers are. Of course it's entirely possible for an Aspie to be as big of a brat as a NT, I'm just wondering if there has been a catalyst for this that no one saw, something that could be redirected next time.

My aspie daughter is usually quite well-behaved, and usually I can see what triggered her misbehavior...but of course sometimes she's just being a normal misbehaving child. Finding the diference does take some detective work, and then figuring out how to stop the misbehavior is much more work, but...when she knows I care about her and am trying to understand, that I really do want to help her and am not just trying to throw my weight around, it seems to go a LONG way toward her cooperation.

Yes, we have. It is the end of the year and he simply doesn't think he has to do class work because he doesn't want to. His words.

Last year, he did the same thing in music class and got an F because the teacher didn't want to deal with him, and it was easier to ignore him than to confront him. This is math class, in which he usually does very well. However, this teacher will confront him rather than letting him sit there and stare out into space.

Hitting puberty isn't helping much either.

Hitting puberty often complicates things. Unfortunately, punishments do not help - they increase the power struggle, and power struggles do not result in anything good in parenting children with Asperger's. Have you ever read the book Parenting Your Asperger Child by Alan Sohn and Cathy Grayson? If not, I would strongly recommend it. It might help you understand some of how your step-son thinks, and why your approaches to discipline might be counter-productive. Whatever lessons you think you are teaching by punishing him, it is not what he is taking away from the situation. I don't have time right now to write more, but read the book - really!

Just ordered it on Amazon! Thanks!! !

Most times what is coming out of their mouths is not necessarily what the real problem is. Aspies sometimes have a hard time verbalizing their feelings even with a huge vocabulary. Sometimes writing or drawing is better. The only thing that works with my son is relating what he does to what someone has done to him...sort of teaching empathy. We also try to give him ways of coping with his meltdowns. Like my son was upsetting another boy in his social group by rhyming his name with a vegetable....to my son this was funny so he didnt understand why everyone didnt share his mindset. We had to get him to remember a time when someone called him a name or said something that hurt his feelings and then tell him "see thats the way ____ feels when you rhyme his name, it hurts his feelings".
Punishment doesnt usually work with aspies, and certainly taking EVERYTHING he loves away is equal to cruel and unusual punishment...they are logical enough to reason with (as long as your not trying to do it during a meltdown or shutdown). You just have to understand that our (Im aspie too btw) brains dont function in the same way yours does.
I do understand your frustration because I am a parent of five kids and its really hard sometimes but Aspies respond better to patience than action. You might also look into getting him some sensory toys (like stress balls & tangles) to take to school with him. Try officeplayground.com they are the best. Also you might want to consider that the impending change is making him more sensitive....We dont like change even when its something exciting like summer vacation. It causes stress and he probably needs to talk this out or draw.
Im glad your getting the book and also that you asked for advice because that shows that you really care and want to help!

well speaking as a gamer, deleting his characters IS really harsh. those are characters he has built, time he has invested. once deleted, you cannot get them back. a lot of gamers get really invested in their characters, so if this is a game hes played significant amounts of time on, deleting them is a step you should not go to. its not like earning back privileges, this would be permanent.

now as a parent, i know you have to give punishments. but you need ones that work and that hopefully arent a punishment for YOU. perhaps shortening the punishment would work better, losing privs for 24 hours instead of all weekend. you could also come up with other punishments, such as a set amount of hours doing extra chores, and when those are done he has earned his privs back (this means if he chooses not to do the chores out of defiance, he still has no privs) or at least some computer time.

something else to consider is the order of privileges lost. make sure you arent hitting him with the big stick first. if he is a major computer gamer geek, and just watches a little tv, then the tv should be lost before computer. otherwise, one demerit means its over in his mind and theres no incentive to be better.

i think something important here also is the fact that this is an aspie. i'd ask a few questions first such as, is the computer the main source of his socialization? is this computer game one of his focused interests? something you see as a mere game may be his entire world you are taking away. make sure the punishment fits the crime.

our 13 yr old is not dx asd but has some autistic traits. he has social issues and few friends, none of which he sees outside school. he has an interest in theater and is part of a local youth theater group. because it is his only outside-school social experience, and one of his few interests, it is off limits when it comes to punishments. thats a choice we made to not further inhibit his socialization or restrict one of his very few, narrow interests.

Jimbeaux, I know you try really hard with your stepson and have learned a lot, but I'm not comfortable with the consequences you have chosen here. But I won't say there should not be any, and I'll have to think about suggestions ...

Meanwhile, never forget the discipline has to have both sides: the looking for and mitigating the reasons leading up to the behavior issue, as well as the consequence.

No, computer is not his special interest. The loss of privileges is in reverse order to interest.

I won't delete his character this time. He doesn't really have a lot of time invested in it (Age of Conan, he swiped my "start at level 50" veterans reward), but if it were deleted, he'd have to start over.

Thanks, DW.

The reason is the year is almost over and he is looking beyond the school year, so to him, he is done. His teacher has issue with this. She isn't overly harsh with him, she just tells him "Billy, quit staring out the window and do your work."

I like the idea of allowing him to earn them back by doing chores. I am going to suggest to mom that we implement it.

Usually, when he loses computer and PS3 privileges, I'll take him for walks through the woods and make up a story of "what happened here" and pretend we are on a mission of some sort. He LOVES it! Unfortunately this past weekend, I had to work, so I couldn't.

My little aspie is a bit younger, so we are still new at the punishment thing. I agree with Azurecrayon, try to come up with a punishment that doesn't turn into too much of a punishment for YOU! I know it is hard sometimes because my son has so few things that mean anything to him, that it is hard to come up with a punishment that means anything to him. One thing we do is offer rewards (mostly treats like ice cream and such) if his behavior is good. If the behavior is not met, then he doesn't get it. You would have to figure out what works for your son. You could offer other rewards (like taking him somewhere) I agree that you have to be careful about taking EVERYTHING away ALL weekend. It is just a recipe for more stress for everyone. I agree that these kids have to be disciplined, it is just a bit trickier......Good luck!

I wouldn't delete his characters because, while I do believe that certain behavior should be punished, I don't think those punishments should consist of anything permanent or that will cause him to become alienated.

I understand that for most children, taking away the computer would seem like a perfectly reasonable punishment, but I don't really feel this is appropriate for children with AS and here is why.

Children/people with AS face many barriers in the real world that prevent them from being able to communicate efficiently, and express themselves properly. These barriers do not exist in the electronic world.

When I was young, because I would not go to school, I was prohibited from participating in extracurricular activities under the false assumption by one of my psychologists that I would react like an NT child and just go to school if I wanted to do these other activities so badly. I don't actually think my mother bought this, but under the premise that she'd seem like a bad parent if she let her child who didn't go to school go out and do all this "fun" stuff, she went along with it. For some reason, the point of the situation was lost on me, much in the way that I would circle all the toys I wanted in the Sears catalog and never think to tell my parents I wanted them, or never cared to, or didn't think about it long enough to....I spent much of my time as a child wandering around the house and backyard content in my own little world.

I did not go to school and as I had been prohibited from activities outside of school, I had very little in the way of social interaction with other children, and not much opportunity to develop my social skills.

But I liked machines, and my uncle had a few computers that I envied and wanted to know everything about, and so when I was 12 he gave me one.

I found very quickly that I could navigate this electronic world completely uninhibited. Unlike in the real world, my thoughts flowed unrestricted from my mind to my fingers, where I quickly learned to type them out in chatrooms.

Throughout most of my teenage years my only interaction with people outside of my family came in chatrooms. I had no social skills intervention as a child. The computer was my window to the world and the only way I could engage in uninhibted normal conversation for a good portion of my social life. Had my parents ever prohibited me from the computer, they may as well have put me in solitary confinement or simply dug a hole in the ground and tossed me in.

The world is a harsh environment to children with AS. I would not take away his one respite from it.

That being said, he does need to own up to bad behavior. Because this is happening at school, it would be ideal to address this situation on the spot rather than having his punishment drag out into the weekend. Children have a difficult time processing events with large time delays between them.

The parent who has him during the week is going to need to work with the school. He likely needs an aid or teacher to remind him to keep himself in check throughout the day, and of the positive consequences of good behavior, and the negative consequences of bad behavior, before he gets overwhelmed and becomes impulsive. He may also need more breaks between assignments. People with AS frequently require more time to process information and the way some teachers hand out one assignment after another can get overwhelming very quickly.

Hey Jim,

I feel your pain! I've got two Aspies and a son who's somewhere in the spectrum, maybe, sort of. They are 13, 11 and almost 9. My husband is their step father and I'm amazed that he's been willing to take us on. When he first started expressing interest in me I let him know right off the bat that I had three not so easy to raise kids, but he seemed to like the challenge. He still struggles and doesn't always know what to do in terms of discipline. Sometimes he overdoes it, but he's doing his best and loves the kids.

Each child is different and what works for one isn't always right for another. Taking things away and priveledges away seems to work the best for my kids. Spanking worked for them as toddlers and little kids, but only when done rarely for very serious situations (like running into a busy road or trying to jump off the roof). At this point it's completely useless.

I try to let the punishment suit the crime. I'd take away computer priveledges or abusing computer priveledges. Around here that means disabling the computer.

Aspie kids often have intense interests. They also might have activities they need to do to calm themselves down. I'd be careful about taking away things they need to settle themselves down as that will lead to more trouble than it's worth.

Aspie kids are just like other kids but tend to be less capable of covering up their tracks. Often what they are doing really isn't any worse than what the other kids are doing they are just more inept at getting away with it. All the kids are thinking "I'm done with school and shouldn't have to deal with it anymore" but Aspies are more likely to say it out loud and get into more trouble for it while non Aspies will take a more subtle approach and keep their mouth shut simply doing a lousy job on assignments or "forgetting" to do them. Your son is really just verbalizing what all the kids are thinking, so I wouldn't over punish him for that. I'd have a sit down with him and explain that he shouldn't say that stuff because although everybody knows it's true it's rude and insulting to adults to say it. Help him develop those social skills.

I find I often have to explain things to my son that other kids just pick up on. It's hard because I first have to analyze what is going on and then find the words to explain them.