How do you get them to think?

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My 6yo son has HF Aspergers. He is extremely intelligent, completely verbal, but doesnt THINK. He knows how he is supposed to behaveandhandle certain situations, just during those situations he doesnt stop and think to recall the right info. He will then resort to immature behavior, doing things that get him introuble, hurting or upsetting people, when in that head of his the correct way to handle himself lies unturned.

I am at a loss as to how to get him to THINK. If he would only THINK before he did things, there would be a different life for him and us. He is in social skills groups and is always the best behaved, always the kid with the most insightufl responses. They tell me how well adjusted he is, when they play games if he looses he says, "Thats ok, I might win next time!" Meanwhile at HOME if he loses he will have a huge meltdown, crying, yelling, etc...

My son knows the difference between right and wrong, he KNOWS what is expected of him, waht behaviors are for what situations. He KNOWS SOOOO much, but he doesnt THINK to retreive that info. He constantly makes the same errors over and over and over. If I follow him around and watch him and do the questioning he will come up with the right response, but I ALWAYS have to do the thinking. Example, he is playing with his sister, they are playing with a puzzle. Jayden takes a piece that his sister was reaching for. She will cry and ask for it back. He wont respond to her. I will then say, "Jayden look at Miranda, how does she feel?" he will say upset. I will ask WHY and he will say she wants this piece. I will say, "What should you do?" he will then give her the puzzle piece or tell her he is sorry for taking the one she wanted. So he KNOWS all the right answers, why cant he perform this stuff without me doing the thinking forhim?

I feel like I do most ofhis thinking, and I wanthimto start to think MORE.

When does this get better? I dont want him constantly getting in trouble, constantly getting reminded, redirected, etc...but for now he cant do it himself. Unless he is in group therapy that is! That is the other thing that gets me. How he is able to do this in group but no where else. They tell me it is lack of generalization of skills. Well, how do I get him to generalize??

any advice or info is welcomed!

Just so you know, we do a lot of practice at home, when we are out, role play, talking about appropriate behavior, problem solving.he is great and has wonderful answers and ideaswhen we do this. We read social stories, books that use real pics of situations and how to respond, lots of explaining social rules, etc...and he is great during those times. BUT...once a kid comes over, or we go some place, or he plays with his sister...it is all out the window. He is also first to tell someone what they did wrong, broke a social rule, its ok to lose a game, meanwhile for him he cant do it!

It is extremely frustrating cause all that info is IN HIS HEAD, he just doesnt retreive it when needed!

He's thinking a lot!!

Communication with NT's and ASD are very different,

It's like if a whale learned words, you could understand what the whale's trying to say, but the empathetic feeling of sharing a thought or emotion just ins't the same,

It's not the same at all, but in similar ways, the dog whisperer relates to how to communicate with ASD and people in general,

sorry, I wish I could have re-worded this better :s

My son is the same, and what I've been told is that he cannot generalise, so what we have to do is provide as wide a range of contexts for him in which to apply the skills he has been taught.

Yes, it is very frustrating, and it can be really hard to see him behave one way with one group of people or in a particular location, and then for all that he knows to fizzle away to nothing with different people or in a different place.

It will get better as he is exposed to more experiences and contexts, but to him each one is new and the rules that applied before don't apply now so you have to go back to go forward each time. So it does take longer, but you and he will get there.

Have you tried Socratic communication ( link) ?

I was like that too. The closest I can get to explaining how it was and still sometimes is for me is this. Have you ever been in a situation where someone did something either so offensive or so shocking that you were at a loss for words and just mumbled the first thing that came into your head or nothing at all, then later on had a perfect comeback? There was a Seinfeld episode where George talked about always coming up with the perfect comeback later. It's like that, but all the time. In any actual situation, I would feel all this pressure to perform, to come across the right way, etc. Even when it was a nothing situation it still felt like performing classical piano at Carnagie Hall in front of thousands. It's not that he's not thinking, it's that he's under so much self imposed pressure that he's frozen and goes for whatever his default setting is. What helped me learn to be more "normal" in every day situations was learning to relax in them. Even though he may not feel nervous, his mind could very well go into nervous mode. Relaxing and taking away the pressure was the only way that I was ever able to do it. Once I was able to relax in situations, that ability spread and I stopped the strange behaviors related to the freezing.

_________________
I'm giving it another shot. We will see.
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I typically use bold text when Im angry....are you angry?

If I had a parent who was angry with me and telling me to use my head and THINK when I was doing everything I could to do so Id be off too. We do think all the time...sometimes we are thinking so hard that we have no idea what is going on around us.
I remember being told several times things like "what were you thinking?" or "where is your head?" (that one made me think the person was completely stupid and I got in serious trouble when I was like 5 or 6 and I said "right here" and pointed to my head.

I know its frustrating when they dont think things through before they do them. I wish my son was thinking before he went off his Bi Polar meds and got so depressed that went back to Heroin. One little needle and my 6 foot 4 inch 200 lb son is gone forever! My son had early onset Bi Polar but he had the same problem lacking common sense. He knew what he wanted, he knew what he was supposed to do but it was hard for him.
I think if he could have gotten more help, if they would have started him on medication and therapy before he had already started self medicating. He was in pain and they did nothing but belittle me and him.

I would consider more therapy for my Auties to help them to remember. There is also a program I just found called iPrompts, it works with the iPhone, iPad, iPod and iTouch. You may try to look that up, it helps kids remember what they need to do. They say its good for Autism, ADHD, kids with behavioral and language problems and even NT kids.

I am not angry at my son, nor do I EVER ask him why he dosent just think. That isnt waht I said in my post. I am asking HERE how to promote him to think becasue I know I cant follow him around forever and do all the thinking for him. I always have us reflect on what was done, and how it could be done better next time. Unfortunately, when he hits, bites or is mean, hurts someone, he gets a consequence. I would love for him to use all his great skills in the actual setting because it is not amatter of him not knowing,it is a matter of him not stopping andf thinking before he acts.

So far he has the info in there, I am wondering if there are any ways to help him bring the info out when he needs it, in real life situations. Not a small group setting where it is very structured and he is only there for 30 mins at a time. I want for him to be able to function in daily life without ME having to do the thinking for him. I always give him opportunity to do the right thing. if I see he is going a wrong route, I will give hints, prompts, etc...so HE has to come up with the answer or solution, and sometimes with promptshe can, sometimes he cant. BUT so far he still needs that or will react inappropriately without thinking.

It is frustrating to know that he has the answers in his head, itis somehow lost and he cant retreive it when needed.

I will keep looking and working with him and seeking ways to hlep HIM be in more control of himself.

As I said, taking the pressure off helped me. Explaining to him that if he messes up in a situation, it really doesn't matter that much, could help. Try reminding him to try relaxing and not caring that much about how he comes across in a situation. That sounds counterproductive, but it it's pressure to perform then it works. Once he's mastered the ability to relax in social situations, especially spontaneous ones, then stressing the importance of saying the appropriate thing can be stressed with greater results.

Just my experience as an aspie.

ETA; He may also realize that it looks a bit odd to pause and think of what to say or do. If you give him stall techniques, it could help. Kind of like that one candy bar commercial where someone is put on the spot and they shove the whole candy bar in their mouth to think while chewing and come up with the right answer, but of course not actually doing that. Filler words, throat clearing, dropping something and picking it up, anything like that to casually stall for time to think of the answer can help him get more comfortable giving answers that aren't right off the top of his head. Once he's more comfortable doing that, it becomes easier to come up with those answers.

_________________
I'm giving it another shot. We will see.
My forum is still there and everyone is welcome to come join as well. There is a private women only subforum there if anyone is interested. Also, there is no CAPTCHA.

The link to the forum is http://www.rightplanet.proboards.com

Hmm....something my brother once said to me. He grew up before they diagnosed. As and adult he's been diagnosed with adhd, but I believe he also has aspergers disorder (he's like a poster boy for it). "I felt like I was always in trouble for things I couldn't help."

I try to keep this in mind for dealing with my daughter who is very similar to him in personality. She's very bright and insightful. And in certain situations, does quite well. At home though is different. Someone who "holds it together" all day, needs a safe place to fall. For people with ASD this is especially true. Melt-downs happen at home. I've found from long experience that melt-downs and "thinking before you act" don't generally go together. When my daughter is in a state where literally anything could set her off...when she goes off, thinking isn't happeninng...what is happening is "unloading". You can have strategies to deal with this behavior, but until he reaches a point where maturity does kick in and he's able to do better with his emotions. We used to go over everything after (when calm had returned)...now i find her doing most of that. She's learned to review the situation herself....but she still can't always prevent the meltdown and she's 14. I think over time it will get better...

It helps that I understand all of this...because although she's improved a lot in her ability to cope and manage...as well as predicting outcomes...it wasn't always the case. I remember life with my brother and that up to a point in his life, he couldn't do better. But...he was always in trouble for doing/saying the wrong thing.

Social interactions happen so fast. Often there isn't time to stop and think.
It's like walking. Imagine you knew how to walk (lift one foot, move it forward, etc.) but you had to think about those instructions every time you took a step. Trying to think about the social rules is like that. Everyone else is on "auto-pilot" and the person with AS is following a mental manual.

His mind could be going too fast. Only therapy could help him to slow his brain down so he has the time to think as it happens. That's been my experience as a child.

so any ideas on how to get him to slow down and think?

I cant just sit back and watch him bite a kid, or scream in a kids face, or knock a kid down. Honestly, I would rather him stop to think, and even look silly stoping to think, then not stopping and biting someone. Casue a very tall 6 yo boy biting someone sure looks silly, as does a 6yo throwing himself onm the floor kicking and screaming. I feel it would be much more acceptable to have him pause to think of a better response and then follow thru with it. I am sure the other kids woould appreciate this pause too...lol. When we arent in the situation and we talk about or read about or look at pics about things that might evoke an aggressive response, he has beautiful answers as to what do. Just cant carry it over. I would love to learn how to help him access those responses that he knows, so he has much more pleasurable experiences.

We are sitting at the table and he has food all over his hands. He wipes them on my table and gets up and leaves. What do I do? Normally I will call him back and ask him if something looks like it needs to be cleaned? And then he will say OOPS, and clean his mess. BUT if I dont point things out he would never fix anything.

For another example. He is playing with a kid. He is tickling, and the kid is laughing. He will then procede to try and tickle the same kid for the next hour. The kid is now running away crying, but my son is continuing to try and tickle the kid, to the point of tackling him, holding the screaming and crying kid down and tickling him. I have given him much space and time to figure it out and stop. But he doesnt. I now either have the very understanding parent of that kid going to rescue her kid, or I go and intervene, again, by asking my son to look at the kid and how does he look, does he look like he is having fun or not? He will say NOT and then stop. BUT if I didnt point it out he would have kept going and going and I cant let him tickle a kid till they pass out to prove a point...I am not even sure he would understand then! Again, he KNOWS the right answer when someone points out the obvious to him, he just isnt able to do it himself yet.

anyhow, I am not sure how to remove the pressure, while keeping him and others safe. I am not sure how to enable him to think and utelize all the wonderful knowledge he has. This is my question!