Unstructured Time "Boredom" and acting out

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DS is struggling with boredom - struggling to the point that he's regularly throwing things in the air and stomping out of the room when we don't have 100 percent of his time structured into playdates or with TV or something else. He recently told me that at school, when he gets "bored," he goes and hides in the bathroom.

This gets considerably worse when we have a day off school - rather than relaxing and taking a breath from his very real struggles there, he gets much, much more tense and upset. I do my best to make sure we don't have days at a time with nothing, but I can't schedule something for every minute of every day.

I can't get out of him what "bored" really means, either - I mean, who sits in a smelly school bathroom by themselves when they are bored? Isn't that significantly more boring? I am certain there is some underlying issue here, but he can't articulate it.

Yet, at home, when time is specifically unstructured and he could do whatever he wanted to in his room full of toys, books, and art supplies, he starts to freak out about being "bored." If I come up with a project, he gets angry because it is "boring." Usually getting his day's allotment of TV works, but today all the shows on Netflix were "boring."

Any ideas?

Apparently your son feels most secure when he has a program to follow, like a cam in a mechanical device. You need to find ways to help keep him following an organized schedule for just about everything for now. Once he is older you may be able to gradually get him used to doing some stuff on his own, without a formal schedule, when he is on his own time.

For now though, sit down with a pad and pen with your son and ask him what sort of things he would like to do when not doing "must do" things like school and chores. If you haven't started him on chores, you should. Keep it simple, and not too many, but have it as part of his organized schedule on non school days. After you have found out from him what things he would like to do in off time, you can schedule those things, too.

I think this is true, but the problem is that he also fights the structure like mad (e.g. hiding in the bathroom when "bored.") I have, in the past, tried to scheduled out every minute of his day, or just to keep a visual routine - and it doesn't seem to solve the problem, it just gives him specific things to fight about.

I am inclined that "bored" means more than one thing - and I would agree that lack of predictability is a big problem for him, but I have this feeling that there is more to it than just that...any other ideas?

Is it possible that your child is using the word "boredom" when he means " frustration?"

My daughter uses "bored" to indicate anything she finds difficult or doesn't want to do. Cleaning her room is boring. I am making her bored when I reprimand her for putting nails in her mouth. She is bored when it's time to get dressed for school.

My son is exactly the same,! !!
He wants all our attention all the time...We dread the: Dad....can we do something?! This will sometimes be after we had a whole day doing things together! He zooms in into my husbands time! It makes us very tired....

I came to the conclusion that this boredom is because of his inability to think creatively or lack of fantacy play.....also his literal use of things.....I also realized that even though he is very clever he struggles with understanding the duration of time.....so having nothing to do in his mind feels forever...the OT said this is part of abstract planning problems.

When he is well slept, less anxious...he doesnt struggle that much with boredom.....

Re hiding in the bathroom....that really sounds like sensory overload.......

WIth my kids, I would say "I'm bored" generally translated to "I can't do what I want to do." While there may not be specific idea in mind, they have run through the viable options and aren't interested at the moment in any of them, or more likely have become frustrated already by several of them and are feeling trapped.

Any tools on how to manage that .... Not sure. I really play it by ear, sorry.

My son can sometimes be led into doing something self-calming like pacing or taking a walk, but my daughter sometimes just needs to be grumpy and whinny, and trying to knock her out of it is counter productive.

When I was younger, I often said that I was "bored". Whenever I said that I was "bored", I meant that I was not able to focus on my special interests to the level required for special interest enjoyment due to external factors. This inability to focus on my special interest prevented my brain from going into the hyperfocus happy state and stuck it in the unfocused crappy state, which, to me, was "boredom". It was very uncomfortable feeling. Around people, it is hard to focus on one thing, so the crappy state persists. Another thing that caused a switch from happy to crappy was when the happy was too happy, like if I had just read a book that was too good and made all others look bad in comparison. Then, there would be a period of unfocused "boredom" until I found the next thing to glom onto.

This may be totally unrelated to your son's problems though. This was just my usage of the word "bored" when I was little and was very limited in expressing internal states of mind. I never used it to mean that I did not think that I could do something. Reading the posts here, I was surprised to see that, because I never thought like that before.

btbnnyr, this does sound like a distinct possibility. How do you handle this as an adult?

For me, the solution seems to be to do nothing and wait for the boredom to pass, aka my brain to reset itself.

It might be helpful to think of it like this:
During special interest happy time, your brain gets into special interest mode and spends a lot of time attending to that one thing. Doing this causes the little blobs in your brain to refine themselves into specific shapes that grow more and more like each other, until all the blobs have become the same specific shape that can only respond to a specific aspect of the special interest, like lock to key, or one specific piece of information about special interest topic. Everything else is automatically rejected, so you can't glom onto anything to do, because none of the keys fit. Meanwhile, you are not allowed to use the key that does fit, maybe because you don't want to use it again (even autistic children have limits of repetition), maybe because you want to find a new key that fits and is as awesome as the old key (even autistic children seek novelty), but nothing around fits, so you are searching for something and failing to find it and unsettled in your "in-between" state. The feeling is similar to the short-term in-between transitioning uncomfortable feeling you would get if you had to stop your special interest to take a shower, except it lasts longer. It's like blah meh clutter blah. Over time, if you do nothing, then the specific shapes will relax and collapse back into random shape-shifting blobs, and at that point, you are ready to glom onto the next thing, because the blobs are flexible and will accept whatever happens to be around as keys. Once you have found another key, the transitional period will be over, and you will feel happily settled again. Maybe this is why your son is spending time in the bathroom doing nothing and rejecting things that you suggest? Because incoming stuff is very uncomfortable to deal with during this "in-between" time, and it is better to have nothing than something impinging upon the shapes that just need to reset themselves.

Unfortunately, for school-age children, they have to conform to school activities and do their homework and take tests and such, i.e. a rigid schedule. It's ironic that autistic children are known for being rigid, but many actually require extra flexibility at school. It's like there's a time when the kid needs lots of structure (happy state), and there's another time when he needs flexible do-nothing time (crappy transition), but schools are not flexible enough to accommodate these needs. It's like an overarching biggest-picture flexibility is missing, so the kids and parents and teachers struggle with these natural swings between states of mind for autism.

I know what you mean about behavior going down during unstructured time. Lately, I've been busy reorganizing my website to incorporate material from my YouTube educational channels. YouTube decided to change channel designs, and I have way too many video clips on my channels for the new channel design that I'll have to go with.

Anyway, the kids have been having more unstructured time lately, as well as less supervision, and it is starting to show in the form of increased anxiety, fighting, making a mess of the house, whining, etc. People have actually mistaken my playroom for a home-based daycare center classroom, and we have picture books galore, Internet subscriptions, CDs, DVDs, etc.

They are still doing pretty well because they have so much stuff and play well together when they are not fighting. However, I know that I'm going to have to get them back on more of a structured schedule again soon and put some of my own stuff on the back burner.

It is not like I normally keep them occupied with contant parties or anything like that, either--more lessons with me, educational games with me, and reading with me instead of computer-based lessons or reading to themselves or free play with each other. I try hard to make things interesting, but if f I'm working with my kids, they get pushed to do as much as possible.

Is your son an attention seeker? My son is not really self aware enough to say he is bored very often, but I often used that word as a child to mean, "play with me." He might want attention. I wasn't a really bad attention seeker, so when my mom would tell me she was busy, and to entertain myself, I generally would, without too much push back.

At school, if you have an attention seeker, he may not be happy because he doesn't get personal attention unless he misbehaves, and barring positive personal attention, maybe he wants to be alone with his thoughts in the bathroom, away from all the boring stuff, the sensory bombardment, and the temptations to get negative attention by misbehaving..

At home, when you have stuff you need/want to do, I agree with others that having special interest stuff he can do on his own to distract him, is a really good idea. If special interest stuff doesn't work, (because what he really wants is attention) try to give him something special interesty to do that is time intensive to "surprise" you with. This might buy you a little time to do your stuff, and then reward him with lots of praise about how careful and patient he was to do a good thorough job on it.

My son is extremely attention seeking and it can get hard to manage, sometimes.

Also, your son is about 12, or so, right? (I might remember wrong) If so, I think I was bored a lot at that age, so some of it may be normal for his age and just exacerbated by other factors.

Yes, Mama and I are in the same spot.

It's true, ASDMommy, my son's an attention seeker - but he demands attention I can't give him, for various reasons (anything I want to do: boring. Anything he wants to do: costs lots of money, involves driving cross-country or breaking a house rule. When he doesn't get whatever preposterous thing he's dreamed up, mini-meltdown! We spent a day last year with him sobbing in his room because we couldn't buy a Red Panda.)

We got through today (off of school) somehow, I wish I could connect the dots and figure out what happened to make it better, but he was a lot less cranky about the unstructured time and busied himself reading comic books...but those days are not common.