Dealing with temper and violence

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I laugh at a lot of things, including things that probably aren't funny, but I find a twisted sense of humor comes in handy in life. There are also many times where no amount of humor helps, of course.



Yep. Are we raising the same little girl??! ! She likes to use "frustrated" & "aggravated" a lot as well. If I had a penny for every time I've heard "Leave me alone! You're aggravating me!" followed by a defiant "Hhhmph!" I would be so rich!

Well that also sounds just like my 12 year old , her favourite words are "Leave me alone!!" and she puts her hands over her ears whenever she's heard enough and says "I'm not lisssstennning" , or "blah blah blah, whatever!"

The "blah, blah, blah" drives me INSANE! One day I tried it on her after she had done it to me and then went to add something else I piped up "blah, blah, blah"! Needless to say, it didn't go over very well, lol. When she got mad at me for doing it I said "It's not very nice, is it?"

Yup, we get that, too - during the school year, at least. I've found that the hands over the ears can seem like an insurmountable obstacle. I think some of it is that he knows he did something wrong, he just has no idea why - and doesn't want to admit that the reason might be that he has different needs than other kids.

Hitting means instantly going to his room until he's calm, and then other consequences just happen automatically, without me mentioning them (no TV, no candy for the day - we just don't turn it on, or don't bring it out.) At some point when he seems open to hearing it, we reiterate the consequences (good to do this at the counselor's - he doesn't like to blow up there.) This started out as nigh on impossible (leading to all kinds of struggles that made things worse) but has gradually improved. If he won't go, then I leave the room, or I send everyone else out, leaving him alone. We also installed a lock on the outside of his door (at his counselor's suggestion) and have only had to use it once (I have never locked him in for more than about fifteen minutes, probably less - just until he's calm, which usually happens fairly quickly when he has time alone)

Has anybody tried writing down what they wanted to say and leaving it in their kid's room or sending it under the door? Maybe with some direction at the end so you know it's been read (e.g. "after you have read this and calmed down, please let me know by opening the door to your room.)

I imagine I'd receive the note back in about a million pieces, lol.

now i am not a parent but i myself have aspergers syndrome and alot of times it seems like we have control over them (ie.;the complexity of the tick, or the timing) but alot of times we don't i have tics like that too. when i was younger i used to bang my head because for some reason i liked the feeling of it. and our temper stems from the fact that we are living in a society dictated by people who (no offense intended) are much less, you know, then we are for instace a independent scientific study showed that when a person on the spectrum and off the spectrum were asked "would you buy a lottery ticket if you had a 40%chance of winning, or a 60% chance of losing"the person on the spectrum realized that it was the same question. but back to the topic we are not angry we just get frustrated this world isn't ment for us even thought in many aspects it was created by us.

And, yes, I hear "why don't you just leave me alone" a lot.

It's almost a relief to hear other parents relate these kinds of behaviors. Her therapist seems to think that its because we don't set boundaries - which is far from true. My feeling is that she totally misunderstood Lindsey's reacton/behavior one day when she was asked to leave the therapists office for being non-cooperative and yelling. The therapists comments was "when I told her to leave, she got a look on her face like no one had ever said anything to her like that before". Uhmmm, yeah, right. If I had a penny for everytime I've sent that child to her room to cool off (and then had to physically move her about 95% of the time), taken away TV, or made her leave an event/not let her go, I'd literally be rich. She has many boundaries and rules - and follow throughs. It just doesn't make a big difference to her.

I find it interesting that much of the advice out there is about "strictness" or lack thereof. It took my husband and I a long time to find people who understood that it wasn't just us. That's not to say that our parenting couldn't improve, or that we aren't paying the price for some mistakes and bad choices, but that there is much more to it. What I find frustrating about the too strict/not strict enough advice-givers is that it often comes in opposites, e.g.: "You're letting him get away with that?" or "Oh, he's so sensitive, you're really too hard on him." Sometimes these two extremes will be spoken by the same person in nearly the same breath (this is usually when the advice is unsolicited, of course.)

It is very, very difficult to parent a child that falls into the spectrum and I'm finding that the most difficult (and frustrating) part is to figure out when my child needs me to stand firm, and when I need to be flexible; of course we seem "too strict" to parents whose kids don't need the kind of predictability my son needs - or "not strict enough" when he loses it in public.

As for consequences - I think all kids need to be prepared for when their everyday decisions will have consequences, but I don't think my son responds to them in the same way that NT kids do; I think of it more as acclimating him to the idea than the standard parenting technique of operant conditioning. We don't get "results" from consequences, either, but they give us something to talk about.

Hello there

Ignoring the somewhat obvious troll above me <referenced troll posts since removed>, I would like to add to this discussion. I have been following this thread for a while, but unfortunately, giving adequate advice in this thread is somewhat hard due to the complexity of the issue. I have also been busy finishing up my book.

That being said, my book is now done, and it goes into great detail about things like handling meltdowns, dealing with problems, effective discipline, etc. If you are still looking for information about how to handle the problems that you are dealing with, then I believe my book may be of great use to you.

It is a free book, and you can download it by just clicking the link in my signature. It should really help explain things, help you understand what is causing the problem, and what you can do about it.

Thank you, Tracker - I've only read the title (love) and first few pages and can already tell this book will be a help to me.

Exactly. I find myself questioning myself at times but I realize that at the end of the day there really isn't any standard formula for raising Aspie kids. What works for one, doesn't work for another and certainly I've found that what works for my daughter one day, may have no effect on her the next. So many things come into play with this - such as what kind of a day she's had, if she's tired, hot, hungry, bothered by clothing rubbing her wrong, etc It all adds up and there are so many variables that it's not always easy to predict her actions or reactions. When she begins to meltdown I'm sure from the outside looking in others see a misbehaving child - but knowing her, and seeing her from "inside" I know better. I know that a lot of the time whatever launches her into her meltdowns or moods, is rarely what the meltdown/mood is about. So, punishing her for it becomes a useless endeavor since it just adds to and compounds the problem. Nothing is solved that way.

She does get timeouts and loss of privileges when I feel like she has been intentionally hateful or disrespectful, which isn't that often. I do see an increase in this for the first week or two after she comes home from her fathers visitation times. I assume this is frustration coming out of her. I point out to her that it's okay to feel xyz, but it is not okay to DO abc. I am not the strictest parent in the world, but I WILL NOT put up with intentional hatefulness and disrespect.

My son had terrible long and violent rages that became progressively worse as time went on. I eventually had a choice, put him in the phospital or try medication. This was pre-diagnosis. He started taking Abilify. He is doing very well on 3.5 mg.

School is also creates an enormous amount of anxiety for my son. He has only been on the medication since June. I don't know what will happen after school starts.

I do not think meds are for everyone and I don't think it is warranted in your case, but that is your choice. In our situation, my own personal criteria for being OK with medication was only if my son was a danger to himself or others and no other intervention worked. We got to that point and I had to make a hard decision.

DD is medicated to the gills, so to speak. I say it jokingly, but it's not been an easy decision at all. It was a last resort, and did help. She's currently taking Risperdal - worked great for about 9 months, dosage has been upped twice now (she's now at 1.5 mg 2x daily) and the pdoc added Topamax about 5 weeks ago to help contain the outbursts. She does de-escalate a lot more quickly now, but she's still not doing as well as she was before when the Risperdal was working well. However, I'm not really all that interested in doing more meds - she doesn't seem to be dulled or having cognitive issues, but I'm really concerned about the amount of meds (she also takes Ritalin for ADHD behaviors).
We also struggle immensely with where to draw the line between "is this something that she can control" or is this "something she's doing on purpose" - sometimes, it's very hard to tell. We're getting set-up to work with a behavioral intervention specialist - hopefully that will help to shed some light on everything.

I don't know if this is helpful or not, but I know with my son, things certianly seem deliberate: his movements aren't random, he's able to leave the room, get something to use as a weapon (this fortunately only happened once or twice and he didn't use it, thank God) he's able to speak (although he can't really hear) and talk about the situation.

However, as was mentioned earlier, giving in to him doesn't solve the problem and sometimes makes it worse (not that we give in to tantrums, but in situations where it's a misunderstanding and he's actually getting what he wants in the end, we've seen things get worse) I think that's a good benchmark.

I also don't like the premise of no control - not because I think they have control in the moment, but because I don't want to communicate to my son that he's helpless. I think he can eventually learn to take charge of himself before he gets upset. While this is a skill that children don't have and that takes years to learn, it is something they need to take responsibility for, and I take coaching my son through this as part of my job as a parent.

For instance, as a bipolar, I can't necessarily do anything about a manic fit at its height - but if I'm in one, I chose not to take care of myself and to ignore both the triggers and the warning signs of an oncoming episode. I am very careful to pay attention to what happened so I don't do it again. It did take years of therapy to recognize what was going on, but it can be done - I think for AS people, too. It's difficult to communicate this, though, when your child refuses to admit anything is different about him.

Of course, children don't have as much control over their environment and their choices as adults do, and this is where the fine line comes in: we aren't inside their heads, and don't know their triggers, nor can we really tell what's really overwhelming, what is slightly overwhelming, and what is just mildly annoying for them, especially since, from what I understand, small things tend to snowball. For instance, my son will overreact to socks - however, by gently insisting, we were eventually able to get soccer socks on him without too much trouble (before we decided soccer was a bad idea for other reasons) Not so with nylon shirts, they send him into a frenzy. Very hard to tell when we should insist gently or when we shouldn't - and I think developmentally, he isn't able to differentiate, either.

Yep, L did soccer too, for one seaons................from watching soccer, I know things sometimes get out of hand.....but, fighting with one of your own teammates during a match doesn't go over well.......

You win some, you lose some, I guess. We've continued with horseback riding and have added swimming........much easier, and much less conflict!

Swimming seems to work for us, too!