oppositional disorder and aspegerger's

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Try reading the Bi polar child and see if any of it sounds like your son. Im not saying that he is Bi Polar but everything that you have just described sounds like my son. My son, at five, woke up in the middle of the night and started our house on fire.....twice. No one wanted to help me they only wanted to shun me. I even had a social worker tell me that I should "beat" him! I was told by everyone that it was my fault and I was a bad Mother, I was embarrassed and angry all the time. I know that you are frustrated and angry but none of that helps you, your son, or your other kids. My son was "the bad one" in our house and it made him so angry at the girls that he would attack them...this may explain your son trying to suffocate your baby. Please get help for you and your son...be proactive, dont give up. If you need to talk to me you can PM me. Trust me, I understand X 10 what you are going through. Even if you just need to vent. I always want to offer this to other mothers who are suffering like I did. You are down in the trenches now and cant see the other side but Ive been there and back and if there is anything I can do to help avoid the pain and suffering that me and my son have and do, Im perfectly willing to do so. Im sorry if this is too forward or presumptuous of me but if I could go back in time and make things different I would in a heart beat. I look at my 23 year old son now (I am crying as I type this) and it hurts me so much to see him and know how much pain he is in. He is battered on the inside just as much as the outside. His teeth are falling out, he has hepatitis C (as I mentioned), he has scars all over him from needles and MRSA abscesses. All I want for him is to be happy but I cant help him anymore, my chance was missed. Now all I can do is hope that he finds the strength to crawl out of the hole he is in.
Regardless of anything else I have said I do truly hope that you find peace for you, your son and the rest of your family.

Please understand that I am not blaming the parent for the child's behavior. I am pretty sure that the mother had no intention of antagonizing her child unjustly. And furthermore, it is unlikely that her demands are unreasonable and unusual. She is probably just trying to provide the basic guidance that she feels any parent should provide. And furthermore, I am sure that the child seems to be unreasonable and stubborn from the mother's perspective. As I said, I am not doubting her statement.

What I am saying is that trying to deal with this situation by making more rules, and using more punishments is like trying to fight fire with fire. And this is pretty ineffective because fire doesn't do a good job of putting out fire. And while your busy fighting fire with fire, your entire house is burning down around you because you keep throwing napalm everywhere. Simply put, if more rules, more threats, more punishments, and more hostility was going to fix the problem, then the problem should have been fixed a while ago.

I am reminded of a quote from Albert Einstein which says that insanity is defined as doing the same thing twice and expecting different results. I think it is pretty clear to say that the coercion and hostility based parenting techniques have proved ineffective. It is time to take a different approach and try something different if you want different results. And if that means opening the lines of communication, and getting to know the child better, then what is there to lose?

You are very wise way beyond your years Tracker...where were you when I needed you? Oh yeah, you were 6!!

I decided to throw in something else as I was derailed by my emotions in my last post. I have learned so much from my oldest son...yeah, learned the hard way, but I did learn. I also learned so much from my kids therapists and my own research. So many of the techniques I use with my younger kids who have Aspergers and Autism I could have easily applied to my older son (his psychiatrist thinks that he may also have Aspergers as well as Bi Polar).
I now have a new way of talking and responding to my kids. I realized that I never talked "to" my son when he was younger I only talked "at" him. When you get to a point where you have been humiliated and talked down by other people because of your sons behavior, you never know what he is going to do next and are still stung by his last stunt, and when you sick and tired of hearing your daughters scream as soon as you leave a room its hard to make an about face. The anger and frustration take over but I think everyone can make a change in their life, you just have to want it.
You are fortunate that your kids have been diagnosed and the services are out there, that is a great start. My son was not diagnosed until he was 13 (already using street drugs) and we did not find out we had Autism in the family until my now 5 year old was diagnosed at nearly 3 years old. We now know that not only am I an Aspie but my 8 year old son and my 18 year old daughter. Again, I hope you find the help and or answers you need.

From my expirence, "ODD" is just way to say "Your child is a brat and you are not a good parent." It's a made up diagnosis.

I always thought it was a label given to spectrum kids in bad situations because the situation doesn't look bad to NTs so they assume the kid is just acting out for no reason.

Oppositional defiant disorder, while can superficially be difficult to tell apart from AS, is different from AS.

Children with AS are prone to tantrums/melt downs because they have a different set of stressors than most people, and most people do not understand or respect this even when the child explicitly communicates that they need certain boundaries respected.

You also have to realize though that normal children do lose their temper, and teenagers especially. My NT sister was so difficult to deal with when she was a teenager, that my parents sent her to Europe (much to her delight) just to have some peace.



Again, normal children do this from time to time. Children with AS will usually only argue with adults they know, and usually only when provoked, over stressors, or when the child is caught up on some sort of technicality or misunderstanding. For example, a child with AS may argue vehemently that jaywalking is illegal and refuse to do it. However, the child with AS does not go out of their way to argue for the sake of arguing.



Again, children with AS may do this simply because of the different set of stressors. Children with AS often have a difficult time with transitioning from one thing to the next, and often suffer from hypersensitivity. A child with AS is not going to easily do something noxious to them.


Children with AS do not do this! At least any more than NT children, and probably less to tell you the truth. However a child with AS may unintentionally annoy someone with stimming, or talking about their special interest excessively.


This is not common among children with AS and would be a trait specific to the particular child, if a child with AS did tend to do this. However, a child with AS may point out technical violations, which technically does make something not their fault. For example, it would not actually be A's fault that B got in trouble because A told on him, because B was breaking the rules. So B got in trouble for breaking the rules, not for A telling on him.


Again, this is most teenagers. Children with AS may seem touchy or easily annoyed, but again, on closer examination one may find that a child with AS who seems to be easily annoyed is really just annoyed by things that go unnoticed and are mundane to most people, while the child with AS may very well not have an issue with most of the things that annoy most people. Again, for children with AS, it's all about having a different set of stressors, and hypersensitivity issues. There are also communication aspects, for example, the child with AS may not understand that what they are doing is annoying others because those individuals are not being explicit with the child.



Again, this is most teenagers, but not a specific trait of AS. I'm willing to bet that children with AS are actually less resentful than most children because when not being harassed or provoked by someone, and left to themselves, children with AS occupy themselves with their special interests, or absorbing themselves in their own world, where they can't be bothered to dwell on resentment.

This tends to change as the child with AS enters their teenage or adult years though...teenagers and adults with AS may very well be angry and resentful over bullying or misunderstanding parents and family members and so on. However I don't really thing this is always unfounded.


This is not a trait of AS. Even if someone with AS is spiteful, I think most are less likely than NT's to be vindictive because most of us are thinkers and not doers.

So in that I'm not familiar with the mentality behind ODD, I'm sorry I can't offer much insight.

I agree 100%!

For people with Autism and transitional difficulties, that's precisely what can mean.

See above.

The whole world is not an Autistic child.

DandelionFireworks, I am really enjoying the link you posted: our whole family has difficulty with this one (especially DH, who manages to get stuff done but is constantly berating himself for laziness - and believe me, he's not in any way lazy,) and it's really helpful to see the mechanisms explained.

We just got DS to clean his room - it took four hours, and it wasn't that messy to begin with. I should have prefaced this statement by saying I'd be fine with him having a messy room, except messiness makes him uncomfortable and unwilling to be in his room even if he has severe difficulty cleaning up (also a whole-family trait.)

We work with him for the whole time, usually tag-teaming because it's hard to keep from getting frustrated. We break the task down into smaller chunks for him (e.g. "Pick up the things near the door," or "pick up anything that is paper," sometimes pointing at things that need to be picked up) We remind him of his task when he gets distracted by a toy or book - usually this takes two or three reminders. We let him take breaks. We make sure the breaks aren't too long. On days where he is having real trouble, we will volunteer to "help," meaning pick up one or two things ourselves - but we are specific about exactly what we are and are not going to do. (There are also days where he's cleaned his room by himself and requested a reward before breakfast.)

We reward him with a half-hour computer game when he's completed the task...oh, and I should have mentioned earlier, we have a clear, reasonable definition of what constitutes a "clean room" that is reiterated (or that is modified specific to the needs of the day) before he starts the process and repeated if need be (e.g. "Nothing on the floor," "No toys on the desk," "Each toy in the labeled bin where it belongs.") I feel strongly that, despite the hassle, this is a worthwhile endeavor because, since he needs a clean room, he will need time to develop room-cleaning skills for himself.

I only have small children, so my contribution to this post is limited. But, I did want to say that my experience has been with my son that there are absolutely things he knows how to do sometimes and other times just doesn't have the motor planning to do. Or, like someone else suggested, has something scripted in his head that he can't shake when I ask him to transition to something else. And SOMETIMES, when he's got something scripted, he can let it go, but other times, when he's tired or stressed, he'll have a meltdown.

I've found it very difficult, myself, to figure out when he's just misbehavin'. So, there are times when I totally lose my cool with him and then have to remind myself that he's exhausted from the week/travel/whatever. My boy has actually been having meltdowns almost every time we go somewhere unfamiliar for the past week. This is a regression for him as I haven't seen him do it to this degree for about 18 months. In the moment I was very frustrated and felt like he was being oppositional, but in retrospect, I realize that we're coming off Winter break.. his routine has been totally thrown off, he's exhausted from travel, etc. etc. etc. I think he just got to the point where he couldn't hold it together anymore. I think it's like that day to day with certain skills.

One day, he'll have the ability to dress himself independently, then another day when he's on sensory overload, he just canNOT stop moving his body and concentrate on the task. At that point, I have to direct every step. It seems like he's being oppositional, but I actually think he just CAN'T right then.

The OT just pointed out to me the other day that the Sensory issues can be quite different day to day or even vary from times of the day. This was in response to the fact that I was complaining that he used to eat scrambled eggs, but that when I made them for dinner a week or so ago, he gagged on them. She explained that it could be that because it was evening, his sensory overload was too much to tolerate that texture. Usually, he eats eggs in the morning, when he's still fresh.

Anyway, just wanted to respond to the discussion in the thread about the idea of being oppositional when not completing tasks that they have previously been able to do. I think the sensory piece to the equation often times is very misunderstood. It's very confusing!