Physical and verbal agression

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No I did not read this one .. as I explained in the last reading is not my friend;) but I did attempt to read and got mostly through one called "picking your battles" and also "how to behave so your children will too!

I will see what I can do:) thanks

put that way yes it sounds very controlling.. wasn't the case tho I told him I knew he loved it and I wished I could get it for him but that 6 was the limit that perhaps he could hide it and bring his dad back the next day to get it.

Can you imagine if I gave either of the kids every single things they ever wanted ever single time... well they would grow up thinking that life is like that .... that you always get what you want and people always bend to your will and you can always be the one in control.. I imagine as an adult it would be a far harder lesson to learn than when your 10 that it just doesn't work that way (even if it's unfair)

I never implied you should do that What I do with my son is put him in front of the price tag and ask him if he can remember what i said about the price limit. I get a lot of "but but buts" ... and I hate to see him upset, crying or going into rages too, but still, no means no, if no starts meaning "maybe if you cry a little longer", nothing will ever work
Try tracker's method, it's a good theory, I'm just certain of the outcome if I tried it on my son though . Might work on other kids, like I said

oh i know you didn't was just clarifying and rambled ... yes i've tried a combo of his theory and that of the behavioralist but i think you guys hit this one on the head previously.. I think i just did not make the limit clear BEFORE going into the store so in his mind maybe it was wishy washy. Usually we talk about proper behavior and price limits and all that stuff before we ever go in.. this time i didn't (not sure it would have made a difference this time but maybe!! but then as tracker has pointed out this really was escalating long before monday .. all week it just steadily increased so maybe if i'd been paying more attention that would have helped quel it lots sooner..


you guys help so much btw:) so please tell me if I ever offend or irritate because it certainly isn't ever my intent!! ! so many things have been pointed out to me in the last few days on this thread and another that I really hadn't considered and which really could have helped and will help in the future...

One was the space and calming he might have been trying himself.. couple months ago he and his sister decided to share bedroom again so we moved everything and sleep and tv's are in 1, toys and computers in the other... but by doing this it took away his 'space' even tho this is how he wanted it.. ok so he started going into the bathroom and filling the sink and playing with his cars in there.. i just thought he was really pushing my buttons because we've talked so much about wasting the water and everything (no a sink of water isn't a lot but coupled with 3 baths and a hose outside left on it goes overboard every month)... anyway i talked to him last nite and he said his new 'space' was that and that was why he was filling the sink because he makes him feel good and calm and happy..

well not knowing that i was telling him to stop playing in the water and come out of the bathroom and bla bla bla point is that he was trying to find a way to feel good but i didn't see that and so i basically sabotized what might haved helped him

Here is a brief synopsis of The Explosive Child.

Step 1 - have the child explain their problem (you could be misunderstanding what's happening), and validate what they're saying
Step 2 - explain your perspective and make sure the child sees your side
Step 3 (the hardest!) - have your child come up with a fair solution

The saddest story in the book was about a little girl who refused to go to a movie with her family. They thought she was being a spoiled brat trying to ruin everyone's good time. In fact, the girl was afraid she would be frightened by the movie. She assumed everyone knew her fear and was trying to torture her, hence the meltdown. When the parents assured her that they would not allow her to see a scary movie, she was fine.

It seems really simple, but it's harder than you think. Just having his side heard and validated can stop my son's tantrum cold. He knows I'm on his side and I don't want him to be upset as much as he does. He sees me working to help him out. And he feels empowered when he finds a solution that's fair for everyone. It takes practice, but once it starts working you'll be amazed.

Good luck!

I do this for most situations.. not sure it's appropriate for an attack tho


that is sad:( we dont go to the movies cause it hurts williams ears and he doesn't like movies generally lol but i can't imagine being mean about it


yes same here.. when it's just a tantrum or just misbehavior the above has worked wonders here:)

I understand the point you are trying to make. Ignoring the situation and telling the child what to do isn't really going to help avert the meltdown, it is just putting you in the position of 'do what I say'. Its the same thing as telling the child 'you can't have the truck, now shut up and sit down'. But that wasn't the intent of my point. The idea I am trying to get across is that you need to get your child to calm down before you can resolve the problem. If I refer back to the 1-6 scale, her child seemed to be at 5 out of 6 during this whole discussion. And the problem is that while this is not quite meltdown mode, it is close enough to meltdown that the child's emotions are taking over, and the child isn't very rational.

Trying to reason and negotiate with the child when he is like this is unlikely to be productive. As Tskin said, she tried to talk with her son for half an hour, and during that time he was too wound up and emotional to consider what she had to say. She could have made the most well reasoned, articulate, and wonderful argument in the world for why her son couldn't have the toy. But when her son is at the 5/6 mark, he isn't going to hear any of it. All he will hear is 'you can't have the truck'. To put it simply, you need to help the child calm down before you can negotiate, because trying to negotiate when the child is on the verge of a meltdown isn't going to work.

So when they child gets all worked up like that, the first thing you need to do is help them to calm down and pull back from the emotional brink. Because no matter what you say or do, you aren't going to accomplish anything as long as your child is at that point. As far as how to make that happen, well that is somewhat the tricky part. In my previous post I gave a somewhat 'rosy' picture about how it is supposed to happen. In reality, you may need to take a more direct approach. Perhaps you might wind up with a situation like this:

Child: I want the toy!
You: I'm sorry, but you can't have it. It costs too much.
Child: BUT I REALLY WANT IT!
You: I understand that you want the truck, and I know it seems really important to you right now, but I think you are allowing your emotions to cloud your judgment.*
Child: IM NOT EMOTIONAL! I WANT THE TRUCK!
You: Ok, then you tell me, are you feeling tense right now? Are you breathing quickly? Does your engine seem to be running well, or are you getting excited?
Child: IM NOT EMOTIONAL! I WANT THE TRUCK!
You: Look, I know you don't think that you are wound up right now, but I can tell that you are. And do you remember the last time the incident where you got wound up at the store? You know that it doesn't work out. You don't get what you want, I have to threaten to call the police, and nobody is happy. That is what I am trying to avoid here. When we talked about the situation afterward, we agreed that it is important for you to remain calm so that things don't go badly. And you asked me to remind you of the importance of calming down. So I am asking you to take a few minutes to calm down before things get out of hand. Once you are calmer, we can talk about you getting the truck, and work out a compromise. But you must first calm down or else we are going to have a repeat of the shopping mall incident, and I am going to have to call the police.

*Saying 'I think you are allowing your emotions to cloud your judgment.' may be a bit too adult of phrasing. You may have to say something more like 'Your engine is running too high right now, and it is making you upset. You know you don't think well when you are upset'. As with this entire post, feel free to modify the phrasing to suit your own child and situation.

In this situation, you are being 'mildly' threatening in that you are telling him that if he meltdowns it isn't going to work out well for him. But it isn't the sort of threatening where you are antagonizing your child, it is more so just reminding him of the consequences of his actions. And yes, this is still telling your child what to do, but ultimately you are going to have to tell your child what to do anyways. If you tell him that he can't have the truck, then that is telling him what to do. If you tell him to calm down, then that is telling him what to do. If you tell him to hide the toy and come back for it tomorrow, then that is telling him what to do. Simply put, telling him what to do is unavoidable. However, what you can control is how you go about doing it.

You can be direct and confrontational and say things like, 'I said no and thats it! Now stop complaining about it'. But being confrontational and telling the child what to do is really only going to make them more upset which will prompt a meltdown (as you pointed out). You can be evasive and say things like 'Well, how about this, you can hide the toy, come back, etc." And by trying to negotiate with the child you can delay the meltdown slightly. But ultimately, as long as you are unwilling to give into their demands, and they remain at the verge of meltdown, it is only a matter of time until they lapse into meltdown (as Tskin observed). By trying to be supportive and calming, you at least have a chance of getting the situation under control without either giving in or having a meltdown.

The message you want to convey is something along the lines of 'I understand, I am taking your request seriously, and I am willing to negotiate; but you need to calm down first before we can negotiate because if you don't calm down then you are just going to have a meltdown, and neither one of us wants that.' It may not have a 100% success rate (especially when your child is not yet used to calming himself down and controlling his emotions), but it does work better then the alternatives. And whats more, it teaches your child the importance of remaining calm and not allowing his emotions to make his decisions for him. And by remaining calm, averting a meltdown, and negotiating an agreeable solution, the child gets to experience and understand that by controlling his emotions, he gets what he wants.

It may not be a perfect solution, but when you get to the point where you are trying to prevent an incoming meltdown, there are no perfect solutions. Which is why ultimately, the best solution is to avoid getting into that situation in the first place. In other words, your child needs to learn to remain calm, monitor, acknowledge, understand, and use his emotions properly so that he never gets into this position. And by helping your child to understand, and appreciate his own emotions, then he will be able to take control of them before they take control of him. As for how to do that, I could easily write a book; in fact I have . I spent a good 100 pages talking about how to deal with and handle emotions, and I don't think you want me to copy and paste the entire book. So, if your interested there, please go read it then come back with questions.

Does that make more sense?

Thank you this particular few lines summed it up for me I get it now:) And your right arguments that would have generally worked weren't getting through

Using the steps of The Explosive Child, this is how you might have taken on this tantrum.

1 Listen to your child - have him explain why he wanted that particular toy - sometimes my son comes up with a reason that stops everything right there, and we go with what he wants

2 Explain your side - he has a toy just like it, there's this other cool toy that he'd be able to play with for a longer time or would fit into one of his collections. Explain to him you are trying to teach him about a budget and looking at prices.

3 Let him make a decision, but tell him your absolute limit of $. He can choose to not get any toy, or to find another cool one that fits the $ limit.

Another thing that works for my son - to put something "on his list" for gifts for his birthday or the holidays or as a special reward.

Good luck!

read back what you discribe is exactely what took place and what i've been doing for 10 years. well i guess more like 7 or 8 since he simply cried non stop as a baby lol..

I do think in this particular situation a few things led up to it..

ediself pointed out it was toward the end of a big day he was likely tired lot of sensory added to that..

Tracker pointed out he escalated very quickly but while at that level it wouldn't have matter what I said to him.

Add to that I did not remember before entering the store to lay out the price, expectations ect. This time i mentioned it as we were walking toward the toys (maybe this step in itself was my downfall because i'm sure it was difficult to hear price talk while looking at the toys getting closer and closer).

so went about like this....
1. he explained. i love this truck mom look it's still in the package and the batteries work and the paint is perfect.
2. I explained.. oh wow william that is a great truck I can't believe you found it .. there's only one problem it's more than 6 and the limit is 6. Why dont you see if theres anymore trucks that you can get.
**now here he did start scanning the row as he was giving his argument again and i was also trying to help him find one and oops there's one there a red one. here look at this one it's perfect too and it's the right price.
**more argument add in tears and now begging but this is the perfect one i love it.
I know you love it william .. you could go and hide it if you want and bring your dad back tomorrow to get it but we can't get it today.
3. these are your choices. you can choose one that is in the price range (and go and hide this one) or you can get none of them it's your choice

realize it's been a week now so my words might be lil off here but that was the basic conversation add in lot of sympathizing on my part because yes i could tell he loved it and i would have loved to have caved to let him have it which is why i suggested hiding it... but giving in only makes his argument longer and stronger the next time. Plus when you have more than one child you give in for one you have to give in for the other and this could potentially get really expensive.

having said this it's a good suggestion:) i know this because it's how most of the upsets we have are scripted more or less.

the christmas idea i've used as well but with him it does not work lol works great for my daughter:)

One of the great tools in our current social skills class is called an "emotionometer" (it's all couched in spy gear and gadgets.)

The basic premise is to get your kids (sometime when they are NOT angry - it helps that this is a class outside of the home and they assigned this as homework, so DS isn't relating it to any specific conflict with me) to create a thermometer-type list for each emotion, with the top being explosive behavior, and the bottom being almost no feeling at all. They offered words, for instance:

Annoyed
Irritated
Angry
Irate
Explosive

Then, they have each child list what their BODY is doing at each phase. DS noted that his lips tighten up when he's annoyed, that he tends to clench his muscles and his fists at irritated, that he starts breathing heavily and yelling when he's angry, swearing and screaming when he's irate, and he might throw things or hit somebody when he's explosive. They did this for each basic emotion, happiness, fear, anger and sadness. What I learned from my son is HE CAN'T IDENTIFY HIS FEELINGS unless they're out of control. He just learned in this class that the tight mouth is something to look for - and we talked about how THAT is the time he might need to go calm down.

He also confuses one emotion for another; they did an exercise where they had to group phrases into feelings categories - everything to him was either angry or happy; he thought the afraid and sad thoughts were angry thoughts - which explained a lot about his explosive behavior, which seems a lot like your son's.

I don't think this is uncommon, since the intervention is specific to this deficit. At any rate, DS seems to be able to track cognitively what NT people do intuitively, so just going over this information has been extremely helpful to him (keep in mind that they went into extreme detail: where your eyebrows are, your heart rate, your ability to think clearly, your breathing, etc.) He has been a lot calmer recently - I think some of what was upsetting him is that he hadn't been able to predict emotions, himself - having a road map to the lesser versions at least gives him a chance to prepare.

Let's put it this way: if your whole world centers around predictability, and you can't even predict your OWN behavior, wouldn't you be frustrated?

I've skipped most of this thread so forgive me if my comment is totally irrelevent.

But I did catch something about a truck and a price.

When my son was 4 or 5, at the suggestion of a friend, I started giving him an allowance. Purely toy money. He could save it, he could spend it. Whatever. It all went into something we called the mommy bank and if we were going to be passing by any shops we checked the balance before leaving. To keep things simple he paid to the nearest rounded dollar (3.99 is 4, 3.29 is 3) and I paid all the sales tax; none of his money had to be used for sales tax.

Within weeks every last fight about toys STOPPED. He made some bad choices a few times but, overall, he learned quickly that if he didn't leave with anything today, next week he might actually be able to get what he really really really wanted.

He often had to ask me to do the math for him in the store, but the overall concept was something he quickly adopted.

Now, we did sometimes make short term advances if there was something special and unique or at a really good price, and I knew from previous shopping trips that it was high on his list, but he also learned fast that he didn't like not getting new money for weeks straight afterward. My daughter was harder to cure on the advances, but she, too, figured out that it wasn't smart to borrow too much (advances always had to be repaid before any new purchase could be made).

I'm always surprised to find out that most people don't do this. It worked so well for us. We just took what we figured out we'd been spending in stupid toy purchases anyway (all those $5 items you get talked into on a regular basis) and turned it into allowance. Soooo much better, I can't begin to tell you. It puts the child in control and that went over perfectly with my AS son.

What's really unusual is that we cut back the allowance when they got older. This is, after all, TOY money, and big kids stop caring about constantly having new things, even if the average price does go up, and we want to keep control of purchases like cell phones and computers. Just yesterday I asked my now 13 year old son if he felt he was getting enough money to stay comparable to his friends and he figured that yes, he was, even though all the families do the money in very different ways. He likes our system.

what you discribed previous to what i quoted here was somthing i think would work to help william learn the actual feelings of the words..someone on another thread or maybe this one had suggested this same thing only not with an example how to do it ... thanks;)

Yes it would be very upsetting if you never saw it coming just blew and then got in trouble for what you didn't really have control over!! Also if you weren't able to explain how you felt ahead of time because you didn't really know that "the rapid heart beat" was a clue to anything. it's no wonder he's snapping at me so much lol

Today when he came home he left the door open so I yelled (from another room) make sure you close the door honey) he screams back in that i'm ready to hate you today tone "I will" i was like ouch ok he's in a mood haha but today instead of letting his therapists climb up his rear first thing I made them wait two hours to let him cool down.... when he finally did he said he had a hard day at school!!

we do this as well my daughter has nearly $100 saved and wants to pay for a day at the waterpark for all of us lol William i'm afraid spends his as quick as he gets it. They earn $5/ week as long as they attempt to make their beds daily, put away their clothes 1/week and pick up their toys at the end of the day.

this particular truck situation was above the allowance it was a reward kinda thing for doing so well at the library that turned into a nightmare


lol you made me laugh here

I hope that your son gets the help that he needs, to control his anger before it gets to be too much of a problem.

I do too.. this is why it's been so distressful for me cause he's only getting bigger and stronger.. if he doesn't get hold of this soon it could turn into somthing much more serious