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Its really difficult to get a routine established once your child has become used to treats. Our youngest son used to scream and scream for sweets every single day after school and would become absolutely impossible to manage when I said no. Its much easier to give in but that's fatal because it only makes it worse in the long run. I think it actually took a year or longer...quite a bit longer before he finally realised he was only going to get treats on a Friday and at the weekend and stopped being a nightmare after school.

Good luck!

My dd5 is the opposite. Indifferent or often oppsoed to anything that is not related to a special interest. If I get her something related to one of those, she will love it. Otherwise she literally says "I don't want this" and chucks it on the floor. In fact she is so... "rude" or "thankless" when it comes to gifts that on her birthday she literally threw a "fancy nancy" book for her tag pen into the garbage because she "has no interest in fancy nancy". Obviously, I fished it out. I tried to re introduce i to her last week and she flipped out over it again saying she has no interest in it and never will. Right now if it's not a game on my phone/kindle or related to "brave" (the movie) she wants nothing to do with it really. I have lways been able to take her through the toy section of any store with no problems. She doesn't even want to play with anything or linger, unless there is a display with a button that causes lights to flash or something, then she will want to push the button over and over, but won't want the toy related to the display.

When it comes to food, she understands that treats are finite fortunately. She gets one serving of ice cream, one piece of candy etc.. she might ask once or twice for more, but as long as she was already in a pretty good mood will drop it. If she's had a hard day, she might meltdown on us, but then again if she had a bad day she was probably going to meltdown over something anyway.

I could see this going the other way though, easily. I think we just got somewhat lucky in this regard.

This drives me crazy.... We have a constant struggle with this issue. We have had it to an extent with both boys AS/NT... The NT kid learned how to stop driving me crazy sooner....but they both did it.

When the boys were little, I would always answer "should I put this on your list so we don't forget it?". The "list" was the birthday / Christmas / save up list. I read somewhere that you don't want to say no but rather work on how to say yes.

As they got older, it is definitely all about how to work to earn what you want....

We also will sometimes use (this mostly before the grocery store)...."you get one yes, think carefully about what it will be". This limits the crap he wants to buy. Often he will trade his one item 20 times before we leave the store, but it usually has him focused and not nagging me.

It sounds pretty normal to me-not necessarily autism-related.

Could you try organising some casual volunteering for people who are less fortunate? Try taking her to do some helping out at a homeless shelter. I think opportunities to do this sort of thing come up moreso in the Christmas season. Alternatively, you could try getting her to help with gathering up some of her old toys and clothes and donating them-that seems more practical with a 5 year old to me. Maybe 5 is too young for the message to get through this way, but it could broaden her perspective a bit and give her more of a sense of appreciation.

This may work itself out better once she is able to understand limited resources vs. unlimited wants.

Does she have a sense about money, that things cost money, that you and/or your spouse must earn money and that you only get a certain amount?

Does she understand health concerns? (too many sweets are not healthy etc.)

I would lay the ground work on these issues when you are not in the middle of dealing with anything. Sometimes reason works, but they have to understand the rationales. We haven't had these exact same issues, but I found that when kids (especially spectrum kids) understand the reasoning behind something, they accept things better.

Feel free to ignore this if it is unhelpful or if you've already tried it, but what my mom did with me when I was a kid was that she would tell me before entering a store, "Remember, LtlPinkCoupe, today is only a "looking day," and that seemed to work pretty well. I think I did better when the anxiety of "will she say yes or no if I ask for this" was taken away by knowing what to expect. I've always had issues with anxiety and never coped well with uncertainty.

Thanks for all of your replies, we have tried explaining many times about how we have to work to earn the money to buy things etc and we have told her about how lucky she is and been very specific to help her understand but no matter how many times we go over it being as clear as we can it doesnt sink in. Today has been an awful day with her behaviour regressing back to its worst Every minute of today has been hard work! Im hoping this will get better with time.

I'm sorry to hear you've had such a horrible day. I know exactly what it's like. My youngest son had so many bad days I thought it would never end. It took him a few years to improve but he is a million times better now.

I hope things will improve for you all soon.

So sorry you're having a tough time. Those days when you feel like things are going backwards really, really suck.

In my experience, parenting a kid on the spectrum is very often two steps forward, one step back or something similar - on the awful days, sometimes it helps to keep the big picture in mind and remind yourself how far you've come over time. It is very hard to do, though.

I was the opposite when I was little. I never wanted anything, not even food.