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Thanks, I really hope we can all manage to find ways to help our kids.

I understand about the consequences coming to you, instead of your son. It would be the same for me. Also, if we were late regularly, I'm pretty sure the staff would form an opinion about me, which is incorrect. People, despite what they say, just don't understand what it's like and I'm not willing for anyone to accuse me of showing a lack of care about my daughter's education, as this couldn't be further from the truth.

My daughter doesn't respond in the expected manner to consequences anyway, never has. My husband used to tell her that if she didn't do X, he'd take away a toy. So, as usual, she didn't do X and he'd take away the toy. Instead of then doing X, to get the toy back, she'd focus on the toy and how she wanted it back. She'd then scream, have a tantrum and then meltdown. She never did X. I soon realised that this was not the way to go, but my husband continued with this form of discipline, despite it just resulting in worse behaviour and never making her decide to just do X. He hasn't done it since we went on a course for parents of kids on the spectrum. As a result of this lack of action/consequence awareness, we really haven't got any discipline methods to resort to. She's not what I would call 'naughty', so I've never felt action/consequence discipline to be appropriate for the things that she was doing/not doing. The consequences, in every day life, just don't seem to affect her in the right way. She gets really upset about what has happened, but can't get into the mindset that it only happened because of something she did or didn't do.

This is actually a really good description of the deficit, isn't it? It's hard to say why in an autistic child - could be that she didn't understand that if she did X she'd get the toy, could be that she is rigidly perseverating on the toy, could be couldn't do X and can't express that...it takes detective work to figure it out. However, an NT child would respond by immediately doing X, right?

We used to do this with DS - one of our hard-and-fast rules was (and I suppose still is, though it isn't necessary any more) if you hit us with a toy, toy goes away. I don't know how long it took him to connect the two, but eventually he did because losing the toy was so awful for him. We had years of meltdowns like you describe, but eventually he did make the connection.

That being said, I'm also not sure that this is a good methodology for anything but incredibly high-stakes stuff. However, you do have something that works - can you modify it in some way to get her attention but that doesn't cause screaming (e.g. "I will hold the toy until X," or "you can only play in the living room with the toy until x") I found a lot of time, if we backed waaaaay off on the "consequences" with DS to the point that they seemed silly (when viewed through the lens of an NT child) we did better. The idea is just to get her attention, not to "punish."

I used to tell friends about how she reacted to this and they could not understand what I was talking about, probably because their kids would immediately alter their behaviour, to avoid the consequences. I think others thought I wasn't being forceful enough and gave up too soon, even though the screaming/tantrum/meltdown would go on for over an hour. She's actually VERY attached to toys, although we didn't realise the extent of this when she was younger. She personifies them and we have a hoarding problem too, so thinking about it now, the emotional attachment was always too huge for toys to be used in this way.

I'll try the 'I will hold the toy until X'. I had a bit of success with something similar last week, in fact. She used to want to take a toy absolutely everywhere, including into after school classes. She goes to an athletics club and a toy there is just a distraction to her, so she doesn't get to take them in. But, last week was her first week back after the holiday and she was feeling like she needed a bit of comfort (she loves the class, so it's not usually an issue). She had a rubber lizard with her and was adamant she was taking it in. I cradled it in my arms, like a baby. Her face lit up and she agreed to let me keep it for her, immediately. So, if I can do something similar, while she does her tasks, maybe we'll get somewhere.

Right - it sounds like from what you describe that all of my guesses were off the mark - she is concerned about the TOY. DS has that, too - his toys can be very real to him. I think this is a good idea - it takes her mind off of concerns for the toy (so taking the toy away would be tantamount to taking away a baby and setting it on the shelf until X, you can see where the meltdown happens) but may also help her pay attention that there are other things she needs to do. You've got to handle it carefully, like you did in your example.

Alternately, something that may work as a reward - if you are able - is to do something nice for the toys. Tea party? Clothes?

I've been discussing the Explosive Child method with my friends IRL. I've come to realize that, while this method is really, really important, it misses one point. For DS, sometimes the problem behavior itself is what is getting in the way of building the skills he needs. We need to do both things: reduce the behavior AND do detective work to solve the problem and build the skills simultaneously.

This is it, spot on. People give advice, based on the average child (not those on here, of course) and they don't ever get that I can't even begin to try what they're suggesting, because I'm trying to manage the behaviour she's exhibiting, instead of what she's supposed to be doing. We're way behind schedule, because of this. I'd love to be able to teach her to do this that and the other, but we're just keeping our heads above water with the simple stuff (dressing, eating, washing). Surprisingly, she learned to tie her shoelaces a few weeks ago, which is quite an achievement, especially when she can't/won't even get her shoes out for herself.

My youngest is 8yo and I'm still washing her entirely. I've tried letting her do it and she doesn't do it at all properly, she can't even squeeze a face cloth out. She has told me she wants me to wash her until she's 18!

My eldest had to be pushed to wash herself, she was washing herself after she turned 8, I didn't feel comfortable washing her any more because she was showing signs of puberty and it felt wrong, she was upset about it though, and wouldn't brush her own teeth until I'd got the dentist to convince her that she should be doing it herself. She needed a lot of training and supervising and it took her time to get into it and she has always needed a lot of guidance and reassurance generally. Even now at age 11 (not far off 12) she still has to be reminded how to brush her teeth properly as she had plaque at the last dentist visit, and she gets upset and tells me she needs me to retrain her to wash herself as she takes 1-2 hours in the bathroom. She's home-educated but if she was at school we would have horrendous problems with time-keeping, because she has OCD which means she spends a long time washing her hands, and I think she has executive function problems that make her take ages.

With my youngest, I can tell I will be washing her for some time to come, she's more autistic than her sister. She's also very ODD and every wash time is a combination of her hiding, throwing things at me, whipping me with clothing, pushing me, growling at me, shouting at me etc. and it takes about 3-4 times as long to get her washed as it should. She will shortly be starting school, so I'm absolutely dreading it. She will be having council transport too and I'm worried about them sitting outside the house waiting (especially as there could be other children in the transport too) whilst I'm battling with my daughter to get her ready. I've pre-warned the school what she's like though, as I don't want to get blamed if it happens. She's very solidly built and getting too big to make her do what I need her to do. She's too heavy to carry so what am I supposed to do!

To be honest, although my daughter washes herself, she's very closely supervised. She wouldn't do it properly, if I didn't tell her what to do. I put the shower gel on the scrunchy for her, as she'd use far too much otherwise. As for teeth brushing, she puts the toothbrush in her mouth for a few seconds, then she starts spitting. I usually end up doing it for her. She doesn't mind the taste of the toothpaste, she just doesn't like having to brush.

My daughter is huge too - not at all fat, just very athletic/muscular. She's just 7, but bigger than most 9yr olds. I've not been able to physically control her since she was a toddler. Even then, she was very strong and feisty. When she was little, I used to try to dress her, when she was refusing to do it herself. But, she'd fight all the way and then, as soon as she got a chance, she'd remove anything I'd managed to get on her. It's been physically exhausting as well as mentally.

Apart from flexible start times for autistic children, I think they should lay off the attitude about lateness for parents in this situation too.

When my youngest was last at school, she was constantly getting ill from bugs she caught at school which frequently resulted in chest infections and antibiotics, and so she only had about 77% attendance. I don't think it helped that she was miserably unhappy at school and was losing weight and stressed about hating it (wasn't diagnosed then) so she was probably more prone to picking bugs up. The receptionist at the school, told me that the EWO was about to come round to sort me out when she saw my daughter's attendance record, and that she had to persuade her not to, and explain that I had always phoned in and she'd seen the GP and got medication. How dare they!

I decided that school start time was the school's issue not mine. We make every effort to get there on time and this year is way better than last year but I just decided that I was not going to stress myself out every day. If we're late, oh well. Pushing DS extra hard on those days when he is really behind isn't helpful anyway. If I have to fight to get him to school on time its just pointless because he and I are both stressed out by the time we get there and him starting his day like that just sucks.