calling the police?

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For us, this was key to helping DS manage his outbursts. We had him identify the physical symptoms of a meltdown and go to his room (we also put a lock on his door, I only had to use it twice.) We would practice having him go to his room when he wasn't upset, and when he was only mildly annoyed.

Addressing other deficits was also important. We did also have consequences - but we found it was important to tweak the consequences so that they were acceptable to DS - neither too harsh nor too light (if too light, he would "punish" himself, if too harsh we'd just compound the behavior. Took a long time to get the right balance.)



You don't earn it - but I don't think what your son has is "control." Our therapist of ours likened it to holding a beach ball under water - eventually, it will burst to the surface. At one point, when we were really successful at home, behavior started appearing at school. It is just that the behavior is coming out in the "safest" place for him, but if he holds it in it is going to come out somewhere.

Discipline and coddling have nothing to do with it. He has a skill gap and this won't go away until he learns the skills he needs. You can use discipline and support (I don't like the word "coddling") to help him learn the skills, but he has to learn them. It's no different than learning to read, just the stakes are higher.

Just so you know, my own DS was able to develop "control" over his outbursts for the last two years- but he was clearly using every technique we gave him and white-knuckling through it. This year, he just isn't having a problem with violence - result is the same, but the driving issues are totally different - and I think the only reason was that he made a jump in development.

If you can verbalize what physical signs you are seeing when he's about to attack, you can talk to him about those things being an indicator that it's time to go to his room - he is probably even more surprised than you are when it happens. DS used to clench his fists - I would point that out and ask him to go to his room to calm down when it happened (you have to find a way to get him to his room that doesn't escalate the situation. We used rewards liberally.)

I don't know what to offer other than to share my experience. I have a 14 year old who was just diagnosed with aspergers. He has a long history of violence towards me and school staff. I am a single parent and the Dads only involvement is to critisize me.
Since Grade 2 my son fought goiing to school and at school he would often lash out and hit teachers,aids,principals,who ever got in his way. I would punish him by physically putting him in his room, grounding him with no tv or electronics. As he got older he began to hit me and it was harder and harder to punish him as it would further provoke him. Ourbiggest problem is school refusal and bathing.
When he was 12 I ended up calling the police because he phsically attacked me and threatened me with aknife. By the time the police got there he was calmed down and they were looking at me like I was nuts..... they called an ambulance we were sent to the hospital,same reaction and told to go see the famil yDr. I think there were three more incidents like this and close to 600 dollarsin ambulance bills.

The last time I called police he wasstill raging when they arrived, he had to be physically restrained,and was handcuffed to a chair for 10 hours before he was admitted to hospital for 6 weeks.

The good news is that he was diagnosed, and rarely has any more violent outbursts....

The bad news is he hasnt been in school for 5 months, I havent worked in years. My son would be content to spend the rest of his life on my couch. I have begged for help but bottom line I have given up fighting him because I feel so helpless and alone

I am so sorry that you are going through this on your own, and even sorrier to see what you've chosen as a screen name - believe me, many, many of us have been there and have only gotten through it because we found the right resources at the right time.

You are not a bad mom. You are being asked something superhuman, and you don't have the resources to pull it off - and that is not your fault.

This board is a terrific resource: post specific questions and other parents and autistic people will be happy to offer their experience. That being said, it isn't the only resource out there. If you are in the US and many other countries, your school district is REQUIRED to provide for your son's education - whether that means finding a program within the district that works, or providing you with a tutor or paying for a private education in a theraputic school, they have to do it until he is 21 in most US states. If he is over 21 and too disabled to care for himself, most states also provide disability.

Second, there are often free resources offered by the Department of Human services wherever you are (sometimes it's called the Department of Health or has other names in different countries.) These include respite care services so you are able to work if you need to, or just to get out and go grocery shopping or have a night of rest.

Services can be hard to get, so I also recommend googling for a disability advocate. Sometimes states provide these through the central board of education. Sometimes they are available from a charity like your local autism society. Finding someone to lead you through all the red tape of getting help is very important.

Find help! You deserve it!

I don't think your a bad mom, your dealing very difficult issues. Having a diagnosis should help get help, but you do have to fight for it.

As for the OP, calling the police is a last and final step. If he's not actively conscious of what he's doing (meaning he doesn't have any malice, etc) it's not assured calling the police will ultimately help.

Now of course, if he's truly threatening your life, or anyone else, call the police.

Otherwise, sitting down and talking to the BHP might help.

I also wonder if, since you say he doesn't do it to kids who fight back, would fighting back help? Obviously not to hurt him, but to restrain or control him enough so he knows your not a push over?

I'd say it depends on the police.

If your local cops will come over and help you restrain him because they are grown men who can do so better than you, and they won't see it as you calling for legal help rather than temporary physical help, then go for it. That's the main point I think. You are asking for physical help for a temporary situation not legal help for punish him or force him into treatment which you can already put him into without their help. Some just can't get their minds around the idea that you might need their help for their muscle instead of their badge.

Talk to your local cops and police chief and see what they think.

When I as 16, mom told me if I ever hit her again, she will send me to the hospital and have me locked away there. I never hit her again or do any other violence against her. It worked like a charm.

This does not necessarily indicate control. I only have meltdowns at family, and it's not because I can control them. It's because I feel stronger emotions about my relationships with them.

I would never call the police on my child.

Police are neither trained nor equipped to handle a person having a meltdown. They use force, including deadly force, to get compliance from NT people and view deviance from NT behavior as an indication of intoxication.

This is not always true. I urge you to talk to your police department and find out about their training and policies before you make this kind of assumption.

Our own police dept was just trained expressly in autism by one of the places we go to get services. I have not heard of violence being used against an autistic person in this town - and I, myself, witnessed police diffusing a potentially violent situation with a neigbhor in a meltdown rage by talking to him calmly and politely, and helping him find alternatives to screaming and threatening the same thing over and over. Everyone, including police, left calmly and no one was even touched, much less hurt.

It is very true that not all police departments are this way - but some departments carefully train their officers in defusing and negotiating and often give them additional training to handle people with special needs if that is an issue in a particular community. For instance, see this: http://conflict911.com/guestconflict/re ... method.htm

In those cases, calling police might well be an asset. The key is determining how they will handle your child (and forewarning them of your particular child's needs ahead of time is critical if they appear to be capable of doing so.)

Just want to chime in and say....I'm so with you!

My son is now 13 and 205#. About two months ago he threatened me with a bronze (HEAVY) lamp base, when he was above me on the stairs.

I did call the police.

By the time they go there, he was calm and wouldn't speak to them. I asked the officer to tell my son what would have happened if I had been hit. Not so much to scare him but for him to get the information from someone other than me.

However, it didn't work.

Monday, my son got mad at my elder son and grabbed a knife. He started stabbing a door jam. I said something about choices, (referring to what the cops said) and he said basically, "then you'll die" with the knife in his hand. With no way for the cops to just be there, I felt it was smarter to just be quiet and hope it passes, which it did. However, I feel like a victm of domestic abuse. While I get that he didn't ask to be given these issues, I really do begin to just hate him. I get afraid that he will do something really terrible, like stab my elder son in his sleep.

I'm now looking into residential treatment programs, because I am afraid of his lack of control and our lack of ability to manage it.

I don't think that he would do anything unprovoked. BUT, we still don't know all of the things that are his triggers and make him feel provoked. Just typing about it makes me feel weak in the knees.... When I spoke with my son about it after he was calm, he said something about how bad he felt and so it was ok for other people to feel bad too. I told him that was what abusers think. I said that there are NO reasons to justify hurting others because of how you feel. He said, then I'm an abuser. (he was not particularly disturbed by this.)

My husband wants to press charges because he thinks the legal system would be helpful. Short of calling him an idiot, I just said, that's not what I hear. I actually called our special education lawyer to see if police documentation would be helpful. He gave me an emphatic NO.

Anyway, I gave way more detail than I planned. But, bottom line is, I feel you and don't know that there are any good answers in helping them grow up and discontinue this.

I'm not a parent, but I am an aspie who has been arrested multiple times. The first time I was arrested, I was wrongfully imprisoned for burgulary & manufacture & posession of a destructive device. It's been cleared up with the courts & removed from my record, but only after I served my sentence.

I was just 12 years old at the time. They stuck me in a cell with a significantly older teen who was arrested for stabbing another student at his school. He insisted that I call him "sir" and follow all of his orders precisely. He often plotted to shank the staff (for some reason you can't say "guards" at a juvenile institution), but he never got away with sharkening his toothbrush. Most of the violence I witnessed was perpetraited by the megalomaniacal staff and not the other detainees (they didn't let us say "inmates" or "prisoners" either).

A 12 year old girl would forget to say "excuse me sir" and have her face smashed by a grown man. I often assumed that they simply derived sadistic pleasure for it, but later developed more complex understandings of the psyches of the staff. Some of them really did just get off on hurting kids, but for a lot of them it was more complicated than that.

When I was finally released my family didn't even notice my limp (fortunately, I've never developed an injury in detention that I couldn't recover from in less than a month). I tried to hang myself, but was stopped. I was put on suicide watch & had to be watched 24/7 (including in the shower, while I slept, etc.) At some point when I was trying to fall asleep with county approved eyes on the other side of the room locked on me, waiting for me to do something, I found a reason to live.

To be told what to do at the barrel of a gun is worse than death. It is to cease to be human, to become nothing more than an instrument of flesh and blood. In the words of Philip K Dick, “Imagine being sentient but not alive. Seeing and even knowing, but not alive. Just looking out. Recognizing but not being alive. A person can die and still go on. Sometimes what looks out at you from a person's eyes maybe died back in childhood.” I wasn't allowed to accomplish anyhing. I didn't go to school or talk to anyone outside my immediate family. I just stayed at home being watched and doing what I was told.

I decided to go to war with the so called "justice system" and I never stopped. If I ever submit, if I ever choose not to do something just because it's "illegal" I know I should kill myself because at that point I'm just a pawn of that cruel system. I have since been arrested for a number of things that I actually did do (and with great pride).

I guess what I'm trying to say is that being arrested will change someone. How it changs them varies significantly, but it never results in them being a happy, well adjusted person. I suggest you talk to a counselor instead of just subjecting your son to physical violence accented with every other form of abuse in a combination the satan figure of any religion would cringe at. Most people just come out of that a lot more violent or suicidal (sometimes both & that's just confusing to me).

LittlePigLocksmith,

I am so sorry you went through all this. I know I am going to come off very uncool when I say this but here it goes anyway.

[Soapbox mommy speech]
If you let them turn you into the thing they thought you were (a criminal) then in a way are they not winning? I know nothing about the prison system where you are but in some parts of the country there is a lot of money involved with churning kids through the prison system. That is true even in places where prisons are not privatized as they are getting insanely cheap labor through the prison system that really amounts to rationalized slavery. You seem like a very insightful person based on the recent posts of yours that I have seen. Don't let them win, seriously, You are not being manipulated just by doing things legally and you may very well be if you keep getting arrested.
[/Soapbox mommy speech]

As mentioned before: find the trigger. Calling the police is useless.
What happens here is not going to be rationalized by threats or 'consequences'.

Think about what the police can do. You're setting things into motion you might not be able to control.

Our friends called the police on their son and the cops came over and tazed him twice. It was unnecessary. It was uncalled for.

The kid was terrified as soon as he saw strangers entering into the home. It set him back big time.

I don't know a good solution for this but understanding what's triggering the violence and getting rid of it.

I recognize that there's a lot of money to be had in the prison system and am familiar with how it functions. What I do is a sort of cathartic research. First, I research a common victimless "crime". I take notes on common mistakes made & methods used by the party/parties involved to avoid being lodged in a detention facility. Then, I perform a series of experiments that are as controlled as possible to improve upon existing techniques. Experiments must be repeated to ensure that the results aren't just a "fluke". Then, I teach other people how to hide information on their hard drive from the police, avoid being caught violating curfew, communicate with their best friend who's on probation (if someone on probation here knowingly communicates with someone else on probation they're both arrested) etc.

The more people see that successful passive resistance is indeed possible, the more people will be able to overcome the fear that has been instilled in them and live free, peaceful lives. Most of the people I've worked with have inspired similar conduct in others at some point and I like to think that those people have inspired others. I just need t continue until this reaches critical mass so to speak. Once this get's big enough, my contributions will no longer be needed.

I'm actually in the process of writing a handbook containing some operational guidelines pertaining to such activities. My goal is to allow people to conduct themselves in whatever way they please (with the exception of doing anything that's likely to hurt someone else) without fear of having people in black masks take them away from their friends and families for it. I also preach about the broad line between what is legal and what is ethical giving historical examples of situations in which the two directly conflicted.

So, in what way are they not winning? I've advised many of my peers who were at risk of being detained for activities they were involved in on how to avoid ending up like me with a combination of technical expertise, tactics inspired by military, CIA, SACP (south african communist party) & KGB training manuals as well as philosophical discussion to eliminate moral ambiguity. Had I not chosen to do this, I would have spent much less time being abused in a cell & would not currently be on probation. However, had I not chosen this path in life, a lot of good people in my community would have suffered the same fate I did or worse. Because of my efforts, they're not left to choose between overt slavery and thinly veiled serfdom. Now they have a third option, to exist freely in secrecy.

I understand that it may be difficult for you to see this as I do, but in my own mind, this is a service to my community and (to a lesser extent) humanity as a whole. I've always had an unusually high aptitude in all academic areas & now I have a productive use for my talents. This is my purpose in life, something most people either don't have the intellectual capacity or resolve to do. I can use inexpensive home-made gadgets, open source software & tactics used by intelligence organizations as long ago as World War Two to prevent what's essentially a paramilitary group occupying my community from controlling our lives. They're not winning because they're slowly, but inexorably losing control here. Recently, they've been getting a lot of military surplus equipment and truly are starting to look like an occupying army, but all that's seemed to do is hurt their image. I'm creating an invisible community of free people... an assault rifle is useless at best and potentially a hindrance when it's owner has no idea who to point it at.

Since I started doing this, I have attracted a lot of attention to myself. My mission isn't a secret. However, as "law enforcement" groups have become more familiar with me than I'd like, I've accumulatd a small number of followers who seem willing to continue my work if for some reason I should be rendered unable to... Does that make sense to you? I feel like this should answer your question, but if you have any further inquiries, please let me know.