So frustrated with bad behavior

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My son is 10 years old with Aspergers. For many years now he consistently goes out of his way to do everything we tell him NOT to do. In 1st grade he would come off the bus and start cussing as loud as he could walking home to our apartment. He knew it was wrong. He knew he would get into trouble but he was compelled somehow to do it. This still stands today. Any time we say something he cannot do he goes out of his way to do it. Any others experience this behavior as well? Please give some advice on how you handle it! Or if you have it did you do this as a child? What was going on in your head? We have this problem mostly with downloading on computers but he excels and loves to do things on a computer. I have had to reformat about 6 times and his grandpa has had to like 4 times now. He wont touch his dads computer but he will mine. I have had to put a password on mine while his dads has no password. He wont download on his grandmas computer either. I'm at my wits end and think that he is out to get me sometimes. He also treats grandma like a queen while he talks back to me always. Its hard to tell how much of these things are normal childhood behaviors and whats because of his Aspergers. Any input would be helpful! Thank you.

My son 13yrs AS hates been told what to do prefers to be asked, sometimes expectations causes a lot of the difficulties. We expect our children to understand without explaining we assume at times they should know but they don't. When we assume or our tone of voice puts them under stress and their only defence is too at times act out. Children with AS need situations, scenarios etc to be explained over and over.

This was suggest to me a number of times about cartoon captions, if you draw the situation and write in the speech balloon how you feel when your son says things that are not appropriate and you do it together it might be helpful for him to understand how it makes you feel when he talks that way because its visual. He is also participating in the story and relaxed.

Well, AS kids aren't immune from having personalities or from going through childhood phases, so he could be doing things with the intention of getting a rise out of you, especially if he thinks they are harmless. Cursing, after all, doesn't really hurt anyone, so he may think it's funny that you care so much.

Is the stuff he is downloading harmful?

Does he have his own computer he can do mostly anything he wants with, as long as it is legal? In my family, the kids each have a net book, and the family shares some larger screens the laptops and net books can be hooked up to if more visual space is needed. That solves a lot of the "messing with my things" issues.

If he is doing this with everything, including important rules or when he actually ends up harming himself with the oppositional behavior, then I would suggest looking into ODD, or Oppositional Defiant Disorder.

If he really is picking only annoying stuff, it's time to have a big, two way, talk with him about respect, and why these rules are important to you. Hear what he has to say, and use that information to decide what the next step should be.

My AS son, btw, is unable to follow our rules for fidgeting and not touching things, and so those are no longer rules. The constant movement is a stim for him, and something he does not do consciously. Knowing that, we found gentle and constant reminders (when in a situation he really cannot be left free to touch) to be more in order than discipline. For some kids swearing is like that, they are barely aware they do it. My AS son really isn't defiant for the sake of being defiant, ever, but he also won't follow rules that hold no logic to him because, well, they hold no logic to him. My NT daughter, however, is sometimes defiant just to be defiant, or to get a reaction. So ... dig a little deeper to get a feel for which of all of the above (or something else entirely) it is.

I remember having a lot of trouble following rules when I was younger. Unfortunately, fear of my father would kick me out of that habit. After my mom divorced him, I was a little more rebellious. After I turned 14, I realized that it's easier to follow the rules and use better ways to get the attention that I wanted. So I started doing that, and doing better in school. It's increased my responsibility, and my viewpoint of the world. I don't know if this helps, but this is my perspective on this situation.

Your son knows the boundaries. I think he may be testing how far he can go. Try grounding him without a set date of how long. Frustration might make him behave, because then that would be disrupting any little routines he created. Just keep taking more things away until he has absolutely nothing to do. Don't even yell at him, just say that he can't use a certain object anymore. If he throws a tantrum or goes into a shutdown, just ignore him. It's blunt, and easy to understand. (Worked like a charm on me. )

It could be that he desires more attention from you and has found this is the easiest way to gain it or he may just find it amusing that he can cause you to be upset. I know both my sons enjoyed the fact that they could upset me. With my younger son I sometimes have to remind him that there are things that annoy him as well and would he find it amusing if I constantly did these things just to upset him. His issue is mainly lack of empathy but you can learn how this works if you are shown properly.

My daughter is particularly oppositional as well. Had it not been for that, I doubt she'd have been recognised as needing to be assessed for autism at this age (6 on Wed) - not that the oppositional behaviour is a typical indicator of autism, just that we'd become desperate and needed someone to help us in trying to find out what was going on. Without the oppositional behaviour, she's just like me at that age, and would probably have been under the radar for much longer.

One of her many issues is not getting dressed in the morning. We're about to start a visual schedule, as advised by her speech and language therapist. She's easily distracted, but there's only a 1 or 2 second gap between me saying, 'Put your socks on', and her starting to do it, stopping it and doing something else. I don't see the schedule working for long as she'll soon tire of it. I suppose you shouldn't knock it until you try it. But, we've tried so many tricks and games to keep her on track that I won't be surprised if we end up going to a lot of work to get it set up, then it works for less than a week. Even when she was just starting to walk, asking her to take my hand when near a road was met by a defiant 'No' or a scream or lying down on the ground.

I've read about PDA (which sounds almost like Aspergers with a few tweaks) and ODD, both of which are possibles in my mind.

She really is a lovely girl, without any real badness or malice. She drives me crazy every morning, but she's still wonderful!

I gave my parents hell growing up. It wasn't always intentional, but it happened one way or another. Some things I did just to amuse myself with no intention or causing frustration for my parents. However, when they laid down a specific rule, there would be occasions where I would go out of my way to bend or break the rule without fear of consequences. Looking back at this, I don't think it was to bother my parents for say, but instead of seeing the rules as boundaries like most children would, I saw them as obstacles for me to overcome.

Explaining to him that rules are set in place for the safety of everyone in an enviroment might help to appeal to his logical side. If he messes up another computer, instead of chastising him for his actions, simply walk him through the process required to fix the computer - such as bringing him to the computer repair store with you (which he very well might enjoy) or walk him through the reformatting process and have him do it with your instruction (don't be too aggressive in your explaination, allow him to figure some things out for himself - be more of a guide than an instructer). This will help him to understand the consequences of his actions as well as helping him to learn something that he is interested him.

(P.S. When I was younger I had an incredible affinity for language considered to be foul, and would use it occasionally to observe the responses of people to it. It's not that I was trying to insult or aggrivate anyone, but it was that I was just interested in people's respone to an illogical abstract thought.)

THIS IS BRILLIANT!! !! I like the rest of what you wrote, too, but in particular this system of thought is really, really important. I've realized that my own son loves TV shows where the kids spend all their time disobeying adults, and I see that he must be taking it this way.

My daughter gets really defiant and oppositional when she doesn't feel "right". This is hard to explain but she gets where it seems her skin is crawling and she just becomes nasty and really, really mean spirited. Diet helped changed that a lot, because she felt better and wasn't so miserable all the time. She still has periods where she'll get downright mean spirited and say and do things she knows are wrong (she carved her name into our wood cabinets once ). I just try to be really consistent with repercussions. She gets this way if she has been around people all day-it's as if her calm and nice stores are depleted and she becomes quite shrewish. I struggle with disciplining at those times because on one hand it's not her fault she has a low capacity for chaos and social situations but on the other we must learn to control ourselves or remove ourselves (a very long learning process) and not lash out.

BTW, Mummy of peanut, I too questioned the usefulness of a schedule, but 2 years later we faithfully follow and use the schedule! It has made a tremendous difference! I hope it works for you as it did us.

Thanks for that. It gives me hope.