Screaming fits - help!! !

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I'm Aspergers myself and am on top of most things with my autistic six year old. He now eats, sleeps, dresses himself, has a couple of friends in the loose sense of the word and is slightly ahead in all academic areas. He has excellent speech though he's not much of a communicator socially (obviously!). He has outgrown most of his rituals etc.

I can't seem to do anything about the screaming fits though. When I ask my son to do something, often he will do it, especially if he understands why, and even if it's just to help me or somebody else. Sometimes his brain just insists "nah mate, we're not doing that" and that is that - he will hurl himself on the floor, scream at a level you'd have to hear to believe and beat himself around the head while crying uncontrollably. Anything but do what he's been asked to do.

I've just put him to bed at not even 4pm over once of these incidents. All I did was ask him to write in a birthday card. He promised me he'd write properly in it, he knows what properly means as we've defined this many times before and he's a very intelligent child, then he scrawled all over it in toddler writing. I told him off, told him to go over it properly, and he went into an absolute rage. It escalated into me sending him to bed basically and he had plenty of warnings before I followed through and placed him in bed. He knows better than to get out as I'll just keep on putting him back in (rarely do this but that's what makes it the final 'don't mess with me' punishment not worth defying). He has been screaming at the top of his voice that he's going to arrest me etc and after twenty minutes has now given up and gone quiet. I feel really bad but if I go in there now it just undoes any good the punishment might serve to reinforce that I am not tolerating these outbursts!

I've been called to a meeting about this next term at school and even had social services called on me about this. It's a total over reaction and we all know that - but it's not bloody caused by me! I do snap sometimes and I'm not the perfect parent, but in many respects I'm better equipped to deal with autism than many neurotypical parents are! I got rid of social services, I don't find them helpful and especially not where autism is concerned. I remain as baffled as everyone else is about where this level of reaction comes from. My son is such a sweety a lot of the time, he's polite, kind natured, bright and very tactile. But when he goes into one of these fits, it's like Jekyll and Hyde.

What on earth can I do to deal with these outbursts? I can just about understand most of what he reacts to - it's the LEVEL of reaction that is WAY too much. Calming him down afterwards isn't good enough, the reactions at this level have got to stop happening in the first place.

At 6 years old it is quite difficult because, while they seem so mature and adept in some ways, in others (socially, emotionally) they are simply functioning as a much younger child. So, while I am not advocatng letting your child tantrum like a 2 year old with no consequences, just try to be mindful that he is, in fact, emotionally very much like a two year old. We wouldn't expect a two year old to have control of their emotions. 6 was a very difficult time with my daughter becuase of the extreme juxtaposition of the cognitive vs emotional capabilities-it causes frustration for everyone.

Try not to get riled by his tantrums, approach them matter of factly. If x happens then Y will happen (short time out or something).

Also, as far as handwriting goes, perhaps he saw your comments as criticism? My daughter had horrible writing so perhaps he wasn't trying to write poorly?

My son is not tantruming like a two year old, a two year old wouldn't behave like this. I know very well what my own child is capable of producing handwriting wise too. I can see you're on the spectrum from your reply and the way it ignores my perspective and comes entirely from your own experiences but it's still a bit upsetting to deal with when you're sat listening to a six year old beating their bedroom wall and screaming so loud it could be heard half a street away.

I need actual help with this please. As I said in my OP, I have been called to a meeting about this extreme behaviour. No amount of explaining what will happen when he does this has prevented him from doing it again and again and again to date. A short time out is just ridiculous. If I was him I'd happily trade a one hour screaming and crying fit in return for a two minute time out. He's autistic not stupid!

Message withdrawn.

Last edited by Dunnyveg on 01 Jan 2012, 11:58 am, edited 2 times in total.

Argghhh! The handwriting is not the point! The reaction is!! Any other child would just huff and go over it again - not scream the house down, hurl themself on the floor and beat themself around the head!!

And they beat it out of my very similar brother too but I agree that's not the way forward.

Coffeebeans, it is obvious my contribution was not appreciated. Therefore, I have withdrawn it. Please forgive my intrusion, and have a nice day.

Not sure what you want me to reply to that? No it wasn't but I was trying to make light of it rather than be out and out 'get lost' about it. I guess this is the problem when you ask for help on an ASD forum though. You place emphasis on the specific problem at hand but the ASDs posting can't work that out and all pick up on other details and wander off on other tangents.

I have no idea where else to get help for this problem though.

It could be his way of expressing sensory overload. Did this incident happen after he came home from school? From your description, he sounds like a child who can hide his autistic symptoms very well for someone his age (from what I understand6 is very young to have gained any kind of sensory/emotional control for any child b/c they are just learning to express themselves, let alone an autistic one). Before asking him to do things after a long day at school (where he is expected to remain in control for 5-7 hrs. approx. (IDK how his school system is so I'm guessing based on my area's school day), you should monitor him for any signs of mental/physical exhaustion. It might be a good idea to keep a journal of this to pick up on any patterns. That way you can determine what triggers these tantrums and work from their.

Based on my experience, I can expect this behavior to get worse before it gets better. My son didn't turn the corner until 10 or so. Meanwhile, the pressures on him at school were increasing and triggers kept happening even when I wasn't ready for them.

In my opinion its a meltdown, and I suspect you know the protocol: identify and mitigate triggers, teach him to recognize the signs of acceleration in himself so that he can switch into mitigation techniques before it hits full on, etc. You do the same: learn to recognize how his physical movements and voice change when he's nearing meltdown, and learn what abatement techniques work for him so you can redirect him at the right times.

I also recommend that you consider that the toddler writing might have been a warning sign that something inside him was rebelling at the writing, and with my son rebelling usually meant that something was wrong. Tasks are not likely to get completed until the "something wrong" is sorted through.

One technique we sometimes used to accelerate it all to its inevitable conclusion was a holding technique, where I locked my son on my lap facing outward and repeated a few calm lines about how we were going to stay like that until all the anger got out of him, to keep him safe. It would get much worse, and then taper fast. I look back on that and feel it was a little controversial, but I don't want to leave any potential tools off the list.

You will have to let go of a lot of things to get through this, one of them being that certain things must be done at certain times. If your son needs to enter abatement, he should enter abatement, even if it means you are late to school, etc.

You also need to decide how you will calm yourself in this process. I pretty much withdrew inside myself after redirecting my son, which was imperfect but necessary. My AS husband often had to leave the scene entirely; he could not keep himself calm in the face of our son's meltdowns, they tended to trigger one from him, so handling meltdowns became my job.

It gets really difficult when a child's needs interfere with your own, and this situation is one of the downsides to being an AS parent with an AS child: you have to sort your way through something that assaults all your own sensory issues. Managing your son's meltdowns will only be half of the equation: you also need to get a system for managing yourself in the overload situation. You aren't going to be able to magically short cut the process he has to go through to reduce the number of incidents, and you need to survive them in the meantime.

For the most recent meltdown, I wonder if it has to do with the pressures or anxieties of the holidays. My son, 10yo, is being argumentative and obstinate right now, so we are not requiring much of him. I let him design all his thank you cards on the computer, and I'm expecting him to settle down during the week.

Many from wrong planet have taught me that behavior is communication. There could be stressors you just haven't figured out yet.

I agree that it sounds like a meltdown. DS is a perfectionist, which means that sometimes he fails purposely with writing rather than failing in a way he can't control (if he can't write it perfectly, he will write it like a toddler - and he's 11.) Asking him to do it over means that I have taken away this coping mechanism and he has to deal with being imperfect - which can cause a meltdown (have had a similar one over a holiday card.) DS's meltdowns are almost seizure-like; they had a completely out-of-control quality that was unlike a temper tantrum.

I tried to create an index of posts here a while back: it's too much for me to update, but there is a lot of good information there. I'd look over the posts on meltdowns and violence. http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt166142.html

While I completely understand your discomfort, I'd like to suggest that you re-think social/professional intervention. Services have come a long way since we were kids; the coaching I have received as a parent has been incredibly helpful to me. Our lives were turned around by a high-quality assessment by licensed professionals, who saw specific deficits that they were able to help us address with specific therapies and techniques. Some of the improvement in our son is, indeed, developmental: he reached an age where the therapies started to make sense to him...but I do think if we'd gotten him speech therapy and the ability to take breaks in kindergarten, we might never have gotten to the breaking point we reached this time last year.

Well, I've been where you are and it's interesting seeing me again. What I mean is, I had to learn a lot of things in dealing with my son. I had to see what my actions did to escalate his behaviors. My son is undiagnosed, but often had melt-downs like you've described partially due to the actions of the adults around him. First of all, any kid at 6 is just not going to be all that evolved. Now add to that the autism (or in our case, nonspecific behavioral issues, we'll call 'em) and you've got a kid who is going to take longer to learn to control his impulses. My son is 10 now and with effort and just plain time he has improved a lot. He hardly has any issues like what he used to. There were times when he would kick and scream and rage all over the place. And now if he's mad, he will usually be alright if given some time to cool off. He knows what's acceptable and what isn't, but when he's mad, he just needs that time. However, we don't let him be around his sisters if he can't control his rage, or his mouth. We give him choices.

For example, if your son was to write in a birthday card and then scribbled in it, his choice is: either he writes properly or you'll do it and he won't get to. And if he doesn't care, well, sorry, but then he doesn't consider it as important as you do. You can tell him how important it is to you, or how important it is to send cards to friends, or how much the person will like it if he writes nicely, but in the end, if your son doesn't see fit to write properly, you have to ask yourself whether it's really important enough to scold him for. You have to determine whether it's important, or just important to you. Is it about respect, or about people knowing he can write better than that? Why does it make you so angry?

And there is really nothing wrong with going into his room once he's calmed down. On the contrary, that's when you should go in. It's not banishment. He just needed time to stop screaming. The only thing he did was scream, and for it, he was put into another room because screaming is not acceptable behavior. Good enough. So once he stops, you go in and talk to him about why he did it. And when he answers, you listen. You don't argue, you don't list for him everything he did wrong, you don't call him bad. You just try to see his side of it. That's all. A good method is to say back to him what he said to you, to show you got it. So if he says he was mad, you reply, "Oh, you were mad?" Calmly, no judgment. I kid you not, if you don't just do it like a parrot but with real understanding of the words, this can get a kid talking. You can find out loads about what drives them to do what they do. It's called reflective listening, and was recommended by our psychologist, along with a book called "Parent Effectiveness Training" and it has made the difference between a meltdown and a mere grumpy mood more than once around here.

So he's calm, you go talk with him. You don't go too heavy on the talking yourself, but you ask if he understands why he was put in his room. If he doesn't know, then you tell him, again, calmly, not accusingly, not angrily. You don't want to pick a fight. These are the facts, you're the parent, and you've decided that the rule is that if you have a screaming fit, you go to your room until you've stopped. But then it follows that once he's calm, once you talk things over, it would not be unreasonable to give him another chance. Ask if he's ready to come out and not scream, let him try. Show that you love him once he's calm. Kids need to feel secure, they need to know you aren't rejecting them if they make a mistake, that they have just made a choice which has made it necessary to put them in another room for a while, and that all they need to do is to fix what they're doing in order to come back.

The goal is to offer logical consequences. Let the punishment fit the crime. That's how life treats you. You act nasty as an adult, people would rather not be around you. You have to apologize and try to do better. And when people get into a fight or argument, it's hardly ever just the fault of one of them.

It takes time, but the key is to have a strategy you can use each time it happens. Make sure he knows the rules and the consequences. And if you as a parent make a mistake, get mad, overreact, it's good to admit that and apologize to him, too. It doesn't undermine your authority to admit that you, too, make mistakes. It shows you're the adult and that you're big enough to handle things right, and it shows him how by example.

Well, that's just a few of my thoughts on what you've posted. Just remember, even with all this, it won't prevent all tantrums. He's just a little guy. The idea is to learn to choose your battles, start showing him what happens when he blows up, and guide him in learning to catch himself before he blows up. Giving him a couple of choices, not too many, so he understands what he can and can't do, is good for him. When a kid has the chance to make choices, under the guidance of an adult to let him know what his choices are, he learns to take responsibility for his own choices and actions. And everyone needs that.

Anyway, it sounds like you've got your own way of doing things established, but that's what helps us. Sometimes things upset a kid when you don't see a problem.

We have similar issues over homework. My son has fine motor issues so it is more of a chore to get decent handwriting out of him. He can write neatly, with A lot of effort, but by the time he gets home from school is he so emotionally drained from the sensory issues the rules he doesn't understand etc. that I decide to pick my battles. I have a certain minimum threshold for the handwriting, but the main focus I have is on the content of the work. I am sure his teacher wants to see his "best" handwriting, but c'est la vie! Sometimes he wants to do it the "silly way" (creative but not acceptable for school) and I make him redo it. I try to be gentle about it, but sometimes it frustrates me, too. Sometimes we get into arguments about it. I am not proud of that. I apologize later for getting short with him, but explain why I was frustrated and that he needs to do homework, and that it shouldn't take so long, if he would do it right, sooner.

For things like thank you cards, I have a lower threshhold still. I try to wait until he is in a relaxed state and that he has finished what he was doing prior, and at a good place to transition to something not so fun, before having him do it. If he wants to do it a "silly way" for that I see no harm in it. If he isn't going to do it right then and there, I let him back off for a bit, do something else, and try again, later.

Yes, I know the point is about the meltdowns but you have to meet them part of the way, sometimes. His day might be harder for him than you think, or it might have been that day, ASD kids don't communicate that well, so depending on your child, you may not even know if he is already in a mood.

I have sensory issues, myself, so even his relatively mild meltdowns bother me a lot, especially the shrieking. If you are on the spectrum, mitigating the meltdowns by backing off when you can (not all the time) will help you as much as him.

I had those emotional screaming self harming fits till I was fourteen and they lasted longer as I got older, you have to understand he is in incredible pain even if it's just something small that sets it off, don't know what to advise I don't think there is much you can do it stop it just ride it out, arguing makes it worse, wait till hes totally calm to try to discipline him and just maybe try giving him a cuddle?
He isn't doing this on perpous

I would suggest that you consider meds combined with social stories, video modeling, and behavior therapy by an ABA (if you can afford it).

My kids are both on 25 mg/day of Prozac (fluoxetine), an SSRI anti-depressant, and it reduces anxiety and improves their mood. They also take .1 mg of Clonidine nightly and a small piece of a pill during the day if they are having an anxiety attack/meltdown.

Also, I would suggest being sensitive to your child's pre-meltdown warning signs. Does he get grumpy, fidget, start looking around, etc., before the meltdown? Maybe as soon as you see the pre-meltdown signs, you can re-direct him to a less stressful activity, such as watching a video, until he has calmed down.

If my kids have actually reached the pre-meltdown or pre-anxiety attack phase, it is too late to reason with them. Trying to reason with them increases their anxiety and escalates things. It is better to redirect them and talk to them later, after they have calmed down, about what happened earlier.