Violent aspie children and teens????

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Hello everyone!

Is it normal or typical of aspie children and/ or teens to be physically violent?

I am reading a book (fiction) about a girl growing up with her aspie brother who is possesive of her and when they get older and the sister tries to have a life of her own the brother becomes violent with her. I have not read all of the book yet but this is what the reviews of the book said.

I asked my friend who has an autistic son if it was true that autistic and/or aspie children/teens were violent. My friend said yes but only aspies. She is basing her answer on a 20/20 or Dateline show she watched that did a story on a family who were having problems with their aspie sons threats and meltdowns. I guess the family was afraid of him. My friend never said if the boy was physically violent but that he was threatening to kill his family and himself. After the boy calmed down from his melt downs he would say he did not mean what he had said and that he felt bad but he just did not know what else to do.

From what I have been told , and I agree, that aspies have a very hard time expressing their emotions properly so they are more verbal, but they are not saying the correct words to describe how they are feeling. Example: If an aspie is depressed, instead of saying I am really feeling down and sad they say they hate their lives, wished they were dead, or that they want to kill themselves. Is this correct?

I hate to have people doing shows or writting books about aspies and not explaining things properly or giving the wrong ideas about these kids. My aspie son has enough problems trying to fit in without people giving the wrong impressions of these kids making it even harder for them in life. If NT's who don't really know or understand aspies and give the wrong info then they are really setting these kids up for failure by making other NT's who don't understand afraid of them.

I would love to hear from everyone on what they think about this.
Thank you~ Kris

I imagine a good amount of people with high-functioning autism/ ASD/ aspies, feel like and can possibly identify with an out-of-power minority. Like Jews in 30's Germany or blacks not so long ago in South Africa.

So no, it's not the autism that makes them angry or depressed. It's the feeling that the world is against them and is treating them like s**t that makes them angry or depressed.

For my whole life, I was anything but violent. The world, however, didn't care, and still treated me like dirt. I couldn't reconcile it: why would a nice person like me get treated so badly? So to this day, the topic of AS and violence seems ironic to me.

I have never seen any statistics about this.I have never been violent to other people even when provoked because it is against my moral beliefs to do harm unless I need to defend myself and can find no other way to do so.As a female,I have stopped many fights using logic and psychology and have" turned the other cheek"when hit because I saw no advantage in escalating the violence.If I was attacked and felt my life was in danger and I didnt feel ready to die....I would try and rip the attackers throat out with my teeth...just kidding(aspie humor)I would defend myself as best I could.

My mother said when I was angry I use to pull out my own hair...I recall slamming my door,pacing and calling her names under my breath...thats as violent as I got....I dont break things because I dont like noise or mess.........

I have read accounts of very violent autistics in "institutions"...I think that environment and ABA therapy would make me more violent also.I have heard that some of the violence is a form of "self defense" because people with sensory over load" feel like they are being attacked.Before I decided on whether the individual was acting "irrationally" violent,I would want to know what circumstance might have provoked their behavior.

Although aspies may have difficulty describing their emotions,I wouldnt discount them if they say they "want to die".I have felt like that many times in my life and I know exactly how that feels.It is the more subtle emotions I have problems with.Angry,sad,relaxed,suicidal....those I know well.

I find that odd that a parent of an autistic child would say that only Aspies are violent. It's hard to say what the statistics are because while it's easier to diagnose and identify autistics (now), it is harder to do the same with aspies. My husband wasn't diagnosed anything and he had a violent childhood, became violent and then had a snap conversion in his teens. He is the least violent person I have ever met. But the anger is still there, he channels it into humor and art. He tests out aspie but he had severe speech delay and other developmental delays-so he is probably autistic.
But there were other factors in his environment that could have made him predisposed to violence. Just like there are many factors in anyone's life that makes them violent. My (autistic) son has tantrums, that I guess you could call them violent. They usually have to do with not understanding what is going on or being able to communicate effectively. He also has sensory integration problems and allergies that can trigger anxiety and impulsiveness.
I wouldn't say that autism causes violence. not at all.

Hmmn, I'm not a violent person, but I've had breakdowns before and lost ALL control of myself, it felt like I was inside screaming for help while my body had a total violent fit, I hated myself for so long for doing it, being told by everyone I can gain control, I can just breath when it happens and it will go away, but it doesn't.... The only reason I kept losing it to this extreme was cause I was spending ALL my energy trying to be what I thought was normal, since I'm just being myself I haven't lost it once..

So no we're not violent, but some of us have the capacity for loss of all control, its simple misinformation that causes this though.

From an AS point of view, I used to be violent in the past. I can still have a bit of a temper, now. It's hard not to be angry, when everybody is treating me like a ret*d. I just want to rip up the people who do it, and eat them for Dinner. No wonder I can't find it in my Soul to become mellow enough to become a Flower Child, like I once was, at 17 and 18, (or maybe there's too much red in my enviornment.)

I think we should all put in, and buy you one of those busses.

I think thats a great Idea...Then we can travel around the country like the Merry Pranksters in the
Electric Acid Kool-aid Test....spreading the word about the beauty of Nurodiversity and if someone comes up to me and starts getting in my face about how "violent" aspies are....I can whip out Machine1's Numchucks and "get all aspie on his ass".....oh,I forgot for a second,I am an introverted Buddhist....You guys be sure and send me some e-postcards....

as i work with people all over the spectrum, i can honestly say that anger is present in everyone. some of my students begin to laugh & smile right before they give you a big wallop....some of my students begin to flap, talk rapidly,posture ( move threateningly), scream etc before they become extremely upset & angry....FWIW, i've also seen these behaviors in so-called NTs

This is hard to answer because it is stereotyping behavior. Aspie behavior can vary widely and that's why it can be so hard to diagnose and understand. Keep reading here and you'll find that out too.

In our case, it was the environment that turned my son violent. Yes, he's always had trouble getting mad, we tried to teach him better ways to get mad, we tried to help him use better language but what really turned him from internalizing his anger and sad feelings was his environment.

We moved and he attended a new school. I still don't know quite how they did it (and in only three months), but they turned him into a physically violent, raging, out-of-control terror who DID try to injure people with his bare hands. His anger was whipped into such a frenzy and they had totally erased any self-esteem and self-control that his anger was all he had left to protect himself. They didn't allow him to make any decisions, they kept forcing him into detention for every little thing, they put him into a loud, overcrowded classroom and when we tried to explain his condition, they took the information and used it against him (please stop moving his desk, we'd ask, so they'd move it again knowing it would cause meltdown and then they would put him in detention for making a scene - that sort of thing).

We brought him home and we've worked with him - he's doing much better now. It's a matter of control - my son needs some control over his own life. He needs to be a part of this family with opinions that matter and a chance to make some decisions. That helps make his life a little more predictable and understandable. Without it, he feels tossed around, bossed about and out-of-control.

Without that control, he'll take control in other ways and those ways turned out to be violent.

As the parent of a HFA and an employee in a high-needs autism environment I have seen many types of behaviors from many levels of autistic children. I have found the higher-needs (or more severely affected) children are more violent than the HFA. They have no speech and find that the best way to communicate needs or frustrations is through hitting, biting, and scratching. Thankfully this is usually only directed at the adults. In my son, I have not seen aggressive attacks against people but only the meltdowns. Those can be very loud and disruptive but I do not consider them violent. When he's frustrated and can't communicate his needs he wants to lie on the floor, cover his ears, and yell to drown out all other voices. In some schools a few years ago he was suspended for this behavior. In one school they seemed to do everything possible to cause him to scream and yell everyday so they could lock him in a 3x3 closet. We changed school districts after all that and finding the teachers backwards and intolerant of autism. This year he has a wonderful teacher and has only lost control of his emotions once. But all of these behaviors (from high or low) usually come from a desire to communicate a need. They just have a harder time expressing it in a NT-tolerant way.

Your friend should know, that shows like 20/20 and Dateline are reporting from a biased curbie standpoint. If this wasn't the truth, they'd also show perfectly fine, reasonably functioning Aspies. You don't see that on those shows, now do you? I guess the idea that children on the Autistic Spectrum aren't a complete burden, doesn't get raitings these days. I'm not upset with your friend, but you should point this out to her. There's no sense in her spreading around this anti-neurodiversity propaganda.

I would also like to mention that meltdowns don't necessarily equate to being angry - some of it is just an overloaded system. There really isn't any "classic" feelings like being angry or sad or out of control with some meltdowns. It can be more like a response or reflex action. So I also think there tends to be a sterotype that some people get angry about their situation and lash out when they have a meltdown or that they are caused by needs not being met.

your friend made a mistake. anyone can be violent, it is not just aspies. i have seen "normal" kids make those same threats and become violent to their parents(and other kids). I also know people with all functioning diagnoseses become violent. if it were a "normal" kid on the show it wouldn't have been a big deal and they would not have gotten ratings and if they did a lower functioning autistic they would be the network that made autistics look like demons, that is why they let they audience know he was aspergers, the safe middle ground . reading what she said did upset me though. i hope no one else thinks that way.

they say exactly what they feel. i always thought its the other way... when normal people feel depressed or suicidal they say "im fine" or "i am down". depressed people can feel suicidal at times.