very worried about the future

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My son is 7, soon to be 8, HF Aspergers. He is VERY smart, verbal, and ABLE to do a lot. One area that he has been stuck in development wise is social situations, and specifically taking responsibility for his own actions and feeling remorse when he hurts someone on purpose. Yesterday he had a group of friends over. One girl who is his size but a few years older, was making rules for their game. I know her, she is a sweet kid, and all the kids including my son were making up rules for the game. My son didn't like her rules, and he pushed her off the top of the slide while she was standing up. She fell off and hurt her hip. She was hysterical crying, clearly was injured. WHen I went to my son, and said how she was very hurt and crying, he coldly said to me, "I said I was sorry already" and continued to play while his friend was screaming and crying in pain. He later told me that she was the "bad guy" in their play. But he has been told over and over NEVER to psuh, hit bites, shove or punch. AND he can tell you not to do it to someone else.

What upset me more then his impulsive act, was his lack of care for his hurt friend. He continued to play unphased by her cries. Later on when everyone left, I sat down with my son and had a clam talk about the dangers of pushing someone, especially off high places. His response?? "Well you never told me not to push someone off high places, now I know I wont do it again". TYPICAL of my son. If there is a loophole, he will find it. If there is a way to blame another, he will. He KNOWS not to push off high places. He knows not to push, not to touch another person. We are constantly talking about safety, and touching, and what to do when angry or upset. You have to know my son to understand that its his way. He will always blame others, or just opt to say he didn't know. When he knows very well. If he saw someone else do the pushing and his friend got hurt, he would have been all over the child that pushed, telling him al the reasons why it was not right to do, and he would have tried to console the hurt person. BUT when it is HIM doing the hurting, he is justified in his mind and could care less about the victim. What I was looking for when we talked about it, was some since that he felt bad about it, that he was sorry he did it, but I didn't get that at all. I got that it was MY fault cause I never told him specifically not to push off high places. Even if he is right and I should go over every possible scenario of what should and shouldn't be done, why didn't he feel sorry, feel sad, feel remorse???

It scares me for his future. I know he is young, but this is a consistent issue with him since he was much younger, and what scared me is the lack of response, the lack of care when he is the one hurting another. He feels justified. He was wronged in a way and he will hurt that person. I fear if he grows up without changing that, he can really hurt someone. End up in jail perhaps. Its just dumb luck that girl didn't break her leg, or fall on her head. THEN WHAT???

please tell me he will outgrow this. Please tell me some of you were like this as kids, or had kids like this and they grew up to at least know better then to hurt another even if you felt justified to do so.

There are days when I look at my son and he seems so "typical", but yesterday, when he was playing while a friend he hurt was hysterical crying, it was like he was in his own world, like he was so distant and far from me. It scared me to see him so detached from another person. ALL the other kids stopped playing and went to see how she was doing, and my son continued with his play as if he was deaf to her. YET if someone else hurt her he would have been running to her and trying to make her better. HOW can one person be so different? How can he e ok with hurting someone else? I can understand him being upset wth her rules and even yelling, but to hurt her and not even care, not see how she is, not give a sincere apology??? Scares me.

I'm so sorry I wish I knew what to say. My 11yo is severely lacking in empathy but even she's not as extreme as your son. If I am upset she will either ignore me or say matter of factly (after some time) "what's wrong". I really hurt myself recently in the room adjacent where she was, I was yelling "ow, ow, ow" and almost crying, and she took ages to come because it was more important to her to stay doing the activity she was doing. If she hurts her sister she will not rub it better for her, and will not say sorry, if you tell her to, she will say it really sarcastically and then say "I didn't mean it" (the word sorry). I wish I had the answers. I hope it gets better for you.

You sound almost traumatized... I'm really sorry. :-( All I can offer is that I immediately thought of John Elder Robison, the Aspie author of Look Me In The Eye, who describes all sorts of callous things he did as a child (playing pranks on his brother that ended with his brother being hurt, telling his mom his brother had been carried away by a strange man), and he turned into an empathetic, upstanding adult.

Also, this one sounds off-topic but it may help; a speech pathologist told me, in regards to my then-2-year-old, just-diagnosed and non-verbal autistic son, "What you see at age 2 is not what you'll see at age 20." (And she was right, of course - 2 years later, he's like a different child.) I'm sure that little nugget could be tweaked to fit your son.

*hugs*

How frightening to see these traits in your son. I do think it's positive that if it had been someone else he would've noticed and jumped all over them -- do you think in that case he would have had empathy for the child who has fallen? I suspect he knew he was in the wrong, and put up a lot of mental defenses to block that out, which resulted in the lack of empathy. It seems to me that he is not lacking a conscience -- there may be a seed there that you and some good professionals can work with to help him develop on the right path.

What professionals are you working with right now? Do you think any of them have the expertise to help you help him learn to recognize when he is in the wrong and the proper response? I'm not sure who I would go to -- maybe someone in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or a very good Aspergers expert?

He'll no doubt learn to temper this. It's true, though, that his own feelings and sense of what is right may blind him substantially to others' needs and feelings even in adulthood, and that he may have to work hard to control his temper, especially when he's convinced he's completely in the right and that someone else deserves the brunt of his displeasure. All this is part of what you and his therapists will need to help teach him. You may find it important to have your own therapist to help you deal with these things, because yes, it's upsetting. He may not feel for the girl he's hurt, and even in adulthood remorse may be rather a dim feeling, but he will have to learn to apply the manual override on his feelings. Both to avoid hurting others and to get along.

Keep in mind, too -- he's at an age at which even the nicest, most sociable kids have a very rough time with rules and fairness and can be unbelievably callous. It can be superfrustrating for many of them to try to get their heads around the idea that rules aren't always consistently applied and that unfairness happens and we often roll with it.

You and his therapists/teachers will have to impress upon him that it is wrong to hurt others even if they have hurt you (and explain why); that there are rules to follow when one has been hurt (and no, they do not always work and the way they're handled will not always feel or even be fair); and that people who damage property and hurt others badly, whether they mean to or not, are often punished in unpleasant ways which he doesn't want; we don't allow this sort of thing. At seven he won't understand much of this; the messages will bear repeating, though.

I'm so sorry. My son's violence has gotten better and he's even better able to be sweet and show empathy now that he's on haldol. I know lots of people are very against meds but it's been a real game changer for us. Are you involved with a psychiatrist?

The being very concrete and not being able to generalize is very typical of kids on the spectrum. Things like "well you told me yesterday not to push somebody down at the park but you didn't also tell me not to push somebody down at the swimming pool!" Or even "I know I'm not supposed to push but she really made me mad."

At the recommendation of somebody here I read No Fighting, No Biting, No Screaming: How to Make Behaving Positively Possible for People With Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, and it was amazing. I think what you'll get out of it for behavior management of this specific instance is that he can't be at a park with friends - for a while, who knows how long. But beyond that you'll read a ton of anecdotes about how these kids think. It really really helped me not think my son is some kind of monster. And it really helped me just take responsibility for not letting certain things happen. Maybe your son just cannot be in that environment for now - because it's very hard for them to control themselves even if we've had talk after talk and they seem to understand and agree and even if they don't like it when they see other people doing it. It's always going to be different when it's them doing it.

Restricting him from friends might seem awful but think of it in terms of what you're saving him from. You're saving him from his peers forming an opinion of him that will influence their interactions with them wherever they happen to see him. And you might be saving him from some self-hatred, although sometimes there is just no insight... Sometimes I know my son feels bad about something he did even if he won't admit it, but sometimes he really feels bad and cries and even says he should die...

A few months ago he reached over and tried to steer my car into a different parking spot when we were parking at a restaurant, and I just took a hold of his hand and moved it off the steering wheel, but when he's touched in a disciplinary fashion, even in this case when I was very gentle and only said a quite little surprised "hey", he hates it and really goes nuts. So when I moved his hand he slugged me, hard. And it hurt. And he said "well you hurt me by touching my hand so I have the right to hurt you back!" but when I said (as I've said many many times) "it's not the same, when somebody hurts you on accident you don't get to hurt them back on purpose" he actually softened and started crying and apologized... and then he got out of the car and ran toward traffic. So my point is if you can save your son from having to feel bad about himself, if he ever develops the insight to feel bad about himself, that's a worthy goal, even if it means drastically reducing his contact with friends.

I don't let my son play with groups in parks very much because things always go wrong, but he is in karate, on a soccer team in the fall, takes art class - all places where there is structured interaction and an adult right there to intervene.

I've really felt better lately that I've decided there are just certain things he can't do, even though other kids can, even if it could be said that he "should" be able to do them. He just can't, end of story. I didn't get mad or worry or obsess when he was a toddler and didn't know not to wander into the street - I just protected him so it didn't happen. I don't get mad when he gets sick and throws up, as he can't control that anymore than he can control saying hurtful things when he gets upset. It is what it is. I'd love it if he could play in the park with a group of kids without major incident, but it isn't going to happen that way, maybe not ever. Be sad, cry, move on, is all I can do.

thanks! My son is homeschooled as well, he would never hold it together in a large class. he is in karate, swimming, bowling, social skills group, etc...we have regular structured homeschool get togethers, but this one was just for play and well, it didn't end well!

I guess I will keep repeating to him the message and hope he gets it, and thanks for the book idea too, I will get that from the library!

MMJMOM, our son is the same age, We are working on similar issues but they mainly show up when he is stressed. At home he shows a lot of empathy for us, but out in the world--only after the fact, and not consistently. We will be homeschooling this fall b/c he cannot handle that environment and I don't want him to turn into something he is not normally. I would try reducing stress-levels, and if necessary taking a fresh look at what his stressors might be. I have found that they changed quite a bit this past year, so it might be a developmental thing for AS/AU kids.

My daughter, who will be 6 in 2 weeks, does stuff like this and it is scary.

Sometimes she shows remorse, other times no. NEVER empathy though.

For example, last week on two seperate occasions she his another child at girl scout camp. I was there.

1) We have a rule about staying an arms length away from everyone. This helps her to stop from getting overwhelmed etc... Well, other kids started getting close to her. The rule is SHE stays an arms length away. It's hard when other kids get into her space and she views this as THEM breaking the rule. I sat down with one sweet but really high energy girl and asked her to stay an arms length away from dd, because dd needs space. Not once but three times I had to talk to her. No big deal, she's 6. I told dd to just move away from as the girl was not good at "personal space" and not everyone is good at everything. Well. She got into dds personal space, dd viewed this as the girl breaking a rule, so dd punched her, apparently. I didn't witness is, but I have not doubt that's how it went down. DD even if not remoresful will usually just tell me what happened. No remorse. No empathy. No apology. Nothing. I punished her. But. It didn't "do" anything.

2) We were creeking. dd accidentally hit another girl with her net pretty hard. It was an accident, I saw. DD actually tried to apologize straight away, but the other child was hysterical so wasn't able, at that time, to accept the apology... so dd whacked her again, on purpose with the net out of frustration. Wasn't that nice? So I immediately took the net and dd immediately started apologizing to the girl, emphatically. I could tell she felt bad! I was pretty proud, she went the rest of the day with out a creeking net and I made her sit out for half of the creeking session, no complaints. At all. I could also tell that she still wasn't really... getting how off putting that was for the other girl, after her time out, she tried to be buddies with her again, wasn't happening.

Why is remorse so important? Just as long as the person won't do it again, why does it matter if there is remorse or not? I never understood remorse. Just as long as you say sorry, why does it matter? if you solve a problem, why does it matter? Also if something wasn't your fault or you had no control over a situation, why show remorse? if someone deserved it, why show it?

I feel remorse is important because it shows that you have empathy towards the person you hurt, and if you feel remorse you wont do it again. I don't agree with physical violence towards another person...unless you are endangered, which he wasn't. he just didn't like her rules to the game, same game he was making rules to. If he grows up and commits physical acts on others cause he feels like it, he will go to jail, or someone will hurt him back. Neither case do I want for my son. I also don't want him to shove someone off a high playground equipment and possibly do severe damage to them.

Whether he showed remorse or not, I would have been ok with him even just acknowledging that he was wrong to shove her. neither happened. It was very scary for me to see him so detached from another's pain, from taking responsibility for his own actions and for feeling sorry that he did in fact hurt someone.

I don't believe that girl deserved to be shoved off the top of the playground equipment. No matter what she was doing, my son was in the wrong. Even if he was impulsive, he could then look back and say OH NO....I didn't mean that! I would have felt better with that response.

I will try to explain from my point of view.