high functioning but so annoying

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It's so hard for me to not get mad at my son. He's a very big strong boy, almost age 12. He's so smart. So capable in certain limited arenas. But he's so so so annoying. No matter how I ask, he always does more of whatever I'm asking for him to stop doing. Sometimes he's like "in a groove" and can't seem to get stopped. Other times he does stuff seemingly on purpose.

For example, he's eating something messy and holding it over my arm. I ask can he please move that bc I don't want to get any on me. He deliberately lowers it and turns it sideways just tempting some of it to fall on me. Or he runs into my space and raises his fist at me. I flinch. I ask him not to do that. He does it again to prove to me that he isn't really going to hit me. I explain it's not that I think he'll hit me, it's that it's not acceptable behavior and it might make me flinch, which hurts me due to my arthritis. He will do sometime like that several times per day, where he acts like he's going to hit me or runs toward me and raises his foot or swings something toward me (his control is not as great with objects and he does wind up hitting me about half of the time.) Or he's banging his fork on a glass and I ask him to stop because it might break, so he does it harder a few more times to prove to me it won't break.

Sometimes I just say stop that without giving a reason. Sometimes I say "I know you are not really going to break that glass but you need to stop that anyway because it's not appropriate." Sometimes I just sternly say NO. It doesn't seem to make a difference in how soon he stops.

Almost every day when we leave the house he runs into somebody somehow, either from swinging his arms around or suddenly walking backwards. And when eating, he stuffs his mouth and can't close his mouth to chew and sometimes partially chewed food falls back out. Sometimes he chokes. This has been an issue his whole live but it's getting so much worse. He bends down over his plate and his hair hangs in his food and he shovesl food into his mouth as fast as he possibly can. I am starting to just give him one bite at a time from a plate in front of me to his plate but of course he's not super fond of that. I only mention this part to add to the overall picture - in the grand scheme of things it's one of my less concerning things since I can just dole out his food.

Also, lately he's been flat out not obeying me about getting up off the couch and leaving when we need to leave. We stayed in a motel to visit his sister and he flat out said no, he would not leave the motel room. I read that book "No Kicking No Biting" etc and it has all kinds of ways to deal with that but when it gets to the point that the only thing that prevents a blow up is changing my demand, yet it's a demand we actually have to follow, then what?

Is this part of being autistic? How do you all handle it? I keep hoping at some point he'll just listen to me and adjust his behavior. He used to be able to and is still sometimes able to when he does something obviously not appropriate particularly in public. But not very often. He's had that new medication change and his meltdowns and aggression and suicidal and homicidal talks have stopped but it's almost like he had anxiety that made him easier to control. Now he's so happy go lucky he just does whatever he wants without a care in the world. But at any rate it seems like I mostly have to let him do whatever he wants to do if my creative attempts at motivating him to do something else don't work. Is it fair for me to expect that he'll be able to follow my directions when I say to stop doing something like what I mentioned in the beginning - slamming his fist into my direction, banging the fork on the glass - or is it obvious at this point that he can't stop and I just need to start making adjustments? (Such as plastic forks? Such as not taking him out to places where he's going to walk backwards into elderly people?) Ugh.

I haven't done any social stories about this issue yet - stopping doing something when asked. He's not wanting to read or listen to any social stories so I guess I'll have to tie it to his computer time. But my main question is, do you just decide this is how things are? I mean should I be disappointed in him? It's good when it's good and when it's not, that's just how it goes? Should it be more like when he was 2 - I didn't get upset or disappointed or overwhelmed when he'd act like a two year old because that's just how they are. Maybe I need to just have the same attitude about these behaviors. He's done them his whole life but I guess now that he's no longer detailing the various ways in which he'd like to kill people who he thinks have wronged us in some small way (parked too close to us in the parking lot for example), this stuff is really glaring. Maybe I just need to count my blessings.

Me again. One of the only things that's worked lately is for me to just very nicely say "Look, you told me you don't want to be considered autistic, and you've asked me for my help, so I want you to know that what you're doing now is making it pretty obvious that you're autistic." Or something along those lines. Like it's me and him versus autism instead of me versus him. Each time I've said that (maybe 9 times in the last 4 months) it's helped him to immediately stop whatever he was doing. Most of the times he's even thanked me. Do you guys think this is OK? I'm worried about overdoing it because I don't want it to lose its effectiveness. Or make him feel bad. I also talk later or then about how autism isn't all bad, but annoying other people is almost always a bad idea whether you have autism or not... I'll point out how he's capable of being so sweet and how people really respond to that. So it's not just "quit being autistic!" Do any of you talk about this with your kids?

I think if a kid wants to be normal, point out everything they are doing that isn't normal. If they don't want to be autistic, tell them when they are acting like it. It sounds like he is in control of it because you say he does stop when you point it out to him.

Mom used to tell me it's part of Asperger's whatever I was doing and I don't know why she did it but it never helped because I didn't know I was being an aspie or didn't understand what I was doing that was part of it. Then it was starting to make me feel bad and feel like I was the label and it was defining me. Then she finally stopped when I was 15 because I actually said something about it finally.

So is it right what you are doing, I don't know. It sounds like you tried other approaches like "It's not appropriate" and he still did it but mention autistic, it works so I see no issue with what you're doing.

I dont know why I did it. Everything to be annoying. Maybe it was the response or lack of recognition. I had highly tolerant parents who don't seem to believe there's anything wrong after thirty soemthing years. I was semi independant from 16 - 30 but moved back in for mulitple reasons and was recently diagnosed. These last years have still had their moments but the parents can feel my appreciation, I cook try to get things done to help them out, but most of all I try to show my appreciation for all that they have contributed. I it hadnt been for the love and support I would have just given up.
Ya boy is probably gonna try and make you bend and crack in every way he can possibly craft up but like me I doubt he even knows why. Nothing emotional, no spite just different. And home is the last place to feel unwanted.

What state are you in? In CA I would tell you to contact your local Regional Center. They provide disability services and might be able to get an ABA therapist to help you with many of these issues, or at a minimum some respite care. You also want him to become a Regional Center client before he turns 18 so that you can set up help for him as an adult.

This is not going to get better or go away on its own. At some level I think you do have to regard it like having a toddler. What's the alternative? Getting angry because he "should" be able to act differently isn't effective in changing the behavior. At the same time you have to find a way to teach and motivate alternate behavior and keep yourself safe physically. It's a tough job and I think you're going to need help.

My 13 year old NT daughter often tries to be as annoying as possible. Maybe your son is just being a "tween"?

Hi all and thanks. He is in the tween years but he's been this way for years and years already. It is hard when he can manage to hold it together in certain circumstances when other people are around, especially in a doctor's office or with a teacher, but with his family, especially me, he can be so mean and so rude. Please stop kicking my chair, I say. No, I don't want to, he says, and you can't make me. If I get stern he'll say how dare you raise your voice at me. Is this part of autism?

As a tween I'd expect some verbal stuff but I am always taken aback by him licking me in public, grabbing my butt, putting his hands down his pants, letting food fall out of his mouth, twirling around into people. I don't think that's normal tween annoying behaviors as I think a normal tween would be pretty embarrassed... ???

There are rare times he hurts me or breaks something when he wasn't expecting to and he'll issue a sincere apology right away and he'll act worried and ashamed and really sorry. But most of the time it's like he's doing it on purpose and his only reason is to try to get me to ask him to stop so he can tell me that he doesn't have to stop. It's almost like it's his way of proving that he's independent or competent. Like, look how competent I am that I can bang this plant with this shovel and not damage the plant. Oh, you think I might damage it? Well watch this, I'm super awesome and won't damage it. Or watch how I can ride my bike right next to your car without hitting it. Or watch how I can point this rake at your face and thrust it forward and avoid hitting you by two inches. Or watch how I can throw this glass item into the air over and over and not drop it and oops I dropped it but that's your fault for talking to me.

To me it's almost more like anti social behavior. And that worries me way more than autism. He is super oppositional and would easily qualify for oppositional defiant disorder if not autistic. Are autistic kids more oppositional?

He has lots of actual ways to prove competency - we live on a ranch and he is strong and can easily feed the animals and handle the horses and stuff like that. But if it's something I'd actually like for him to do, he's not interested.

We do live in CA by the way, and Alta is getting involved. We just had the home visit. The lady stressed that it's not just that he has autism, to qualify for services he has to have some level of impairment. And during the intake he was really really really really normal seeming. He played a tablet game the whole time and stayed engaged with it and not frustrated. The only weird thing was he kept putting his feet really close to the lady. So I'm hoping he didn't seem too normal. I don't know how that works. The psychologist tests him in a week.

thanks all!

When you go for further eval (or any future intake), you want to set it up to show his worst side. Don't bring the tablet or any other of the usual distractions you use to keep him calm. If there is something you can do in the morning that sets him off for the day, do it. For my son, I'd even consider skipping his ADHD med that morning (it's safe to skip a day).

Is Alta your health insurance? In CA, insurance plans are required to cover ABA, speech, and OT. (Unfortunately my husbands company is self-funded, and gets out of the ABA requirement because federal instead of state rules apply.)

Getting back to the original question, I'm not sure what you do if a child has developed ODD in addition to autism. I wonder if he is deliberately oppositional, or is testing to find the exact boundaries of a rule?

Here are some more books I found worth reading that might apply to your situation:

The first has some descriptions about kids that are especially rule-based or get into legalistic arguments about things. My kid is more ADHD-like than rule-based, so I don't remember the recommendations for handling that:
Parenting Your Asperger Child by Alan Sohn, Cathy Grayson

These two address discipline issues like what you are describing. They do require that you are able to sit down with your child and discuss the incident -- at the time I was reading them, my son couldn't have that kind of conversation.
Setting Limits with Your Strong-Willed Child by Robert J. Mac Kenzie
No More Meltdowns: Positive Strategies for Managing and Preventing Out-Of-Control Behavior by Jed Baker PH.D.

I've often described my son's autism as giving his brain a certain amount of momentum - so stopping things for him is difficult.

That said, I don't let him off the hook when he doesn't stop things, I just try to keep that frame around it (that it's hard for him) because it's easy to wind up seeing things through the frame of "he's being annoying," but then I'm constantly angry and frustrated.

So, the difference being that I just point out what he's doing (and I've used the technique of pointing out that if DS wants to be more NT, he should not do X or Y) and stop and wait until he stops.

I think I posted this before, but Kermit and Don Music offer a great model for parenting an autistic child: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eneNtW-lVhE

Those specific things you mention sound a lot more like my friend's child who was diagnosed with Conduct Disorder, early age onset (after he beat up a little girl at Head Start and then told them all in detail how he was going to kill her and the teacher with his grandpa's shotgun--he was 4 years 3 months old at the time). He has gotten better as he's gotten older. Enough so that he doesn't qualify for the CD diagnosis any longer. It's been downgraded to ODD. There was a lot of therapy and a few hospitalizations and several different medication regimes involved though. It doesn't sound at all like my oldest, HFA child, but I do believe that he is much more passive than average. There is a steady trickle of news articles and blog essays about autistic teen boys or young men whose families end up putting them in an institution because they were being threatening or aggressive, so I guess that even though the group as a whole would like to deny that it ever happens, it is not unheard of.

So, the way it is described here, it doesn't sound like autistic behavior to me. It doesn't sound at all like stims, or even just something he is doing where he has trouble switching gears since he does immediately react to your attention to it by intensifying whatever it is. It really sounds like a power play. I get them from my middle child (ADHD/ODD) a lot. My friend gets them from her son a lot. My middle kid is the same age as yours, and it has gotten worse since he hit the hormone stage. I mean, don't get me wrong, there is a lot of impulsiveness that he doesn't have good control over in what my kid does, but there is also lot of, "No one is going to tell me what to do! I'm the boss! I recognize no one's authority to treat me like a kid!" in how he responds to being told to stop whatever annoying and/or impulsive thing he is doing. He's been like that since he was toddler. Also, even at his age, when he's not puffing out his chest like that, he wants to snuggle and be right on top of me. It's kind of like he is screaming his defiance at me and the world like he thinks he is a MAN, but then gets scared that his mommy is going to abandon him (because he is well aware of how obnoxious he is behaving when he throws that attitude around). It's kind of like having a giant two year old.

Mix those attitudes in with the rigidity and lack of self-insight of autism and you've got a big problem, but not necessarily an autistic problem.