Punishment Options

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Joined: 24 Nov 2008
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18 May 2010, 2:29 pm

I posted here also because I wanted not only the perspective of parents, but of you guys too. The replies here have been great and I have learned a lot, and for that, I am grateful.

S-P-M-E
Blue Jay

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18 May 2010, 4:09 pm

Jimbeaux wrote:

I like your idea of the chores on the day he misbehaves. Maybe a choice of one of three. We are all moving in full time in three weeks, and when we do, I'll give it a shot. Thanks!

You're welcome!! As has already been said in this thread, I think you're honestly trying to find solutions, which is doubly admirable since the child is your girlfriend's and not your own son. Any child can be difficult to figure out, and an Aspie child must seem like an alien sometimes to a non-Aspie caregiver; good on you for going the extra mile to try to make things work. :thumleft:

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JCpatriots
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18 May 2010, 4:26 pm

Callista wrote:

I think he knows very well that eventually he's going to mess up again, and that when he does you may or may not delete everything he's done with a character (which is almost as bad as deleting the character, incidentally). If I were him, at age ten, I would have just misbehaved and gotten it over with, rather than the huge anxiety of having it hang over my head.

You have to understand that for an Aspie, taking away a special interest as punishment is more painful than being beaten until you are black and blue (and I know, because both have been done to me and I would choose the beating every time). Your special interest is how you relax. It's how you get your brain back on track, how you defuse anxiety, how you stave off meltdowns and temper stress. It has so many more functions than just entertainment. When it's taken away, things get very, very bad.

This is the end of the school year. If this is a typical Aspie kid, he is utterly exhausted and holding it together by a thread. That he told his teacher to "leave me alone" tells me that he is probably stressed out by demands, and trying to withdraw; but at school, he can't do it, so when he's cornered, he gets angry, frustrated, and desperate enough to demand that he be left alone--and when that doesn't work, he feels trapped, has a tantrum, and calls the teacher stupid.

If I'm right in guessing that his computer is his special interest, then I think you shouldn't take it away from him. You can tell a special interest by the way the Aspie tends to basically make it the center of his life--eat, sleep, breathe it, collect information about it, master the skill or become an expert on the subject. The special interest is a huge pressure-release valve, and he's going to need one.

If the school punishes him for stuff he does at school, let them do it; he doesn't need a double whammy. If it doesn't, I suggest something that doesn't touch his special interests, such as being assigned an extra chore; or something that directly involves making up for what he did, such as writing a letter of apology to his teacher.

I agree completely with this post. It's not making it better for him this type of punishing you're doing to him. If anything, it's making it worse. It's gonna make him want to act out to relieve the anxiety that is being pressured onto him from worrying about "not screwing up again, otherwise he will lose his character." He cares a lot about it, and taking it away from him, while it's proper punishment for a normally functioning child, should be approached in a different way towards an Aspie kid.

Rose_in_Winter
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18 May 2010, 4:58 pm

I'm going to go along with those who suggest positive reinforcement...the carrot, rather than the stick. That's how my parents usually worked with me, once I was past early childhood. My suggestion is to identify his special interest, and use that as the carrot.

As an example, I had an aspie student who's special interest was trains. He was only 6, but he knew all about them. He wasn't a huge behavior problem or anything (biggest problem he had was wanting to name his table "The Steam Trains" when the other kids wanted "The Dinosaurs" and things like that). In JJ's case, if he started acting up, I would say, "If you can behave until free time, you can read your train book." (He always had one.) That was enough of a "carrot" to help JJ behave. Maybe as a parent, I'd have offered to take him to the train museum, or helped him add to his train set. (I bet he had one.) Maybe even taken the train somewhere we usually drove, whatever aspect of the train he wanted the most.

I'm not assuming that your's gf's son is all about trains, but find out what it is that he seems to obess over. Offer him ways to enjoy his special interest as a reward for positive behavior. And talk to him -- with his mom, if possible. It sounds to me like something, somewhere in his life, is terribly frustrating for him. As an aspie myself, I'd be astounded if there weren't a lot of things frustrating him! His behavior may be an expression of frustration that actually has nothing to do with school or his teachers -- it might be an issue with peers, or a desire to accomplish something he can't. (I have a friends whose autistic daughter goes into full meltdown if she can't make her drawings look the way she wants.) See if you and his mom can work with him this summer to get past whatever is frustrating him so much!

Followthereaper90
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18 May 2010, 11:23 pm

serenity wrote:

I don't think that you ought to automatically assume that an ASD child's behavior is borne out of defiance, or laziness, or any other long list of negative, manipulative behaviors. I agree with the poster above where they said you need to be sure the school is dealing with him properly. My son's behaviors are also getting worse as school as the year ends, because his tolerance level for their 'suck it up and deal with it' bs behavior plan is running him ragged.

After taking care of the school situation, then maybe you can come up with a behavior plan for at home. Preferably, a positive one. [You never, ever, ever want to use a special interest as a threat, or punishment. Though, it can work well in terms of a positive reward for desirable behavior. My son has a chart with chores on it, as well as things that he hates, like homework, and wearing his glasses. He gets stars for each of these things he does everyday, as well as he can earn extras for doing extra stuff, or if I catch him being extra good. After so many stars he earns a night sleeping on the couch, where he gets to stay up as late as he wants watching tv, and playing on the computer. It is very motivating to him to earn his stars, and it's done without nagging, or negative reinforcement.

just wow

talk about creative parenting

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ToughDiamond
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19 May 2010, 9:08 am

Jimbeaux wrote:

ToughDiamond wrote:

He called a teacher stupid....so what? I suspect the teacher will live.

Teacher today, boss tomorrow. The world won't care he is an aspie. I want to help give him the best chance at success and happiness in life.

Of course you do.....I'm a father myself, and I used to get worried when my son used to get into trouble like that. All I'm really trying to say is that I think it's important to stay on his side, and to freely admit that the teacher may well have deserved it. I should have added before that it's equally important to also make it plain to him that he's going to come up against adversaries who are bigger than he is and who will subject him to a damaging counter-attack. Chances are that he'll grow out of it and he'll begin to defend himself more effectively against the horrors of the real world.

Jimbeaux
Toucan
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19 May 2010, 1:19 pm

ToughDiamond wrote:

We try to find out what happened and why. A number of times, no punishment was handed out because it wasn't his fault (A kid smacked him one time, or another, a teacher was having a bad day and kept pestering him). These instances are because he simply outright refuses to do his work because, in his words, he just doesn't want to.

anbuend
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19 May 2010, 4:25 pm

He may not always (or ever) have the ability to describe the real reasons he doesn't want to do homework. Describing such things can be beyond even very articulate autistic children. And even if they can sometimes it doesn't mean they can always. I wouldn't take an autistic child's word for it on things like that. Not because I don't trust them but because generally we:

1. Have some trouble expressing internal states

2. Are not thoroughly exposed to complex and uncommon concepts about the effects of stress, overload, and shutdown on our abilities.

3. Have trouble understanding such concepts so young even if exposed to them.

4. May have trouble generalizing such concepts even if we use them appropriately sometimes.

5. May not be using them properly even when we do seem to be

All of this because of communication and comprehension problems. And if he is already having trouble doing something due to overload, the result might be a meltdown. A meltdown is not a tantrum. Tantrums are intrinsically manipulative in order to get your way. Meltdowns are about overload (and may sometimes seem to be about not getting our way, except it really isn't -- if not doing his homework is overload related then reacting to being pushed is due to hitting a limit, not due to not getting what he wants).

I don't always like Tony Attwood but there are seriously good reasons that he recommends that some autistic kids be exempt from homework. I know you care about the real world and all that. But the reality is that pushing an autistic kid to do something he just can't do, if he can't do it... then he's not going to be prepared for that part of the real world anyway, at least not at this point in time, and there may be nothing you can do to change that.

Obviously I am only guessing about one particular set of scenarios. But it's important to keep in mind that this may actually be what is happening. And if it is, punishment won't work.

Honestly I think there's something seriously broken about the school system in general. Most kids intrinsically want to learn. That's how they start out. And when they don't appear to want to then there are often ways to make learning attractive. But put kids in school for awhile and by the end most of them see learning as a dreadful chore. There has to be a better way. And that goes for all kids, not just autistic ones. It takes a rare kind of person to get through school and still want to learn. That sounds like a tangent but it's highly relevant to why most kids don't want to do homework, when it really is just a want.

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