success story helping autistic kid with sibling conflict

Post Reply New Topic

To change things up a bit, I would like to report a success story with my 10 year old autistic spectrum son (unlike my previous posts that talk about our struggles).

After dealing with years of almost daily fights that often escalated into physical altercations we have seen a DRAMATIC reduction in the titanic sibling battles that had become all to common in our house. Most of the fights stemmed from my son getting irritated at something his 12 year old sister was doing (e.g. playing the guitar, chewing her food strangely, etc) and would just snowball into combat.

Nothing we tried seemed to work. Both kids seemed to lose privileges and be sent to their rooms at least every other day.

In desperation, we booked regular sessions for our whole family with a therapist who specialized in autistic children.

This has had a miraculous effect! My son hates therapy SO much that he started negotiating with us to find a solution so that we wouldn't have to go to therapy anymore. He just can't stand telling other people how he feels, and therapy is worse than getting a root canal without anesthetic in his mind.

We mentioned his desire to quit therapy in one of our sessions and the brilliant therapist worked out a scheme whereby we could stop our weekly therapy sessions if our family can go 21 days without a major fight. Arguments, and even yelling, is ok. The therapist defined 3 rules which mustn't be broken (i.e. no physical harm, no name calling/hurtful language, no violation of another's property). Every day that passes without violating those 3 rules can be subtracted from the 21 day goal.

The result has been miraculous! Our son has been polite to his sister in ways I have NEVER seem him do before. Instead of just yelling at her to stop playing her guitar he asks her nicely and even tries to work out a compromise (e.g. could you go to another room). My son now keeps a number on a big board showing the remaining number of days.

We've had to have 3 resets so far (due to an infraction), but we've gotten to as low as 13 days left in the countdown.

Our house has been more peaceful than I can remember it being for maybe 6 years.

All this confirms to me that our son CAN be more constructive in dealing with other people when he wants to be (a skill he has clearly learned at school seeing as how he almost never gets in trouble for the social missteps he seemed to constantly get into when he was younger). He just needs the right motivation. Who knew that the fear of therapy could be such a powerful motivator?

Thanks for sharing your success story! It is very encouraging and rewarding to read about it!

Hatred of therapy becomes a form of therapy.


The irony.