AS son always negating his NT younger sister

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MMJMOM
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10 Apr 2013, 11:32 am

My son has NO ISSUES asking his 4yo sister to do any number of things for him. If I say to DS, please get your PJs, he will ask his sister, and she will do it for him. If he makes a mess and I ask him to clean up, he will ask her to help and she will, always. If he wants to play he will ask her to play HIS game with her, and she will say OK!

If DD asks DS ANYTHING, his answer is ALWAYS NO. It upsets me a lot cause he is always asking HER to do for him, and she always does, but he NEVER reciprocates. He can never say YES to her, he can never help her or join in on what she asks him to do. I asked them to go clean the toys off the floor together. DD asked him to help her pick up a certain toy, he says NO. WHY??? Why cant he say, SURE and just help her? She is the younger one and she helps him all the time, but he cant ever help or agree or just let her be.

Also, no matter what she says, he has to tell her she is wrong, even when she is right.
Examples:

DD: I ate spaghetti for lunch!
DS: No, it wasn't lunch it was breakfast.
It WAS lunch, he just has to say something opposite of her.

DD: I had a bath before and got all clean
DS: You aren't ALL clean, just some clean cause you are playing now.
SHe wasn't talking about now, she said BEFORE she got all clean. But he has to add in his negative comment always.

He finds a loophole in everything she has to say, and it is frustrating. He can NEVER just agree with her or say OK, or YES.

BUT he has no issues asking her for help, asking her to do things for him, or asking her to see things his way. And she always complies with him, why cant he do a bit of the same back to her?

Why is this and what can I do to remedy the situation? DD gets very upset and ends up yelling or crying out of frustration, or yelling to get her point heard. Also, it upsets me that he is unfair to her. Why should it be ok for her to help and agree with him all the time and he can never do it for her????


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Dara, mom to my beautiful kids:
J- 8, diagnosed Aspergers and ADHD possible learning disability due to porcessing speed, born with a cleft lip and palate.
M- 5
M-, who would be 6 1/2, my forever angel baby
E- 1 year old!! !


aspiemike
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10 Apr 2013, 12:34 pm

I find it very interesting that the younger of the two is not ASD. But not surprisingly, it's the male with it.
I am no parent nor do I have any surefire advice. How does he react when you point out right and wrong to him? Do you have to try hard to get it into his head what he is doing? Does he understand what positive reinforcement is compared to negative? Understanding responsible behaviour also seems to be something he needs to work on.
I am not sure if behavioural conditioning will work, but maybe look into that. Take something away when he is bad, but take him to an area he likes to play in when he behaves. Of course, you will have to be strong enough to endure any meltdown behaviour and not give in to him in this regard.



ASDMommyASDKid
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10 Apr 2013, 12:53 pm

Reciprocity is hard to learn. Based on my observations of my son, if he had a sibling he would be the same.

I don't think he is meaning to be negative necessarily. Inviting her to play his game is a form of sharing, understanding of course why she might want to get to pick the activity. Have you tried suggesting that to him, to see what he would do? Even if he refuses, you could plant a seed in him and tell him it would be nice to do. Maybe bribe him with something small.

The bath example might not be negativity so much as precision in that he felt she was no longer clean.

You might also want to teach you daughter it is OK if she chooses not to help him everytime, so she can learn to be assertive if she does not want to do things he asks. She may want to b/c he is older and it makes her feel good, but you could make sure she feels she has a choice.



MjrMajorMajor
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10 Apr 2013, 1:57 pm

ASDMommyASDKid wrote:

You might also want to teach you daughter it is OK if she chooses not to help him everytime, so she can learn to be assertive if she does not want to do things he asks. She may want to b/c he is older and it makes her feel good, but you could make sure she feels she has a choice.


It could be presented almost like a game to your daughter, with the understanding that your son has to take turns first helping someone before she helps him with a task.
As for "finding loopholes", I hear the same with my boys. I will call my oldest on it, but not in an angry way- just matter of factly. Another approach is to ask why- " Why do you say it was breakfast?" Hear out his answer, and then respond accordingly.



MMJMOM
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10 Apr 2013, 4:16 pm

thanks,

he is just constantly saying no or telling her what she said or thinks is wrong or different. I point it out to him and ask him how he would feel if when he asks for her help she always said no, etc...he says he would feel upset. I then say so how do you think she feels when you tell her no? And he says upset. But it doesn't ever seem to sink in.

I tell DD she doesn't have to help him, but she is like that, she likes to help AND she likes that he is engaging with her. He will ask her to go with him to get his PJs and she will ask him to wait with her when she gets hers but he always leaves her and she cries. It makes me feel bad for her, cause she did what he asked but he didn't do the same.

And when she said she was clean before, she WAS clean before. Why is it so important for him to shoot her down? We discuss how he would feel if everytime he spoke we told him NO or that he was wrong. Again he says he would be upset and not like it, but I guess he just cannot see another's perspective.


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Dara, mom to my beautiful kids:
J- 8, diagnosed Aspergers and ADHD possible learning disability due to porcessing speed, born with a cleft lip and palate.
M- 5
M-, who would be 6 1/2, my forever angel baby
E- 1 year old!! !


ASDMommyASDKid
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10 Apr 2013, 4:21 pm

MMJMOM wrote:
thanks,
And when she said she was clean before, she WAS clean before. Why is it so important for him to shoot her down? We discuss how he would feel if everytime he spoke we told him NO or that he was wrong. Again he says he would be upset and not like it, but I guess he just cannot see another's perspective.


I know it sounds silly, but to him it probably does seem wrong to say she is clean when to him maybe clean means freshly clean, right in the tub, clean. I could see my son thinking that except for the fact that we had issues with him being willing to take baths so I would go on and on about how fresh and clean he was from the moment he got out of the tub, until night-night.

Anyway, I know that is not the main point, but yeah, I have the same issue with he will tell me he would not like something but does not make the leap to being able to rest others the way he would wish to be treated.

it is a work in progress, always.



Aspie1
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10 Apr 2013, 8:52 pm

I'll chime in with a fresh opinion. I'll say it could be just garden-variety sibling rivalry. AS is only a small part of it. Quite possibly, MJMOM's son is jealous of his 4-year-old sister. After all, 4-year-old kids are generally cute (and I'm saying it as a non-parent), and even their own parents can be swayed by the cuteness. MJMOM's son, on the other hand, is 7, and has already outgrown his cute years. And he knows that! He knows that he has to work extra hard to win over adults, while his younger sister can simply act cute and get "results". Hence, the rivalry. He tries to compensate for his own lack of whatever advantage he perceived his sister to have by undermining her at any opportunity he finds. The AS enters the equation due to aspies' strong desire for fairness: son perceives inherent unfairness in his sister being "better than him" (notice the quotes) due to "unearned" factors such as her age, gender, cuteness, and natural social skills that come with being NT.

What may be a contributing factor is favoritism that happens in the OP's son's mind, but not necessarily in real life. I don't have the full story, but I'll bring up one example: minor and understandable, but parent-enforced favoritism, such as the younger sister getting the piece of cake with a rose, "because she's younger" or "because she a girl". No bid deal, right? After all, it's all buttercream frosting just the same: corn syrup, vegetable oil, Yellow #5, Blue #1, and Red #40 Lake. But to the son, it's major unfairness: why should his sister get the rose based on "unearned" qualities, like cuteness, age, or gender?



MMJMOM
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10 Apr 2013, 9:06 pm

My son has not outgrown his cuteness! He is adorably cute :)

He does that with me too, So I don't know if its just sibling rivalry. He kind of does it all the time but it drives me crazy that he does it with her!


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J- 8, diagnosed Aspergers and ADHD possible learning disability due to porcessing speed, born with a cleft lip and palate.
M- 5
M-, who would be 6 1/2, my forever angel baby
E- 1 year old!! !


Aspie1
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10 Apr 2013, 9:59 pm

MMJMOM wrote:
My son has not outgrown his cuteness! He is adorably cute :)

Hmm, I suppose I'm projecting my own experiences. When I started first grade (and I was 7 at the time), my parents immediately ramped up their efforts to turn me into a miniature adult. So "cute" was the last thing they'd use to describe me. Hence, me starting the thread "Being Loved for a Reason" in the first place. I'm sure your family's situation is different, but just saying.



MiahClone
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13 Apr 2013, 11:09 am

This isn't really relevant. We kind of have the problem of one being jealous of the other due to being treated differently. But! There is seven years between my two sibling rivals, so you can't treat a four year the same as you do a 11 year old, and some things are just impractical at best, such as I can carry my four year old around (he's on the small side about 35th percentile), which even at four I couldn't do that with my middle kid. Right now he's a couple of months from being 12 and is 5'4" and weighs 130 pounds, and he has always been at the very top of the growth charts. There are some serious limitations to snuggling with him that have nothing to do with his age.

This might be relevant. My oldest who went through a very long negative spell. He would see the worst possible thing in every situation. His brother said something? Oh he pronounced it wrong. His brother read a beginning reader (middle child had a very hard time learning to read)? Well, that was just a baby book. Pretty bouquet of flowers? They're just going to wilt. Favorite foods for supper? Spend the entire time complaining that we don't eat them often enough. And on and on and on. We finally made a rule--one that applied to everyone, even the adults--that whenever someone said some kind of gripey negative thing like that, we had to state two positive things about the same situation.

It was really, really hard for him at first. We had to give him examples and let him pick two that he then repeated back to us. Sometimes he would pick the smallest little thing, or something I didn't really agree with, but if it wasn't stated negatively it passed. Sometimes we'd pick a topic and sort of play a game of name something positive. Like the topic was "Dogs" He could say I like the way they wag their tails, but he couldn't say They annoy me when their tails' thump the ground. Even if that was true, the focus had to be somewhere else, some part of the topic that he did like. He actually seemed generally happier and more likely to look at any given topic less negatively when we were following this.