Help with frustration and emotional regulation!!

Post Reply New Topic

My son [9, fourth grade aspie] had a bad day at school.
He had a very hard time with transitions.
His frustration and emotional regulation was WAY off.

On the playground [unstructured time], he got really mad at someone and threw a rock at them (which he denied) because they wanted to wreck something he made. It's not like him to throw stuff (or get to the point of hitting). He went to the school psychologist to tell his story and calm down, then to the Principals office for throwing a rock.

My son told the principal that the school rules were stupid and he didn't have to follow them if he didn't want to because he lives in the United States --- and if the doesn't want to follow a rule, he's not going to because it's a free country. [this would SOOO not fly at home if he said this! LOL!]

After seeing the Principal, he proceeded to math class. He missed the first part of the class and he understandably felt as though he didn't understand the work that the teacher was then passing out to the class. So the teacher asked my son to read his math textbook and wait until she finished passing out the work and explaining it to the rest of the children. He felt that she was being unfair because she wasn't attending to his needs immediately. He continued to speak out about how badly he
was being treated so she asked the paraprofessional to explain the work to him in the back of the class. He has exceptional hearing and extreme difficulty reading while someone is talking -- he cannot ignore background noise. So he continued to become very frustrated, upset, and complain, using the word "idiot" often. Eventually the paraprofessional took my son out of the classroom and tried unsuccessfully to find an empty room to work with him. At the end of the period, she returned with my son and his unfinished work. The paraprofessional plans to work with him on it tomorrow morning.

Today was day #8 of school and so many kids have already asked to be placed in a different seat away from him. They don't want to be near him.

I understand why he gets frustrated - which is also not age appropriate. BUT... how can we get the frustration and outbursts to subside so he doesn't have to be removed from the classroom for disrupting the class??? The emotional regulation and frustration are really hurting his social stuff. It's no wonder that nobody wants to be his friend.

Does anyone have any sage ideas or input???

I remember having trouble with emotional regulation at that age. I got bullied a lot because I didn't know how to respond to people in general, and because of a dislike and fear of my own anger. I only got into one fight, in 6th grade. I ended up kicking the s--- out of this one kid who wouldn't leave me alone, and I don't recall ever seeing him again after that. I think I was nonverbal during that incident, too. Probably a meltdown, with growling and everything! Everybody though I was weird. It might have been useful to be able to function somewhere besides having to choose between total passivity and uncontrolled aggression.

Oh, I so know what you mean! My son is 8 yrs old and is struggling with emotional management too. One thing different is that it is the class that have to be removed from the room because he is under tables having meltdowns and pushing furniture around! (aargh!)

When you say it is day #8, does that mean he has a new teacher? Is the teacher familiar with the way AS specifically impacts on your son? Is there an IEP to identify his needs and support him in class? Would she know that getting him to wait in that way is a "no, no"? Does the teacher actually shift the students who complain about sitting next to your son, because I would think that this was discrimination against a special needs student? The class need to be taught inclusion principles when it comes to your son

I got told at a course the other day that the 8 yr old stage is often a bad phase, due to a burst of testosterone, coupled with the fact that it is about this age that a child realises that they are different. I am hoping that things settle down. It could be that this is part of your issue too.

I have been searching for triggers for the last four months, and have eventually come to the conclusion that the main problem at school for my son is that (even though he is a genius in some of these areas), he lacks the motivation to do subjects such as reading, writing and maths. When the pressure goes on to do work he melts down. If I pressure him to do work at home, I get the same response. We are going to start an intensive rewards programme at school to try and improve motivation. While these sorts of issues may not be your son's issues, I mention it because it is vital (but difficult) to find what the main triggers are and try and get teachers on board with ways to help. The stress my son is feeling results in angry behaviour towards other children because he is so wound up over other stuff. Today the school had an Art & Music day where he went around different classes, and he was a completely happy kid. Happy kid = settled, non-angry behaviour in other areas.

The other thing I have been trying is Phosphatydil Serine which is a dietary supplement (ie. not a drug) that is getting some good reviews about lowering stress levels and providing brain clarity. I have noticed some improvement with my son (also more social), but it is still early days.

There is also a really good article on Smelena's website about Emotional Management, which summarises some of Tony Atwood's suggestions.
http://www.smelena.com/article_emotion_management.php

Also, the RTLB teacher explained to my son that his brain gets blocked with a problem, and that we need to learn ways to take the block away. I am going to make him some problem-solving keys for him to refer to at school, eg. "Ignore it", "Ask for help", "Take a break and do something else" etc. Am also interested in looking into Cognitive Behaviour Therapy.

Don't know if any of this is helpful, but I wish you all the best because I know that it is VERY stressful on your own emotional management.

I have a 12 yr old Aspie son who has had difficulty with emotional outbursts (especially at school). He generally starts crying. He goes to a private Christian school. So, the students in his age group (approx. 75) all expect this sort of behavior from him. And, so do the teachers. Therefore, he is and has always been on the outside socially at his school. This is heartbreaking as a parent to watch. He has less outbursts now than ever; however, his peers and teachers have already made a negative judgement call about him. He is positively brilliant academically and for this I am thankful. Truly, I have tried rewards, punishments, therapy, etc. Nothing worked. Social skill group therapy has given him the best benefit to date. Also, I try to remain neutral when he is ramped up (this is hard). Maybe you could try social skill group if it is available near your home. It is a financial sacrifice but it has been worth it so far.

Thank you to those to posted feedback.
I'd love to hear from more Aspies -- see what they thought.

Why is emotional regulation so difficult for some??
Is it because that part of the brain is developmentally delayed?
Is it a possibility that part of the brain might never function correctly? {not the best choice of words - my apologies - I'm tired tonight.}

If it IS a developmental delay, could prescription meds cause even further delay or damage?

And if meds are used, and then they are weaned off of them, how are they able to cope?? Could it make the emotional regulation worse in the long run?

We really are very much opposed to any prescription meds, but if there is something that could help with the emotional regulation, I would like to at least hear about it.

UGH! I wish more was known about all this stuff!
This trial and error crap is horrible!

We ( my 9 year old son and I) have just started a new year of homeschooling, this time without a correspondence course to stick to; that is we no longer have to do lots of exercises, including long hand-written pieces to complete, ( as if computers didn't exist) because the course assessment requires it, many of which often sent us both ( I am AS too) into a practically comatose state.

So a week and a half ago we started working our way ( about an hour a day again) through a book of exercises for his age-appropriate "school"-year, simply so that he would remain familiar with the format of school exercises, and keep up with the main progressions in school work, so that he will be able to pass the control at the end of the year again, as he did last year.

We abandoned it after two days because they were all so mind-numbingly dull, and decided to get the books for "next" year's work instead, in the hope that the exercises would be a bit more challenging, and thus less sleep-inducingly tedious.

The first section we began with was more advanced, but was if anything even more deathly to do. We had an unfortunately unpleasant scene with me losing it rather, trying to "get it into his head" ( as I had obviously, if damagingly, succeeded in doing to myself in my own childhood hence my complete losss of interest in learning, studying, or understanding anything until the age of 25, when a kind of mental revolution reawakened an interest in using my brain ! ) that it is simply something he "has" to do, that surely he could do it because he reads Harry Potter and understands text etc, but he insisted that it was awful because it was so boring, and was worse because asking him to think more than the easier stuff but about equally uninteresting things.

After a pause in which I looked at that question, and the next, I began to see what he meant. That while easier work is dull and sleep inducing, this was harder, requiring him to think about it, but just as boring, and so even more painful. Literally painful. Agonising in the head.

So we have decided to only do the exercises that he finds amusing/intriguing/interesting, and stuff the rest of them. And he is of course shooting ahead in maths and vocabulary and general knowledge questions. I think he could already handle the year above that, or even beyond, in what interests him.

This experience has made me realise, again, and even more, how awful my own school experience was, and to notice this thread particularly, because I think that being obliged to "think" about something which does not interest you at all is mentally painful/traumatic. It isn't surprising if children are exploding in schools, or falling asleep, or exploding at home, or numbing out in front of the TV, after such horrible hours at school being made to think, forced to think, ordered to think, about things which are so profoundly uninteresting to them.

It is like a sophisticated form of mental torture, a sort of mind-emptying/mind-stuffing ( with what might aswell be cotton wool or a tranquiliser) procedure which efficiently stops/prevents children from thinking about what they need or want to think about . And I think that children who explode in schools are expressing all that pain. The agony of using their minds to work out pointless irrrelevant made-up "problems" ( as if there aren't enough already in work places which they could be profitably putting their minds to) . When it doesn't send them to sleep it erupts in physical thrashings or violence.

.

Was just thinking that this problem, which AS children, and introverts in general perhaps, seem to experience whereas NT children don't feel it in the same way, might have something to do with the observation that in introverts their brain even "at rest" is more active than extravert brains.

In other words, perhaps AS and introverts need more time and "mental space" for their own thinking, their regular thought processes/mental activity, which NT's don't.

Being forced/obliged/made to think hard/too much about things which they are not interested in is experienced as a suppression of an essential metabolic activity, in the same way as if normally-breathing people were obliged to restrict their breathing process, with restricting corsets for example, for a certain number of hours a day.

.