How do you disipline a child who has Asperger's?

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DW is right. You need to fire this psychologist IMMEDIATELY. It is extremely poor advice, and quite literally the opposite is true. What is usually the case is things require more explanation, and actually listening to your childs perspective. Quite literally, it takes alot more verbal dialog and respect.

Power plays do not work very well. There are two things you have to remember, thier memory is much better than yours and thier brains are more logically regimented. Lets put it this way, this is memory on the scale of a library, it goes beyond encyclopedic. This includes things that happened in thier life. The fact is they are going to see things much better towards you if you acted rationally, and treated them with respect, than enforcing strict heirachal structures. In fact I suggest you need to move as far away from that as possible, and realize you are dealing with a child that is on the intellectual level close to an adult, but socially disabled. That is the best way to view somebody with AS that you are describing. In order to get through to them, you really do need to respect this, which means listening to them but also negotiating with them, and explaining things to them in a highly logical manner.

If you follow strict heircharies...and enforce strict discipline. The child with AS who has an incredible memory, will probably judge you very harshly as an adult. Strict heirachal structures don't work, your child is not a dog. Nor is he NT. The little professor analogy is correct. Somebody with AS thinks on an extremely rational basis. My advice is to strart watching the big bang theory...the Sheldon Cooper character is a good example of somebody with AS. He had to create a chart and logically come up with a system for the act of making a new friend. Something that comes naturally to a person with AS. That is how you handle things with a person with AS, you have to rationalize everything following clear logic. Just because is not enough, Nor is the simple fact you are the parent. The reality is in the end, when they are an adult, they can turn the tables on you very quickly, and playing parental dictator, will only backfire and hurt you in the end.

I have more to add to KEYPREAL. There are a few things that we here have learned are KEY, and I mean KEY to creating solid structure in our families and raising responsive and responsible AS kids. I'll list them off, and if your psychologist didn't mention them, or allow for them in some way in what he told you, I would have to agree with starygrrl that he needs to be fired.

First, AS kids can hyperfocus and miss the instruction. You might assume they must have heard it, but they did not. To be sure an instruction is heard, you need to be face to face with the child's full attention.

Second, AS kids have difficulty making transitions. If the instruction is to come to dinner while playing a computer game, are you expecting immediate compliance, or will the instruction include, "within X minutes." Allowing a certain amount of time for compliance, and visually enforcing that with a timer, allows the child to complete the thoughts he is currently engaged with and make a planned and comfortable transition. Processing speed is also an issue for many AS kids, and that should be considered, as well.

Third, what if there is flaw in the request? Is he allowed to clarify? This has happened with my son quite a bit. I often mispeak, but he is not capable of translating what I said to what I meant. He might act on the request literally, or if I've misspoken in a serious way, say, "I can't do that!". Either way, it needs to get fixed, and we need to communicate in order to do that.

Give some thought to what you want for your child. Compliance, absolute, all the time - or self confidence and a postive relationship with you. Unfortunately, with AS kids, these can be competing goals and many, many grown AS children on this forum have no contact with their parents, and no respect for them, as those parents appeared arbitrary and completely uninterested in understanding them as children. Does this system have enough in it to overcome that?

My AS son is great. He's 12. I can count on him to help me when I need it most, and to listen when I need him to most. Sure, there are things we've never gotten him to do, but in the world of pick your battles well, I was willing to drop those and kids can sense it. He is a patrol leader in scouts and has zero discipline issues at school. Zero. But even better, he has a positive self-view, a positive outlook on life, and loves his family in a very real way. There have been times I've listened to other parents talk and wondered if I should bone up and be more strict, but then I look at my son and realize that with him, I've got it right.

[/quote]I realize every child is different, but the AS children I've read here are rarely into power plays, unless they feel its been forced upon them. They act on logic.[quote]

I understand the shock. First I would like to say that the psychiatrist is very well reputed and second that I don't know if these guidelines are not a way for him to understand to what extent this is a behavior or mental disorder.

When I say discipline it is not on every subject but on behavior. Social rules he's been asked to comply for years now. There's no misinformation there. And after a couple of days sinking into this change of paradigm I realized that it seems right for "our son". Because he has a big enough ego and intelligence to adjust. And because if he does have AS it's probably on the lower spectrum. Treating him like a little adult seemed right but didn't work. Because all the rules he's been taught just don't go into practice. You'll tell him every minute to eat or even chew but he's mind is some other place. You've told him to lower his voice but he forgets a few seconds gone by. You tell him not to hurt his schooll mates but the teacher keeps complaining. I don't want him to be an adult and still not get the picture. And if the best way for him is a reinforced routine then that's where he's going.

And routine is very important here for him not to feel it's arbitrary. If we keep asking till we give up or lose temper then force him or bring on the consequence he'll see it as power play because he's in the game denying, reasoning or just ignoring. But if we build on his discipline and awareness very constant and coherently he's gonna accept it. He doesn't have to understand why, and if he does require a reason then that reason is because he is little and adults know best. Period. And let him feel free to be a child. No little professor crap. If he feels he's gonna get our interest with action figures best, that's what he's gonna try. He doesn't know how? We'll teach him practicing social and fantasy play. Not astronomy! He chooses that just because he can excell and impress.

I asked the same questions to the psychiatrist about him not understanding and he would reply: don't assume he's stupid. But don't let him choose his own path because he'll just drift around and away from normal behaviour. Show him the way and if he goes there that's fine. If not make him go there or, like the physician put it, it's he's loss because he's gonna be misfitted all his life or at least till he comes to adulthood and recalls that because of his behavior he doesn't have a good social and professional life. And then he'll feel the pressure to comply but he's had to struggle all his younger years because he didn't build on his social skills (or had them installed into him).

What Starygrrl said about his memory being better and his mind being more logical are true, but with two qualifications, if he is anything like my girlfriend's 10 year old aspie. His excellent memory will be highly selective (things worth remembering in his opinion), and his highly logical mind will function on a very different set of base logical axioms.

Things we take for granted will never even occur to him, and often cause and effect will fall outside of his logical chart. Other people's feelings are illogical to him, and thus are often difficult to predict let alone take into consideration. If I were in your situation, I might even go so far as having both of you sleep on the ground one night or afternoon to demonstrate to him what would happen if he broke your bed.

Big bang theory is deffinately a good place to learn about how aspies might think. One thing that stands out in my mind is one time Sheldon was told that something wasn't about him, and he replied "I don't follow..."

As far as the strict heirarchy being a bad idea, possibly, but a "loose" heirarchy is definitely needed. I have been trying to explain to Billy that the world isn't going to cater to him the way everyone did when he and mom lived with Grandma (who was famous for sacrificing long term development for short term harmony), and he is slowly adapting.

But you can't treat them like an adult, because they aren't equipped like adults. However, you can reason with them like they are adults. "Because I said so" is never enough, but rather "Because I said so and here's why" can be, even if his opinion of why seems illogical to him.

For example, Billy hates getting a bath, but it is a requirement that he get one every two nights. He often demands to know why, and I tell him because I don't want to smell him stinking up my place. To him, that isn't really a good enough answer because what does it logically matter to him if I have to smell him stink. He doesn't mind it so why should I? His desire to not get a bath is logically more important than my trivial discomfort, but when he refuses, I don't let him come near me (I am OCD), and he gets even more upset. At that point, it will often click in his mind that he needs to get a bath.

As I read KEYPREAL's advice from his therapist it made me just cringe. That sounds almost identical to the CBT therapist I took my son to. This person didn't understand the AS mind, and I totally agree with the poster that said to fire this person. This therapist is telling you the opposite of what you should be doing. These kids are not defiant by nature, and a lot of their behavior is because of things that we often times just don't understand. They process the world differently, and therefore react unlike NT children because they aren't seeing things the way NT's are. The approaches that have been suggested by other posters work, they are just time consuming, and some of these take a long time and it goes against traditional discipline sometimes. Respect is key. There is nothing wrong with negotiating with your child. It gives them confidence, communication skills and experience in making good choices, you can lead them to think about consequences of behavior and give them the choice to take the consequence or abide by the rules. Isn't that what we do as adults? Choose between what we want, what we must have or do and the consequences of non compliance? Choices and allowing control is not always a bad thing. It builds confidence and self esteem, and these kids really need a lot of that. Consistency is also important. I have been very positive in my discipline with my son and he is a happy child. All the therapist did was make him angry. He had no respect for her, and as my husband described him, he was beyond disrespectful, he was totally dismissive. It was all because of this kind of advice and approach.

I will forever feel guilty for putting my son through that program, and I will always kick myself for following her advice for the 3 months that I went to her. As soon as I stopped going to her my sons behavior improved It was a disaster and a very expensive mistake.

I know it all gets complicated, and each parent looks for that right balance between understanding their child the way they are, letting them be who they are, and helping them make their way in the world and learn to do certain things just because the world expects them to. But when I read Jimbeaux words as coming closer to the looser philosophy here than that psychiatrist ... well, I'm really comfortable that the psychiatrist is going too far. Jimbeaux is a pretty strict guy, and he doesn't let his soon-to-be-step-son get away with anything that isn't truly and really for the best. He's worked hard for that balance, and his stepson is doing really well as a result.

Jumping might be a calming thing. I'd find something else for him to jump on and when he starts on the bed shoo him to the other location until he is done jumping. (Yes, and my mom gets on me for "shooing" my children, but whatever, haha.) Mostly I do an "Excuse me? Are you jumping on MY bed?" I wait for an answer then give an "I don't think so!" and then shoo him off to a "wiggly zone" or in your case a jumping zone maybe.

With the raspberries have you considered that it might be either a stim or a tic? My child had a spitting tic for a little while which was quite gross. The neurologist gave us some information on Torretts Syndrome and I read the "for the child" section to him and out of no where he says "You know, I think the spitting thing is a tic!" All I could say is "Yip, that's what I'm thinking too." Thankfully that one went away and turned into something less intrusive! With the spitting tic we made a rule, he was to try to get to a trash can or a sink or a tissue before he absolutely HAD to spit. Both of us agreed that we sure didn't want to clean it up, and he really did his best with that. If it is a stim, do it a little while yourself, it makes your lips tingle and tongue feel weird, maybe find something more appropriate that might do the same thing or stimulate the same areas and see if it stops.

Not knowing your kid, I'm going to have to go with impulse control and poor memory retrieval when the impulse hits.

I have AS and no way do I hold grudges against my mother. She did most of the discipline and punishments. She grounded me, took my stuff away, made me not do anything until I did what she told me to do and I do not disown her. In fact I look back and see she did me a big favor and she was a good mother. Any aspie who holds grudges aginst their parents for their good parenting are a bunch of cry babies. There are worse things they could have done. Look at A Child Called It or Becoming Anna and other memoirs out there about child abuse. Hold grudges for that, disown them for that if they did those things to you that were done to those abused kids.

Call me an NT I don't care. I'm not one of those aspies who are cry babies over having my Barbie dolls getting taken away for a few days.

I think I'm gonna start another thread about this subject so I stop taking control on this one and because this seems to be a subject with some controversy. I'll put it on the General Autism Discussion to realize how adults see their upbringing and in what way it had an influence on their self discipline and personality.[/quote]

I think that's a great idea! The nice thing about Wrong Planet is that you can get both sides, the parent and the child. I'm sure you will do the right thing for yours. Each kid is different and the more information you can get the better off you are. Good luck! This is a tough one!

I'll check out the new thread later, but I realized when I posted to you in another thread one of the reasons we might be seeing some things differently:

http://www.wrongplanet.net/posts115270-start15.html

While most AS kids want a solid friend or two, they really don't want social admiration. What they want is to not be mocked, and for society to allow them to be who they want to be. It's a big difference.

As for ego, I'm not sure its ego so much as over-confidence in one's own logic. Remember that AS are very logic based, while the NT population acts on a variety of factors. To someone with AS, this is very confusing, and they can't see any logic to it. Until they come to understand the NT way of reaching conclusions, they assume they, themselves, are "smarter." Its more about not recognizing different kinds of intelligence than ego for, when looked at from black and white logic - facts and statistics - they ARE smarter. But when looking at the bigger picture, the concept of wisdom ... maybe yes, maybe no. At age 5 your son doesn't understand that, he only knows that the other kids don't carry all the same facts in their heads. Which makes that ego a rather fragile and sometimes counterproductive thing, and something you should be careful with.

Certainly there are times kids need to understand that a rule is a rule and it just is. I don't spend endless rounds of hours trying to get my son to agree with what I want, but I do give it a fair shake. My parenting isn't democratic so much as recognizing the value of the child believing he has a voice. Don't doubt there are many, many times that I say, "I understand how your feel about this, and I've considered it, but the decision is now made, and you need to do it." What bothers me about this "say it once" is that so much can be missed with that, and it can lead to other problems. I would much prefer, "rephrase it no more than 3 times, and count down to 10 after the third to enforce that this is the end of discussion." Does that make sense?