Behavior issues

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Hello All-

Just wanted to share what has been going on with my son lately, and see if anyone has any input. He will be 5 in 2 weeks. For the most part, he has always been pretty happy. He has never really had many meltdowns or tantrums. But for the last couple of months he has started hitting at me and kicking and punching at me. Some of the time he does it because he doesn't get his way, but many times he does it when other children are fighting or if my husband starts reprimanding him. He has also started just walking up to me for no reason at all when we are at home in a calm environment, and he will just punch me or hit at me, He has also started butting his head on mine and scratching me with his fingernails. This behavior has gotten me so upset lately. I feel that I have always been very loving and nurturing to him. He is my only child, and he gets lots of attention from me every day.

We have been putting him in time out for these behaviors, but it doesn't seem to be working. We try to talk to him about why this is not acceptable and that it hurts Mommy and hurts my feelings, and sometimes he laughs or smiles. I am just so frustrated because I don't understand why this is happening. He has been on summer vacation for almost a month now, so it is not because he is stressed at school. We have also tried taking things away from him that he really likes and that doesn't work either.

A big part of my son's issues from the beginning were his late physical development and his lack of initiative. I always worried that he had really low energy levels. I never would have described him as hyper. He has always had attention issues, but not hyper. Well, it seems as though he has turned a corner, and I am just wondering what will come next. Is he going to continue to abuse me, and is this just going to get worse as time goes on?

Any input would be greatly appreciated.........

I'm not sure what is up with your son, but I'll share a data sheet that I find helpful when trying to figure what is up with my own son (same age, diagnosed PDD-NOS).

I got this from Lynn Koegel's book "Overcoming Autism"

[b]Behavior Data Sheet

Time:

Place:

Before:

Told to do something
Change in activity
Moved
Alone
Interrupted
Told "No"

After:

Given attention
Given something
Lost something
Removed from area
Ignored
Punished
Request withdrawn

Why

Get out of _____
Transition
To obtain ______
Attention
Avoid (person/place)
Others (specify)

[/b]

Each time your son displays challenging behaviour, fill out your Data Sheet right away. Try to find patterns in his behaviour.

Once you have established some patterns, you can work from there.

One thing to watch for - make sure that you "reward" positive behaviour and not negative behaviour. In other words - let's say that you are reading a book or doing some chores and suddenly your son comes up and pinches you. If you stop what you're doing and attend to him - you might be inadvertently "rewarding" him by responding positively to his negative behaviour (i.e. I pinch mummy and she gives me attention - that's great - when I want attention from mummy, I'll pinch her!"

You want to reward the positive behaviour, e.g. your son using words or signs or PECS to get your attention without pinching you - then shower him with praise and attention.

I'm not saying that he is necessarily using his challenging behaviour to get your attention. He might have other reasons. This is why it is important to fill in the data sheet and determine what these reasons are.

I recommend the book "Overcoming Autism" - I learned some great things that I have successfully used with my son. I'm certainly not always perfect (far from it!! !), but I have improved and our relationship has improved.

Good luck.

Children test limits. Especially only children.

If I ever did that to my mother I'd get grabbed by the arm, swatted on the butt a few times and scolded in a bit of a severe tone.

I feel for you. I'll be very interested in reading this thread as we are going through the same thing with my son. However he's throwing things at walls and spitting at things rather than hitting us.... not sure why he is doing this either, and wont talk to us. He gets lots of love affection and attention from all members of the family. If I take a toy away for some time or if he looses privledges, he is ten times worse and has no affect at all in trying to teach him right from wrong. He doesnt understand consequences for undesireable behaviour at all.

This kind of "discipline" is unlikely to work with many Aspies, in large part (I think) because it is illogical. The denial of privileges, or taking of a toy feels more like bullying than it does like a consequence for undesirable behavior, to the child involved. The toy, or the privilege, has nothing to do with the "bad behavior" that occurred. "Natural consequences" and social stories are more likely to be useful teaching tools.

angelbear - this may seem like a silly question, but have you asked your son why he's doing these behaviors? Sometimes, as parents, we get so involved in trying to explain why the behavior is unacceptable, or "training" it away, that we forget that behavior is communication, and that many of our children are quite capable of helping us in the translation. From what you've said, it's possible that your son is trying to behave in ways that he's seen modeled by others - he saw other people fighting, so he hit or punched also. He might have no idea why the other people were punching and hitting, but thought he would do it, too.

When he witnesses situations like that, maybe he needs to have a simultaneous narration, sort of like a social story? "Johnny is angry at Harry. He's hitting him. Harry is hitting back. That's not a good way for them to deal with their argument. A better way would be for them to talk. If Johnny told Harry why he was angry, maybe Harry could explain why he did what he did. Maybe it was just a misunderstanding. Fighting with fists is not a good way to settle problems. It's much better to use words to work out problems." Or something like that.

Another thing that occurred to me when reading your post is that even though school ended a month ago, your son could easily still be processing the stress from the school year. Some children take a lot of time to do this - I don't know your son; you do. Is it possible that he's having a "delayed reaction" to some things that happened during the school year? Some children act out, in reaction, only after they've had a chance to decompress a bit.

my son would "hit" me but intresting stuff is that it is only me (not his father or anyone else). i understand it as his experiment with evoking emotions so i play with it since it doesn't hurt really. he would kiss me if i pretend to cry.
in our case i see that he doesn't want me in real pain so i let it go even it is not politically ccorrect.

Is it attention seeking behavior? What would he do if you just said, in a non-commital tone, "I don't play with kid who hit." and walk away. Counter this with being extra positive in response to good behavior. "We have been playing together for 3 minutes with no pushing WOW I AM SO HAPPY!! !" Sometimes kids seeking attention are equally happy with negative attention, some kids just want to see what happens if they push the envelope.

I also agree with Jat that he could be mimicking negative behaviors. Maybe he has seen some kids do this with no consequence and he wants to figure our how they succeeded.

Thanks for the replies. This is one of the theories that I have: My son is an only child, so he does not have to deal with all of the normal "fighting" that goes on with siblings. I am wondering if he is testing the waters with me since I am "safe" He very well could have seen other children at school doing this, and even if they were playing, he may have not understood it. He is very timid around other kids, and becomes intimidated when they play rough. I do the best I can to get him around other kids, and overall he tolerates it, but when kids start running and playing and it becomes unpredictable, then he wants to remove himself from it. So, this has crossed my mind, that maybe he is "experimenting" with this stuff to see what will happen.

When it is just the two of us, I can normally just walk away from him or redirect him. or firmly reprimand him and move on. But when my husband sees it happen, he gets upset and raises his voice and reprimands him and it makes it worse. My husband feels that he just needs more discipline such as being sent to his room until he can learn to control his behavior. I have noticed that if my husband gives him warnings to stop something and he doesn't and then my husband says okay, you are going to your room, then my son will run across the room and start hitting me. So it is like he knows he is angry, but he just doesn't know how to express it. We have tried showing him that he can hit the couch or squeeze a toy.

I feel that he has impulse control problems because it does happen when he sees other kids getting upset. I know that he is very sensitive, so maybe his emotions just take over and he doesn't know how to process it.

Jat, I have asked him why he does it, and most of the time he does not answer. But, if it is in an episode where he ends up losing something, then he says it is because he lost something. But that doesn't make sense because he hit me before he loses something.......

So, I think the behavior may be coming from several origins. I like the idea of keeping the fact sheet on it so that I can pinpoint it better.

Thanks for the ideas everyone!

This is so familiar! LOL! I think that our kids sometimes don't understand certain parts of language quite the way we intend them, or their linear sense of time is not quite developed? Something is "off" about the way they "sequence" events, and I don't know whether it's a linguistic thing, or whether it's a temporal processing thing, but mine outgrew it. I remember that puzzled feeling, though. But clearly, for now, you won't find out anything about why he was doing something if there were any other negative consequences, because he'll go back to the negative consequences regardless of the sequence of events.

With my son, he often wouldn't answer because putting together the words to communicate was too difficult. If I could come up with some possibilities, and offer them as "multiple choice" options, he would tell me which (if any) was it. I always offered a "none of the above" so he wasn't forced into an inaccurate answer. Sometimes, even if I didn't have the "right" answer, my suggestions helped him start talking, so he was able to give me some information - not a full explanation, of course, but the beginnings of an answer, so we could start to figure things out. As he got older, this technique was increasingly valuable, although school was very skeptical. My son was extremely verbal, and they couldn't imagine that he really couldn't talk about anything. They thought he was being non-compliant. I knew better, but of course, as a mother, had no credibility.

Thanks Jat, I like the multiple cholce thing. That sounds good. Yes, my son is becoming more and more verbal.
What I am noticing is that if I ask him something specific about an event that has happened or something that he is interested in, he can answer with a beautifully constructed sentence that sounds like a "normal" child. Or if he is talking to someone, I have to tell him specific things to say to them like "Tell them where we went today, or tell them what we ate for a snack." But if he just tries to talk to a stranger on his own, it turns into a bunch of nonsense gobbledegook! LOL! But when he talks to me, he can just keep on and on talking about things that he is making up in his head. One good thing about that is that I really see that he DOES have a very creative imagination.

Earlier today when he was calm, I tried to discuss with him about why Dad put him to bed early last night. He responded "Because I hitted." Then I said "Why do you hit Mom" and he said "because it upsets Mom" So I think you are right, he just can't get the sequencing of events down. I do think he is aware that we don't approve of the behavior, but he just can't put it into words why he feels the need to do it.

My husband really thinks we should just keep sending him to his room every time he does it. I agree to some degree, but I really would like to know why it is happening so that we can help him cope better. We will just have to keep trying, What else can you do?

Exactly, I agree. That is what I was trying to say in my short winded post He basically doesnt understand, we worked out pretty quickly that removing privledges wasnt going to work and we stopped doing it. We certainly didnt want to provoke behaviour to escalate into something much worse and we are always looking for new ideas and abolish those that have a negative affect. We always communicate to him first and put ourselves in his shoes or try and figure out what is really behind the behavour. We do social stories on a regular basis. It's still not getting through for this particular issue..

I've printed out the behavour data sheet that canadianrose suggested to see if we can make some sort of pattern/reason behind the behaviour and I'm open to any "natural consequence" ideas you can share re this issue

I think the behavior sheet could be really useful - you might find some very interesting patterns that you would never have suspected, and having the data sheets printed and ready to go makes it much more likely that you will get the information down when you need to!

As for natural consequences, you're right - it's hard with hitting. When my son used to hit (thankfully, not often), I often used to hold his arms, in a kind of bear hug, and part of the time, talk calmly to him, until he got past the "meltdown." The thing is, if your son is doing this and it's not a meltdown, the deep pressure (which I think was what helped my son) isn't necessarily what will help, and you might wind up inadvertently giving attention to "bad" behavior.

If your son is "safe" by himself in one room of the house, it might be an appropriate natural consequence, if he is hitting you, for you to withdraw. Rather than putting him in time out, take yourself out of the situation, so he can't hit you - no one wants to stay somewhere where they are being hit. Tell him that's what you are doing. "Mommy doesn't like being hit. It hurts. So Mommy is going to stay in her room by herself for a while." When you come back, if he is being appropriate, be very enthusiastic about being able to see him "safely," or "nicely."

My daughter also did this and it started around that age. I feel it is a developmental stage for them-most NT kids hit this stage around 2 or 3 but my daughter hit it around 5. I like PenguinMom's advice above-saying I don't want to play with someone who hits me in a calm way. I think for my daughter she would get overwhelmed with frustration over something and it come out in a physical outburst (much like a NT 3 year old). She never wanted to hurt me but it was a method of communication that said "I don't like that!". My daughter would get more frustrated if I tried to put words to to the feelings such as "It seems you may be frustrated right now" but that's what was suggested to me at those times. I think your son will grow out of the behaviors if you don't give him attention for them (sometimes with my daughter time outs would equal attention-she didn't get that it was a punishment).

There's no way I could hold my daughter as a pp mentioned-it would have escalated her immediately so be aware that doesn't work for all kids!

My son does seem to understand that when he loses something it is related to his behaviors because we always ask him why did you lose this or that?, and he always knows why. The problem with the hitting is I think he forgets in between incidents that there are going to be consequenses and his emotions get the best of him.

Like I posted before , when it is just the 2 of us, then I can do "natural consequences" and just go in another room. The problem is when my husband sees it happening. He gets angry about it, and then the whole scene just gets escalated. I just need my husband to understand more about AS (which is a work in progress)

The funny thing is, my son went through this when he was 2 (the typical time for it) and now he is doing it again. I really just think it is related to his lack of controlling his emotions. Hopefully, in time, he will grow out of it again.

I think you hinted at this earlier, but one complication at your son's current age is that he is now seeing how other boys "play" hit, and that whole social construct no doubt is completely confusing him. What I had to tell my son was that he was not allowed to copy it or even reciprocate it because there is a fine line on when it's socially accepted v. when it is not and that while other kids may be able to see where that line is, he can't. So, instead of running afoul of the line and getting into big trouble by accident there was only one rule he needed to live by: NO HITTING. Plus, to keep things simple, it is MY rules he needs to mind, not some other families', no matter where he is, and my rule is, repeat, NO HITTING. Anytime, anywhere.

It was interesting a while ago on a different topic when I got a pm from a member talking about how it still confuses her to see people break rules she thought she understood. Her first instinct is to believe the rule must have changed, and to play along. An instinct which has gotten her into trouble for about as long as she can remember, as it will our kids. Our kids need to learn not to allow such assumptions to take hold, for it does pretty much always work out poorly for them. My son has figured that out, but it does frustrate him, and it probably will throughout his life. Part of what they need to get used to, and learn to accept.

I realize from your description there is more going on than that, but it is a concept to be sure you've addressed.

I tested the limits, as a child. I test the limits with some of the staff, at my clubhouse, nowadays. I haven't really changed. I've just gotten older.