autistic kids and discipline

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I was just thinking the boy may have done it to get me into trouble. It was special ed so he may have done it for a sensory issue or just didn't understand why it was bothering me. He seemed normal so I don't know what his disability was. It could have been learning issues or behavior problems or ADHD, who knows or HFA. All kids in my class had disabilities and half of them came off as normal. It was a special ed classroom and it was for full time, no mainstream. Or he could have done it for both reasons because he kicked my chair harder this time and when I yelled stop it, I got into trouble. I didn't like lot of the older boys in my class and then I was happy when they were all next door the following year.

So I guess chair kicking doesn't bother anyone? Weird. I guess I should try it sometime and see how the person reacts. If they look at me or if they move their chair or tell me to stop or if they just ignore it and not say a word. I would have to watch everyone around me and see their reactions to my chair kicking and see if any of them look at me.

I guess my story just happens to help the OP and other parents here and lurkers so they can see what it's like for someone on the spectrum and their perspective.

I assume that I am NT and the chair kicking would drive me up a tree.

Here's the thing - not everything makes sense, so to figure it out in retrospect(maybe), and then attribute future behaviors and actions....will likely get you more misunderstood.

Thinking about my own childhood and your story, highlights how little the adults tried to understand, and often reacted. No matter what they were thinking, their reaction was not helpful.

To the OP, consequences worked fine with my NT son when he has control over the issue. What I have found is that by being consistent with these consequences, I have found out what the kids can and can't control. My older guy just can't help his exec functioning issues. Punishing him when he forgets something won't improve his memory or our relationship. My younger one (with As) completely freaks when he gets a consequence. He feels like he's in trouble and he just can't bear it.

With both boys, we would give logical consequences when they do something
wrong, like DS 2 just had a meltdown and trashed his room. The consequence is cleaning it up. It is connected to the wrongdoing, regardless of the reason. We don't punish for the meltdown, but if you make a mess you gotta clean it up.

Yeah my husband told me chair kicking would bother everyone so I guess it has nothing to do with sensory issues. My husband said you tell the teacher. When you raise your hand, the kid will stop. I guess the punishment was meant to teach me that but it didn't. If it had something to do with sensory issues I guess it had to do with how I dealt with it while everyone else without it would deal with it better.

Why? What does that even mean?

What it means is that you were a little kid, the teacher did not teach the intention of her punishment, so (IMHO) she was a dumbass. What the causes were or weren't are probably not going to help you figure out what's appropriate now.

When you said, maybe it doesn't bug people so I should try it sometime, I got worried. If you are being literal - that's not a good idea. I didn't want you to get in an uncomfortable position because of something said here.

Yeah I did mean it and my husband told me not to do it when I told him after I asked him if chair kicking bothers him.

I guess I wasn't complete in my first answer. Of course chair kicking bothers people, but not to the point where they lose control of their options and react against their own best interests. I feel like the later is what happens with my son in these situations. Outside of them, he can tell you everything he could have done or might have done that would be considered approprtiate. Inside of them he just reacts; it's like he loses the ability to access the other information or process the options because his level of stress is too high. Most NT's don't normally reach that level of stress, although if they are having a bad day they might.

Just FYI, when you take your child on a plane, odds are good he will kick and push at the seat in front of you. Just gently hold his feet and let him know it doesn't good feel to the person in front. 90% of passengers will never complain about it but yes they feel it and no they don't like it.

To paraphrase Skinner on punnishment:
1) once punnisment is removed (ie problem behavoir stops) it is only a matter of time before behavoir returns to baseline or is replaced by on that more effectivly serves it function as the is no longer contact with this contingency.
2) source of punnishment will be avoided and may be viewed as a threat ( ie do u want your kids to fear u?)
3) punnishment can be escaped/ avoided by attacking its source.

I have 3 NT children in addition to my Asperger's son. He knows there are rules that he needs to follow. My other 3 children also know that Joe is held to the same standard as far as following the rules...but the route by which we get him to follow them may be different than their routes. Open communication with ALL of the children in the family is the key.

You have to be careful when it comes to disciplining an autistic child. When they “act out” it is usually just to get attention, negative or positive. So for instance if an autistic child says a cuss word you can react one of two ways: 1. You can punish the child and give them what they want which is attention so they’ll just keep doing whatever it is they’re being punished for. 2. IGNORE THEM!

If you choose to ignore the child who, for example, keeps repeating a bad word just to get a reaction out of you they’ll realize after saying it multiple times that hey wait, I’m not getting any attention by doing this anymore and MOST of the time they’ll stop.

I'd be careful to qualify that statement; it depends on the child and WHY he is practicing a behavior. Repeating a word could be a sign of Tourettes, it could be sensory and/or processing related or, it could be to test mom's nerves today. If a child who is mostly non-verbal or has limited usage of words - ignoring them for any attempt to get your attention is probably unwise.

That's our special challenge as parents - trying to figure out the 'whys' first and foremost.

Punishment doesn't work on me and I'm high functioning. Ever since I was a small child I've always reacted to punishment by having a meltdown and/or defiantly continuing the behavior. The idea of someone being able to force me to behave a certain way really freaks me out, so I want to prove that they can't control me.

What does work, instead, is explaining exactly why I should do or not do the thing. For example I should change my clothes regularly because my skin will get rashes and such if I don't. If you have a good, logical reason for me to follow a rule, I'll follow it. I might even follow it if you say you have a personal preference for it, but only if you show similar consideration for me.

With lower functioning kids explaining often doesn't work because they don't understand the explanation or are incapable of controlling the behavior (this second thing can happen in high functioning kids too, for example I can't control having meltdowns). What I tend to do to manage behavior in lower functioning autistics (I volunteer with disabled kids) is to restructure the environment so it no longer triggers that behavior or they can engage in a safer variant of the behavior. So for example with the teenager who bit me when I changed a routine, punishment would be completely pointless and explaining why she shouldn't bite would be even less effective. All I can do is stick to the routine in the future so she doesn't bite me. This is not spoiling the child when you do this for a severely disabled child, because they don't choose to misbehave to manipulate you. (Most of them have neither the social understanding nor the self-control necessary to manipulate someone.) They misbehave because they don't understand or can't cope with a situation.

It's pointless and cruel to punish a child when they don't know what they did wrong or when what they did wrong was outside of their control (or they had such strong compelling reasons to do it that your punishment is less important). It's also pointless to punish a child if their temperament is such that they don't respond to punishment (either a strong fear of control or a lack of sensitivity to punishment).

Too many people act like punishment is the only way to control a child's behavior, and if you don't punish a child you'll let them do unacceptable behavior. There are many things you can do instead of punishing a child - explaining why they shouldn't do a certain behavior, rewarding the absence of the behavior or presence of incompatible behaviors, modifying the environment so it doesn't trigger the behavior, removing the rewards sustaining the behavior, teaching skills that render the behavior unnecessary, etc. All of those are effective with some kids and some behaviors, and you should pick which one you use based on the child's individual characteristics.

How many autistic children do you have?
Autistic children need to understand the why's of any given situation. When my son uses a bad word I don't do either of those things you suggest. I explain to him that the word is not polite and that while he may have heard someone else use it, that does not make it right and that it is a word that we do not use. Then I try my hardest to bite my tongue whenever one of those words is about to slip out of my own mouth:)!

Autistic kids are generally less socially oriented than non-autistic kids. It's right there in the definition. Which means, by definition, autistic kids are less likely to be attention-seeking. If a kid is extremely attention-seeking, then they're probably not autistic.

In my experience working with autistic kids I've only once met an autistic kid who misbehaved to get attention (he was a very sociable nonverbal guy who I'd have called non-autistic MR if it weren't for the fact that he acted more classically autistic when he was little). In fact more often they'd misbehave from too much attention. (Time out can be rewarding for autistic kids because it gives them a break from overload.) I have seen many people claim the kid's behavior was attention-seeking when it clearly wasn't, though - such as this one kid who compulsively flicked the light switch, with absolutely no concern for whether there were people in the room (if he was attention-seeking he'd want people in the room instead of not caring) or not but with delight at seeing the lights go on or off.

I think people often tend to assume that any behavior they don't understand is attention-seeking. Which really causes problems when dealing with autistic kids because attention-seeking behavior is quite rare in this group.

Thanks for posting your comments, Ettina. They are a refreshing perspective on discipline. I was getting worried about my inability to adopt certain of the behaviourist suggestions about disciplining my AS child. I didn't raise any of my older children that way, and you're right, I shouldn't feel that rewarding / punishing what I determine as good and bad behaviours is the solution. What's been successful for us is learning together how to relate to each other, and finding ways to create more positive interactions. This seems to prevent a lot of meltdowns (although I can't say I know what to do when they occur; they still set off my own feelings of anger and guilt).
J.

i do not find this to be the case for my own autistic children. it is MUCH more typical in NT children than those with ASD. for the most part, that kind of action requires greater manipulation skills than most autistic kids have.

my youngest behaves extremely well at school. in fact, he is almost docile compared to at home. the last thing he wants is to draw the teachers' attention to himself. at home he is much more active and emotionally labile, however it is done for the purpose of expressing himself rather than garnering attention.

I have to agree, I haven't seen this at all with kids on the spectrum. Honestly, it was one of the first things I noticed with DS that my typical, consistent discipline didn't work AND he was never sneaky about misbehavior and would not modify his behavior based on who was around. It is a problem with the other kids because they know how to avoid getting in trouble, not my guy!

There may be some behaviors DS will use when he doesn't have words for what's up and is upset and on the way to a meltdown, you may call that attention seeking, I would agree that it is communicative, but I don't think for the purpose of getting attention, rather needing assistance.