I'm lost as to what to do

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Pddtwinmom - well what do you suggest to stop it? When I asked people on here for help, the main thing I heard was I should consider drugging my daughter and/or sending her away to learn better behaviour. Everyone seems to act like it is a simple thing to stop - I wish I knew how. I have to physically remove my 13 AS daughter from her NT twin and it is no easy feat, seeing as she is taller and stronger than I. Then my NT daughter will add to it by screaming to get away from her or get out of her room and this amps up my AS daughter. She will hit her sister who will scream and hit back and it is a miracle to remain calm and pull them apart. And then my AS daughter will see it as a game and keep trying to go back for more. I hate the situation and I don't think most people on here know how hard it is to deal with. It's exhausting and makes you feel awful as a parent.

They say "violence should not be tolerated at all" like I can just take away some video games or tv and then it will stop. This would escalate it in my home and make it a crazy household to live in.

And S2 might not be doing much to provoke his brother because my AS daughter can get mad at anything - yesterday she was convinced her sister drank all of the yogourt drink in our home and even though there was a full litre in the fridge for her to have some, she had already decided her sister was a pig and had to be punished.

It is sucky situation and it's not like you can just make some charts on what started it and what happened and what can you change because I am constantly trying to figure out her triggers and to prevent meltdowns, but they happen anyways.

Edited to add - I can see why the OP said she is lost at what to do - so am I. I feel if I can stay calm and get them separated within 5 minutes and keep it that way, that is a victory. If no one gets hurt, that is a victory. And yes I am asking my NT daughter to try to not provoke and/or exacerbate it when she gets like that because nobody wins when my AS daughter is getting upset. If both my NT daughter and I can deal with her calmly, it usually blows over. If we yell at her or it gets physical, then it can go on for an hour or more.

Last edited by triplemoon18 on 17 Jun 2014, 11:05 am, edited 1 time in total.

I totally get that, Tripplemoon, and I'm sorry you're going through that! My reaction on this thread was to the idea that S2 was the real problem, and was somehow instigating the attacks. I think that's a dangerous message to teach both the NT and ASD children involved.

I have been following your posts and my heart breaks for you. To be honest, I would take stronger measures with your daughters, with regards to physical violence. If that means medication, which I know you're against, I would probably do it. But, my children are still very young, so I have the luxury of saying what I think I would do without the benefit of experience. But, I did grow up in a violent home, so I do know that the children who experience it don't just get over it. They don't "understand". It destroys their self-esteem, self-worth, and self-love. So, it bothers me when the theme is focused on getting NT children (kids!) to accept a situation where their physical safety is in jeopardy, just because they happen to be NT and their siblings are not.

PDDmom - yes I grew up in a violent home too, my parents were just awful together until they separated when I was 14 and I even had to call the police on my dad for putting my mom's head through the wall. So I can see why you worry about the implications.

What I am trying to get across is just how hard it is to be in a situation like this. I just want to run away at times. I have been a single mom for 13 years and I am just tired of it. To think this will be my life for at least the next 4 years freaks me out. And if I thought that a medication was going to work magic, I would put her on it, but all I read about is the nasty side effects and how some aspies feel like zombies. The OP put her son on drugs and they haven't seemed to help. So really I don't want to pay money I don't have for drugs that may not help or make things worse.

I am feeling badly because I feel looked down upon for not being able to prevent the violence. This isn't a life that anyone would chooose and I am trying to be strong for my family and find the solutions that will change things. It is a constant struggle just to get through day by day.

I wish I had the answers for you. I really do. And I wish you had more help.

I hope you didn't take what I said personally. I do know that it's hard. I just didn't like the way some posters were saying that it was the other son's fault - without even knowing what he did. The search for solutions cannot include that line of thinking, imo, especially when we're talking about young children who are largely defenseless.

Tripplemoon, do you think you might have ptsd? Given how you grew up (similar to me, except my father beat the kids, too) and what's happening in your home now, I think it would be a miracle if you didn't. I know I did, and counseling really helped me! It might help you take a step back and see all of your options more clearly.

My response indicated that violence could be justifiable? Um, no. I think your violent childhood is coloring your interpretation of my and Adamantium's words.

You are right that we do not know what S2 did, and what level of teasing it was. We also do not know if there was any intentional button-pushing going on. I think the main point is that if there are consequences for S1, who may not have much if any control over his outburst, it seems reasonable to have consequences for S2 for instigating. I understand your thought that the natural consequences of getting beat up might be enough, but they do not seem to be. It is possible that getting his brother in trouble is worth it to him.

OP, I am not saying S2 is instigating it on purpose. I am not there, so I don't know. I do know based on having seen kids intentionally button-push my son, that it is possible. That does not mean that I am victim-blaming S2, or that I think S1 should not be helped with managing his anger. What I am saying is that if it is all possible to get S2 to ease up on S1 as a short term solution, that this would buy you time to help S1. It does not mean that you don't let both sons know violence is not an OK response to being angry.

(I have seen children purposefully attempt to rile my son up to either get him in trouble or for the recreational experience of watching him to go off. I am letting you know this to let you know of potential bias in my answer.)

Not the real problem, but part of the problem. The OP did not seem to acknowledge this.



Again, no one said anything remotely like that.

YippySkippy, I don't know if you intended it to be or not, but your response was offensive. I didn't posit that your reaction was a result of your ASD. That would be the parallel to what you just did, in a really dismissive and not particularly insightful way.

ASDMommy - I hear you loud and clear. My point is that what the child did should determine whether or not he gets punished. His brother's reaction cannot be the only guideline.

Pddtwinmom - I am not sure why I took what you said personally. I was feeling really good the past couple weeks and then when I read about you feeling bad for NT kids, it struck a chord and it made me feel guilty and sad for my daugher. I don't think I have PTSD, but I do suffer from depression and anxiety at times, but counselling usually makes me feel worse because then I am focusing on my problems. I guess hearing the OP express her frustration brought back my feelings of being overwhelmed too. I heard her talking about getting the diagnosis and how she will get help then, but I thought the same way last November too. I thought that once I got an aspergers diagnosis for my daughter, the services would all come pouring in to help us. I just got a book yesterday on preventing meltdowns and I am almost afraid to open it because it may be another disappointing book that doesn't really help us. I don't have a lot of options because I am a single mom working full time and I make a small salary too, so really a lot of things that could help us that I can afford means taking time off work. I have already been missing so much work in the past year to get my daugher diagnosed and then to attend meetings, etc. at the school and service providers.

Not really. I didn't bring my ASD into the conversation, whereas you brought up your childhood. Why did you bring it up, if no one is allowed to mention it?

Chiming back in finally. I have to be honest. After I read the posts that basically blamed S2 for what happened, I got upset and started avoiding my own thread. Because there was no way I was going to tell a kid that was cowering and crying that it was his fault for instigating it, and then punish him. In my opinion, he was punished enough by S1, and anything I did was going to add salt to the wound. Frankly the only reason I came back to it was because I saw the triplemoon was posting, since we are in similar situations.

To give a little more background, what S2 did was throw S1's bread in the sink of dirty dishes. I don't know why he did that. The bread was from their grandparents' leftovers, and when I looked at it, it was moldy and should have been thrown out anyway. But the way S2 did it set S1 off. I doubt that S2 saw that it was moldy and was attempting to do S1 a favor, but I was out of the room for a moment, so i just don't know first hand. S1's reaction was over the top, even for him.

I've talked with S2 before about needling S1. So he knows he shouldn't be doing it in the first place. But that in no way excuses S1's behavior, either. I am trying to help both kids, not one or the other.

Anyway, I have to tell you want has happened since. S1 is generally remorseful after his meltdowns, and this incident was no exception. We have been working with S1 on how to make amends for his behavior. On his own he went to S2 and apologized, and S2 accepted. He then came to me and told me what he did and what S2's response was.

I followed up with S2 to make sure he was truly OK. I explained to him that S1 has some issues for which we are working with doctors, that we thought it was AS and gave a brief description of what that is, and what our goals were in seeking professional help. I also talked about things he can do to help the situation, i.e. , don't needle your brother. But I wanted to make sure he knew we're not just going to let S1 keep going as he is without intervention to alleviate things.

Then S1 came up to me and said he didn't want me to tell dad. I told him, sorry buddy, but this was something dad needed to know about. S1 wasn't happy about that. I decided to wait to tell DH when he got home, because I thought the conversation would go better in person than over phone or email. When he got home, the kids were all over the place interacting with him, and so I was waiting for a time I could actually get him alone.

Ended up DH and I were on our bed, and S1 was there working with DH on some Boy Scout stuff. S1 came to me and whispered in my ear that he still didn't want me to tell dad. DH says, "tell me what" and gave me a look. (DH can sometimes get upset about things when he should stay calm, which is the reason I was waiting for the right time.) Turns out, a few minutes later, S1 says to me out loud, "Mom, I think I want to tell Dad myself." I asked him if he was sure, and he said yes. So he told DH everything. He told about what he did, what he was feeling when he was out of control, how he stopped (with my help), what he thought about it afterwards, and what he did to make amends.

I was floored. And very proud of him. We've been working really hard with him to help him be self-aware of his meltdowns - what triggers him, how he feels leading up to one, how he feels afterwards - and also what he needs to do afterwards about them. DH stayed calm, too, because he also recognized how phenomenal this was.

In short, it blew over, and some positives came out of it. My goal, though, is to reduce them and give S1 tools so that he knows how to deal with meltdowns in a healthy way. I don't know if my expectations are realistic. Ideally, I'd like them gone, of course, but recognize that's probably not possible. My goal is also to help S2 know how to best interact with his brother, and to help him understand that the interaction is going to look differently for an NT-AS relationship, than it would look like for his friends who have NT-NT relationships with their siblings.

So that's how things ended up. In two weeks, we have an appointment with the developmental psychologist, and hopefully will come away with some more tools for all four of us.

NOTE: written before the OP's update.

This all sounds so familiar.

I can say that the natural reaction is to want to control the violence, as that is where the danger is, and the action our society ranks as the worst. And we worked hard at that with my son.

I can also say that in my son's eyes he was being consistently blamed for things his sister started, and that feeling was really destructive for him (among other things, he really believed we favored his sister. Heavily). In this vein, if you send your son in for residential treatment, unless he actually likes the idea, there is a chance you will destroy him emotionally; he may never trust that you really are trying to do your best by him, and that trust is really important to helping him do the hard work to get past his issues.

IMHO: You have to be very careful walking this line, and make sure that the older child SEES you giving consequences to the younger child for the provocations, while making it clear that violence is NEVER the solution, and NEVER warranted, REGARDLESS of how much provocation there seems to have been. Normally in our minds we've weighted the transgressions and the younger one has already received enough negative consequence, but that is not how the older one sees it AT ALL.

My mantra to my son (in addition to the above line about violence) was that if he felt his sister was provoking him and not listening to his verbal attempts to get her to stop, he needed to CALL A PARENT.

What was interesting to hear from my son was that he felt he had consistently been trying to do that, but that we often did not hear, and when we did we often didn't realize how hard it was for him, and were shouting out our standard, "work it out!" Ooooopppppssss.

So a very important promise from ME became to pay more attention and be more accessible, and be much more proactive in helping them "work it out." We parents get very overloaded and that level of diligence with our kids is hard to find the time and energy for, we can't help but think they are old enough that we don't have to do all that, but the reality is that we DO. At least until the younger one learns how not to provoke the older one, and the older one gets much better at controlling their impulsive reactions.

I recommend making it your priority for a while, to really be present for both kids when they are both home, and NOT trying to do other things. You older son needs to know that you care enough to invest the time in seeing what is really going on, and helping him handle it.

That did help for us. Until I started writing this I hadn't really thought about it, but I think we're past that stage pretty nicely. phew.

Edited for typos. Some probably remain - ha!

Odetta - I am so glad that things ended positively. As you can tell from my posts, I was pretty shocked by the immediate responses as well. But, it sounds like what you're doing is working, and in a way that's making both children feel valued and protected.

Triplemoon - My responses were worded strongly, especially after the initial pushback I received. I apologize if this pushed a button for you. I know that these things are not easily resolved, but I do believe that the right principles need to be in place as we search for solutions. But, it's so very hard. I hear you about counseling too. I always felt worse after I left. But, something did happen around month 3 for me. I still do 6 months on, six months off, just to take a break from all the introspection!

YippySkippy - You've mentioned your ASD on several threads here. It's something I "know" about you. But, it's one of only a few things that I know, based on what you've shared thus far. To attribute your differing opinion to your having ASD without you expressly stating it would be presumptuous, potentially inaccurate and rude. I would be dismissing every other experience you've ever had, thereby reducing your opinion to "ASD bias" as a way to invalidate it.

And to be fair, I shared my history to commiserate with someone with a shared experience, not as an explanation of my views here. In reality, my views are mostly driven by being the mother to five children, two of whom are on the spectrum, but I do believe that an experience with violence does make me qualified to speak on its lasting impacts. That, by itself, does not mean that I incorrectly interpreted the statements with which I disagree.

Well, you certainly misinterpreted my statements, and attributed ideas to me that are so FAR from anything I said that I can only imagine there was something else influencing your reading of them.

I'm glad to hear that it was a misunderstanding. But, given the fact that the OP also reached the same conclusion based on the initial posts, although she didn't mention any specific one, perhaps the problem was with the wording, and not my "colored" interpretation.

Odetta, I don't know if you are still reading this. I wondered when you say 10 year old needles 13 year old with AS, is this little kid being annoying without knowing and failing to stop when sibling starts getting overwhelmed, or do you feel the needling is intentional to get big kid in trouble and cause a meltdown?

If you are unsure, then despite all the controversy in this thead and on WP generally, siblings without ASD do tend to have more difficulty with social understanding than an average child. Maybe it's just the part of me that is tired of being told to try harder, but I would not be able to count on punishment or consequences or even services for 13 year old to fix this. And I would need to help both children understand the others perspective and how they can help because if you love both and have taught them love for each other, I think chances are they need help being more loving. Not punishments or consequences as a primary fix for either child. Though that's partly that I get so lost trying to go the punishment route.

I think this sounds like they misunderstood one another and will be best off learning the other doesn't hate them so their reactions calm. Then the urge to attack is naturally better, because of not feeling so under assault.

This is just my take. I am so glad for you that things are working better!