I'm lost as to what to do

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That's what I'm hoping to come out of family counseling for the two of them - the ability to understand each other's perspectives, or at least S2's ability to understand S1's perspective. I try to explain things to S2 myself, but then he "forgets" over time. They do love each other, and generally play well together. In a lot of ways, S1 is very protective of S2. It's just that S1 doesn't get teasing, and sometimes, S2 likes to tease him to get S1's attention, and then complains when S1 gets upset. And sometimes S1 will pick on S2 as well, honestly, to get S2's attention. I used to mediate between the two, and then got to the point where I just let the responses be natural consequences. This was before we realized there was something unusual going on with S1. Now I'm getting back into mediating.

In this incident, it was way over the top in terms of S1's reaction. In looking back at the day, the picking on each other and misunderstandings started from the time they woke up. I was spending the whole day attempting to buffer the two of them. For S2 the NT, it just gets annoying. But for S1, it built up and up until the bread incident was the last straw and boom! a meltdown.

Anyway, I'm glad it blew over. And I appreciate the responses here in giving me different perspectives. I've realized I need to be more active in buffering, and in helping S2 understand and find ways to better related to S1. Sometimes I get lax because I remember how me and my younger brother were growing up. But we are both NTs, so this situation is different.

It sounds like things are going well, I'm happy for you.

A tangent re: violence.

What can one say? It's endemic not just to our species but to chordata--and even that is an understatement. There are single cell predators. Viruses don't even fully qualify as life and yet they violently repurpose the cellular machinery of hosts.

Regardless of one's personal ethics, many beings will be violent. You wouldn't poke a sleeping dog with a stick. Nor should you wake up a sleeping soldier with a mock physical attack. Or pull a fake handgun on a cop. This isn't a matter of condoning the potential violence in the canine, soldier or police officer, but just to take a pragmatic approach to reality.

In the case of S1 and S2, S2 is old enough to know not to tease and he should be made to understand that S1 has issues which may result in a distinctly negative outcome for S2 if he "needles" S1. That neither justifies nor condemns any violent behavior on S1's part. From the description in the OP, it will be easier for mom to teach S2 not to provoke than change S1's responses.

My own view of violence is nuanced. In some circumstances, violence is the right tool for the job (this is why we have soldiers and police). In other cases it's inappropriate, destructive and immoral. I don't think a parent does a service to any child, particularly any boy, to send them into the world with the idea that they must never, under any circumstances, be violent. Such a child is set up to be a victim and boys in most cultures test this in each other fairly constantly.

A thing that is hard to understand sometimes is that the core difficulty in ASD is correctly understanding certain kinds of communication. This makes it difficult or impossible to pick up nonverbal cues to "intent" -- this means that both the signals that say, "this isn't really an attack, I just want your attention," that S2 may be giving out might as well not be there. It also means that all sorts of nonverbal signs of approval and disapproval and situations in which you think would be able to "figure it out" from the context are invisible or highly obscure to S1.

No matter how much you may tell yourself this, you will still often be surprised by the truth of this. Your whole life and all your experience has prepared you for something else. As a parent of an ASD child, staying attuned to this is a huge part of what you need to if you are going to be effective in helping him to learn effective strategies for living.

It is a tough balance to teach. If you add to that the aspie confusion in trying to figure out intent and the greater likelihood of getting caught defending oneself when the antagonist knows how to time things not to get caught. It was one of the things that always worried me with my son, when in school. I was terrible about that type of judgement, myself.

Jane Goodall's studies suggest that this is a really good reason to use extended family or group networks for defense.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1 ... 2834225378

Isolated individuals are always vulnerable. The knowledge that a potential victim may have vengeful kin may be enough to prevent some attacks. The knowledge that your potential victim might hurt you back unquestionably IS a deterrent. Gaming the system to use these factors to recruit external authority against the victim (goading a victim into a response that will be punished by authority) is a huge problem.

Extensively edited:

Adamantium - I actually don't disagree with you in theory. I do, however, disagree in this particular case. Theories cannot be applied in blanket fashion; instead they have to take into account all of the relevant information.

For me, the pertinent facts are:
1) s2 is 10 years old. 10 = young child. Primary parental mission = protect.
2) s1 is 13, with ASD. 13=adolescent. Primary parental mission = begin to prepare for adulthood. Asd = likely impulse control issues. Some things will have to be taught explicitly, creatively, and persistently.
3) punishment for either child should always fit the crime on the parent's watch.

Crime: s2 throws s1's bread in sink. Appropriate punishment - get s1 new bread and apologize.Maybe lose privileges if it was done maliciously. Grossly inappropriate punishment - s1 violently attacks s2 to the extent that the mother has to pry him off. Not a punch in the arm, not a kick in the butt, but an extended attack which an adult has to work to break up. That violates the primary parenting missions for both children. In the real world, S1 cannot react that way to things he doesn't like with overwhelming force without risking ending up in jail, and s2 is a little boy, and should be physically safe in his own home. At 10, there is almost nothing he can do that would warrant a massively violent attack - nothing. If he were 14, my response would be more measured, because the range of potential transgressions would be broader. But, most 10 year olds aren't trying to burn down houses or are assaulting their parents, or doing anything other than being annoying and occasionally willful. A parent's responsibility is to assess the degree of injustice and teach the appropriate level of response.

Imo, it is damaging and unfair to teach a young child that he has to be perfect according to someone else's unrealistic standards in order to avoid being hurt. I think it's equally damaging and unfair to teach s1 that he can resolve his internal conflicts/emotional distress with aggressive and gross physical attacks. That is what you're teaching them both when you punish s2 after s1 has already physically attacked him.

It sounds like you are figuring it out. Best of luck to you.

I didn't see these questions addressed. If I missed it when skimming through the posts, I apologize.

Just so you know, it is common for intensive situations to seek therapy while waiting for/trudging through the evaluation/diagnosis process, so yes, you can seek therapy and work on issues without yet having a diagnosis, and many people do. Some therapists will even see you multiple times a week until you get to a somewhat stable point, and basic safety during outbursts.

In-patient is very difficult for children on the spectrum, and really, unless the violent outbursts are regular and uncontrollable, and/or you fear for the safety of your family or your son, then I would avoid this. There are also intensive day-treatment programs, which may be beneficial. They last like school hours. Just make sure they are really able to handle a child with ASD.

My heart goes out to you.

I'm reading this thread in some perplexity, particularly about the S2-blaming. I'll assume that most of those posting in that vein aren't really tuned in to the maturity level of a 10-year old, emotionally, cognitively, or physically. He's not a small adult.

It does seem to me that the first priority has to be physical safety - it's damaging to grow up in a violent home, and the OP's sensitive to that. There's also the fact that a 13-yo boy can do real and permanent physical damage. A 10-year-old can't be expected to be responsible for his own physical safety. It is also normal for 10-yo boys to tease and to be unaware of where boundaries are at least some of the time. Odetta's got an extremely difficult balancing act here.

Odetta, I know this is painful to think about, but if you need to, do you have a nearby relative you could send S2 to stay with sometimes, or while you're figuring things out? Just so that he can feel (and be) safe?

Yes we do. My ILs live very close by and spend a lot of time with the kids. It would actually be better, when it's needed, to send S1 over there and keep S2 at home. Tatu (grandfather) is S1's favorite person, while I am S2's favorite person. So they'd both think it a treat, not a punishment, to have one-on-one time with their respective favorites. I will keep this in mind.

Edited to add that for some reason S1 hardly ever melts down when he's with Tatu.

Oh, please! It isn't blaming S2, just recognizing what was in the OP.

My kids are just 12 now and 10 is not so long in the past that I don't recall all of it in precise detail.
They were not "small children" they were "big kids" in transition toward the peri-teens they are today.
Wickle 10 yew owds don't need to wrapped in cotton wool or denied the opportunity to exercise their faculty of reason.

http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/childdevelopm ... ddle2.html
Positive Parenting Tip from the CDC:


So back to the OP. We didn't really know what is going on this situation, but the OP was overwhelmingly weighted toward punishing, even incarcerating, the aggressive older child while portraying the younger child as the instigator. This did not entirely make sense.

And it's unlikely the 13 year old is using anything like the maximum force he is capable of if his brother is just "beginning to feel unsafe" but we didn't get that level of detail from the OP.

No doubt about that. Reading through the OP, it seemed like an attempt was being made to find a balance with all the weight on one side of the fulcrum--an approach with a very low probability of success.

In truth the thing with the bread crust sounds like it was not about the bread crust at all, but a sense of a violation of space or property. I suppose there are sibs in some family on earth who never fight over control and self determination, but I never met any.

Yeah. The other thing that is possible, which the OP implied, is that if the bread was moldy, S2 was trying to do a good deed and protect S1 from getting sick. This is totally different from teasing from the intent perspective, but not necessarily clear to S1.

I have an only child, but I have read numerous posts on here where NT siblings alternate between a traditional sibling relationship of love+rivalry and one in which they feel they are part of the parenting team. Sometimes the sibling (even younger ones) will protect the ASD kid from peers and other things they deem to be dangerous.

This makes it even more complicated b./c the ASD kid might feel inferior when a younger sibling is his protector and may not agree that he needs saving at any particular point.

To me this is completely different from the teasing issue, because they have to be handled very differently b/c of intent. You can use S2's protector instincts to explain why teasing S1 is wrong to do, but trying to explain to a 10 yr old when to protect and when not to? I don't think that is so easy. I don't even know if S1 would be able to explain it with consistent rules or anything.

I thought the same thing. If I were dealing with the same thing with my kids, I would have them each cool off in their own room, then talk to each one until I was sure I understood their perception.

If the situation was that S2 was trying to help or protect S1, and S1 perceived it as an invasion of space, or theft or whatever, I would:
--> explain exactly that difference of perceptions to each of them and
--> make a rule that S2 not interfere with S1's stuff without S1's permission. In the event of moldy bread or some other problem perceived by S2 but missed by everyone else, conversation and a call for adult assistance, rather than direct action is the appropriate response.
--> make a rule that S1 respond to perceived provocation by S2 with a call for adult intervention rather than violence and note that there would be a strictly imposed 24 hour ban on all video gaming and internet access for future infractions regardless of the degree of provocation and make it clear that enforcement of this rule would be draconian.*
--> require an apology from each to the other

Then I would suggest that we all remember that we love each other and have a hug (they both like hugs) and then I would tell them a funny story and lead them into some kind of shared experience so we could have a sense of having both a rule to handle future situations like this with justice and a memory of how good it is to have a loving family.

Edited to add, I once removed the television from the living room as demonstration of sincerity in a similar case.

I get the feeling there are a lot of blowups, some involving needling by S2, and others involving misunderstandings such as the bread incident. It might be helpful to keep a log for a week and start to generate a list of situations that set the stage for conflict or meltdowns. You probably need a bunch of little solutions addressing each situation individually, not some global ruberic like "punish S2 more" or "give S1 big punishments for violence".

As for something you can do in the next two weeks while you're waiting for an appointment, try reading Lost at School or The Explosive Child by Ross W Greene.

Zette and Adamantium - your approaches seem pretty reasonable, and likely to be effective. The only thing I would point out is that certain types of issues require a heightened level of urgency. Relativism works most of the time, but there are a couple of things that are bright lines in child-rearing, imo.

A kid never forgets feeling unsafe. They also never forget the feeling that a parent didn't protect them, often whether or not the parent actually could have. I'm not talking about sibling bickering, or school yard fights, but rather the persistent feeling of being in physical danger. And that feeling is a matter of perception. We may know (or hope) that Timmy (or Susie, or Mommy, or Daddy) would NEVER really hurt Johnny, but what really matters is whether or not Johnny is afraid. That is what Johnny will remember, and the fact that the responsible parent didn't protect him.

A child never forgets being hungry and not being able to eat (as in, persistent hunger and no resources).

As adults, we know the reasons why these things happen, and sometimes try to rationalize away the impacts. But, kids are kids, and they have basic needs, primal needs, and as much as they may intellectually appear to "understand", not meeting those needs marks them on a fundamental level.

So, as we strive to be reasonable, understand all the drivers, and formulate solutions, the fact remains that there are two things that trump absolutely everything else.

A kid never forgets injustice, either.