Old question.....need new insight......

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Ok, I will try not to generalize to much in this post....sorry if I do.

I have been reading alot the last month....trying to figure out all about ASD....

So often do I read about AS kids struggling to make friends and isolation......but with this I often get the impression that the reason for this is because these children struggle with entering a conversation or being "shy" or because they don't like or want to be in the loud social environment?

But, what I see with my son is that he can do all these things, BUT he messes his relationships up with verbal aggressiveness, being bossy and plain rude! Some of his friends is also starting to ask him why he is always being so rude to his mom and shouting like that? He gets VERY irritated with his brother and he becomes rude infront of his friends with me when he doesn't get his way or like when I ask him to come home. He will just shout "what"! or "your not my boss!", ect.

This mentioned behaviour is causing great distress between me and hubby and son and his friends is not knowing how to handle this and sadly to say I can see that they are starting to avoid him, making less contact even though they want to be his friend because over all he is a very nice funny friend to have.

We gave him very hard and direct feedback regarding this matter yesterday....it just resulted in him crying, saying he is sorry, really don't want to be this way and went to hide

What me and hubby don't understand......is this within his control....to be so rude? is this part of ODD traits? Or is this all on a neurological level, because if it is....then how on earth are we going to stop him from loosing all his friendds?!

Is being rude, irritated and verbally aggressive part of ASD?

Sorry for the long post!

I don't want to say it but... It's probably just a phase,

not too give too heavy of advice, but the brain has a lot of hormones in the teen years and even early adult hood, and still has to prune to its mature state. And also Neurogenesis is a very prominent and popular topic in neuroscience. There's hope for us all!!

Also just from experience, getting to a psychometrist and understanding (or attempting at least) how my brain works, and how autism works was extremely insightful.

I've been wondering why I am the way I am all my life, I didn't know it was something that was so hard for me to even comprehend :p



-sorry for if message is choppy, I best be recharging soon, it's very late :s -

well, the mentioned shyness is a large part of the lacking social interaction, but not all of it; there is also the lack of 'need' to enter them, and the fact that many of the social goings-on appear weird, useless and alien to many of us.

as for the bossyness, this could very well be a way to try and handle this, aside from being a fase in adulthood (the rebellious fase almost everyone goes trough).
i myself also have the tendency to act like this, but i usually manage to supress it untill i can no longer hold up and explode in a final attempt to be left to my own activities/opinions.

These are "theory of mind" issues and they practically define kids on the spectrum. They CAN'T naturally read the perspective of anyone other than themselves. You have to teach them and that's difficult. My son will be all excited and ask me if he can get on the computer. I say, "No, we will be eating soon." He then runs to get on the computer b/c he just CANNOT take in that I would have any reason to say no. He can't take my perspective. If anger follows, it will look agressive like you described.

So he in his heart he is not chosing to be rude but effectively he is. You have to train him and help him understand others' perspectives. He probably has some self control. He needs to apply that in these situations with friends. My son used to hurt his sister quite often. My friends had to show me that my son did have some self control and he needed to apply it with his sister. He had to come down hard on him and he never hurts her now. So don't be afraid to train, teach, help him understand and let him know it is a serious matter. He'll lose all his friends if he won't change.

My daughter has this issue also, she has always been controlling in her interactions with other children (when she interacts with them) because she feels inept or anxious and that causes her to speak rudely, bark orders, chastise others, etc. My daughter is only 8, but I mediate/supervise pretty closely all unstructured play with other children and will step in and "guide" her in the proper treatment of others. Now for another point which applies to your post. My daughter speaks rudely and gets aggressive with me when she is tired (especially right after school) or when she "doesn't feel well" (which is ALL the time). I haven't quite figured out what she means by "not feeling well" but I think it is anxiety related-she will also says her head hurts or her chest hurts. Anyway, her behaviors towards me like the ones you mention are because it is SO hard to act nice and be nice when you literally feel SICK inside. For this reason, I simply guide her to a place for some reclusion or sometimes she wants me to rock her in the rocking chair or just wrap and squeeze her. If it gets violent or over the line she does lose privileges (because no matter the reason I have to try to teach her that acting in that extreme way will have consequences in the world).

Guiding their behavior is a slow process and overwhelmingly difficult for a parent. I have really started reaching out for help and seeking respite for myself. Just a Sunday afternoon does wonders to recharge your reserves to be able to handles things consistently and calmly.

What makes the situation even more difficult is that when he is in that mode you can not reason with him.....He will often say:" You are not my boss, you can not tell me what to do.....I can do whatever I want to, I don't have to listen to you!" And if you want to explain, he will just say " bla bla bla"......blocking me out! It really seems as if he does n't understand that society has rules and he needs to follow them.....he feels he is his own boss......Yes he does feel sad, but that 's because of feeling rejected......I really don't know that he understands the "why" of the situation......

i laughed when i read this question, and had to ask my SO, who says, "YES!"

in my experience, i would have to agree that yes, they are often part of asd. i dont think that, for the most part, these things are really intentional most of the time even tho others may perceive the behavior this way.

in my house, we have 3 autistics and we see this behavior frequently. heres a quick list of various reasons ive seen:
- heightened emotions
- lack of hearing tone in verbal exchanges
- deficits in seeing other perspectives
- control issues
- stress and anxiety
- inflexible or black and white thinking

i can say that this stuff doesnt necessarily just go away with age. my SO was undiagnosed until the age of 39, so he developed his social skills "naturally" without any intervention or help. that means, there are often times he comes across as a total a**, even tho that isnt really his intention. this was the main problem area in our relationship for the first 12 years, communication. i tend to let him know when his verbal interaction is getting mean, and he is learning to try and dial it back, and now he often apologizes afterwards.

with our kids, we are working on recognizing how your words and tone sound to others and identifying how we want to be treated ourselves. facial expressions are something i plan to address also with our autie in the future, as he has the typical flat affect for many things, and exaggerated expressions for others.

i think this whole issue can be tied into the source of the myth that autistics dont feel emotion. they do feel emotion, sometimes more so than nts, but there is often an inability to express it in typical ways. thats what you are seeing with the rude, irritated, aggressive behaviors, its just atypical expression of emotion.

Thanx...it does make me feel a bit better....don't ask me why, maybe because I know that ok, it's not just his personality, but we can work on it!

He did try today, and got it right twice to change his attitude and tone of voice while his friend was visiting.....

It still hurts me to think that he might loose some friends because of something he don't really mean or can't control....but we're working on it and will keep on trying!

This all sounds really familiar to me. If it is any help, my dd is learning about relationships as she gets older, and as I try to simplify some of the social rules. I notice that she is recognizing the behaviour of others that is mean, and seems to be deducing some rules that she can apply to her own behaviour. Sometimes she even asks me what she should reply to a FB message and I realize not only how confused she is but also how much she wants to learn.
I'm not sure if people have identified the understanding of rules as being a problem in social relationships for ASD. When a child works hard to learn how you are supposed to behave, whether it is playing a board game or not pushing someone who is in your way, it can really disturb an ASD child when someone, especially someone considered a friend, breaks those rules. Acknowledging to your child that someone has indeed broken the rules but should still be treated kindly can help. I like to say that the person hasn't learned the rules yet. (I think it's interesting for our ASD kids to realize that NT kids break rules too... I'd say at this point my dd's classmates break more social rules than she does.)
This learning does not happen during an incident or a meltdown. If she talks back to me or is rude, I have to ignore it and stay come until she stabilizes again. And I always start the conversation by showing that I am unconditionally on her side, saying it seemed like she was really having a hard time with the situation, etc.
HTH
J.

Consider sharing with the friends something like the following: "my son has an extra hard time with these things because his brain works a little differently. He doesn't intend to be mean, but he does have to learn how to not come across that way. We're working on it, but it is going to take a long time. You can tell me or ask for my help if he's hurting your feelings or frustrating you." That way they know it's not just them, or that your family doesn't care about being nice. You don't want kids telling mommy about the incident and then mommy wonders if this a good friendship for her child ... Once they all have some explanation, some sense that you see and work on it, they will tolerate it better. It is just difficult and confusing for kids to see someone "get away" with behavior they have learned not to use.


PS, my son is one of the "not shy at all, no trouble making friends, but isn't very good at maintaining social interaction" Aspies.

This kind of behavior resulted in my son losing most of his friends and being bullied by them last year. Fortunately, we did a lot of intervention as did the school, and things are pretty much back to normal (amazing how forgiving kids can be if they genuinely understand what's going on. I think, however, that we were particularly lucky with this group of kids.) I'm not excusing the bullying, it went far beyond any perceived slight my son caused, but I can understand how it might have happened.

How old is your son again? One of the things we discovered when we finally got a full assessment last year, which I've mentioned a couple times: there is a developmental leap in language between the end of 2nd and the middle of 4th grade. DS didn't make it. Up to that point, most kids are single-minded, and either just follow what someone else is doing or do their own thing...after that, cooperative play is expected and kids expect to be treated as equals. DS did not understand that sticking to a script where he was the superhero and everyone else were villains or sidekicks was not fun for the other kids.

In large part, it was a pragmatic speech issue, and therapy specifically for pragmatic speech helped a lot. The therapy isn't magic - basically, it started out with the therapist taking DS to observe kids interacting, and then asking him how he would respond. Lots of breaking things down into minutiae and discussing them: DS can quickly "learn the rules" cognitively if you explain them carefully.

We should keep that concept in our forum database. Is it you that started the post linking list?

I am finding I am forgetting all the stages my son went through, and discovering ones that zipped by me. Some of it may have been written up 6,000 posts ago, but who can find that? Anyway, I think this is important information that I'd rather not see buried.

Yes, that's me - if anybody wants to add to it, the "index" I started is here:

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt166142.html

Another mom of a peer of my daughter's confided in me that her daughter kept asking her "why is Grace always so mad at me?" and other similar questions. I was really astounded when the mom informed me that she had told her daughter that "Grace's brain is different and sometimes it tells her to be mad/sad/angry when she may not want to be". I thought this was a really succinct explanation for an 8 year old and was really pleased another mom (of only NT children) was willing to take the time to explain this to her daughter.

Mama to Grace - that's pretty awesome that mom was able to explain it that way. In the contiual debate over whether or not to tell other people about our children's conditions, I think this puts a check on the side of telling. What if that mom had no idea about Grace's condtion and her daughter asked that questions?

My son has been impossibly difficult from about the age of four months onwards. He was always struggling and screaming (day and night) and I was never able to take him anywhere on my own, just too difficult.

As he grew he became ever more argumentitive. I should say that in between being angry and difficult, he's really loving, creative funny and sensitive and great company.

He's 12 now and growing ever more independent every day and frequently shouting "you can't tell me what to do!" Then appologising. Our psychologist says we're doing a good job because has no behavoural problems at school.

He has two friends, we just hope he manages to keep them.

I think it's just a case of battling on and doing your best. I hope things improve for you. And I'm glad the concert went well.