Playground behaviour - mother trying to cope

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I am just in from the playground with my AS son (6yrs). For the whole half an hour we were there he did nothing but crash into other children and push other children and have major, major meltdowns. I am just feeling really deflated at the moment. I was trying to chat to other mothers there and it seemed like I was always running off to rescue other children from my son's behaviour. I need cheering up!

6 years is a difficult age. I do not know what to tell you because my daughter was never violent. All the contrary. She was so passive I had to be constantly checking because other kids will abuse her. So they are the victims or the perpetrators. All I can tell you is things get better with time... and therapy. Do not call it quits. Later on my daughter's therapist told me all that time in the park trying hard for my kid to be able to play with other kids was really good for her.

It will definitely get easier for your child to play and to play with others!
Could you try "shadowing" your child? Being right behind him or next to him when he is playing, so you can quickly redirect him to other activities? Or "guiding" by asking your child to try to learn new skills on the playground equipment? Sometimes children who have trouble climbing the stairs up the slide, learning to pump on the swings, etc. will choose rough play to avoid things that are hard. Assisting, instructing and setting goals can be helpful.
J.

My son used to have that problem. Actually it's funny one of my sons was the one getting abused and the other was the overly rough one.

Anyway. With my son that was overly rough I found that he acted that way because he was at a loss of what to do. Our response to it was to shadow him and tell him some instructions. He liked this a lot. Now we actually do a practice run of different things and ways to respond before we head off to the park and if he finds a situation that he does not know how to handle he will come back to me to ask how to handle it.

An unstructured activity is really hard for our kids. My son is almost 10, and he still can't play on a playground with other kids without me facilitating behavior that won't get him in trouble. He is very bossy, he will get aggressive verbally and physically if he feels threatened or picked on or confused. I notice all the time kids ganging up on him because of this. I had one camping trip where a kid threw sand directly into his open eyes, and then demanded an apology from him if you can believe that. I was watching but out of earshot and he did nothing physical. He may have been being quirky or bossy and that's how they reacted, and they got a piece of my mind for that. I wouldn't make him apologize for anything until they apologized for the sand. That was cruel and he didn't deserve it. At one point we went to a different playground (this campground had 3) and they all followed him. I finally looked at the older kid (probably 14 or so, playing with a couple of 10 year olds) and explained to him that my son has social difficulties and he's a little different, and he doesn't always understand how he comes across to people and he doesn't mean anything by his behavior. He is just trying to fit in, and he is not going to learn how to do that without being around other kids, but I don't want him to learn that by getting beat up and hassled. I asked him to either accept him for who he is or don't play with him. If he doesn't want to deal with him leave him alone, or tell me so I can redirect him. That actually worked and they left him alone.

What was hard for me was accepting the fact that even though my son seems way old enough to play on the playground while I'm reading a book or talking to parents, or far enough away that I can't actually hear what is going on but still can see, he cannot handle it. He just can't. He can't handle the way kids his age play unless they are playing a structured game with rules, and then I have to deal with the losing/bragging thing. I cannot leave him alone in these situations, and I NEVER take my eyes off of him. He plays best when I'm in there playing with him and the rest of his playmates, or there to remind him of what to do and what not to do.

He just isn't able to play using his own devices, he's not there yet, and he needs me close enough to hear what is going on, to see what is going on and I need to intervene when necessary and use every teaching opportunity that I can find. This is the only way he will learn. He has to be taught and exposed to situations where teaching can be done, and he needs to learn skills to use to avoid and deal with bully's as well. I will say it does get better, he has learned and will keep learning even though it seems slow at times, it just takes a LOT more effort than typical children. You're child is 6, he has a little ways to go.

This is hard, and I completely understand how you feel. In some ways it gets better, but as play gets more sophisticated and there is more give and take involved it can get harder in some ways too. I try to get him to play with kids that are younger than him, he does much better with them because he is more on the same level and often times that works well. It's so wonderful when he finds a nice kid who accepts his quirkyness, but they are few and far between. Accept that your kid is different and do what you can for him. Playgrounds and pools are really hard, but they are also great places to teach him how to socialize in an unstructured environment and deal with differences and adversity. If you work with him he'll figure it out. You can do this. Just keep the right perspective, adjust your expectations and it will get easier.

Social skills groups can also help too if you can afford that. It's definately worth the money. Good Luck and hang in there!

Speaking from having had similar experiences and often wishing I had done something differently, consider this: maybe sometimes when you see this type of behavior the best thing you can do is leave as soon as possible. Maybe for whatever reason your son was especially not able to handle that environment today and what he really needed most was to be doing something calm and quiet by himself or maybe something active and loud but by himself. Being around other kids can be incredibly taxing for our kids and they are not always up to the challenge.

This is our problem as well! My daughter can get along with certain children but aggressive or "in your face" children will send my daughter into aggressive meltdown mode. We had a situation last Friday, where a school mate "accidentally" fell onto my daughter (this girl is very physically aggressive) which sent my daughter into hyper vigilent, hyper reactive, hyper sensitive mode. The other girl seems to get some sort of "kick" out of my daughter becoming unhinged and proceeded to follow my daughter around telling her "I didn't mean it!". (with a smile-I swear the girl was goading my daughter into getting physically violent with her, which my daughter has been known to do when provoked). My daughter began to escalate even further, collapsed onto the floor, crying and writhing. I explained to the girl to "please give her some space-go play for awhile". But no---as soon as my daughter stopped crying I looked over to find the girl once again making a beeline for my daughter-lecturing her on why she shouldn't have gotten upset!! ! When I asked the girl once again to leave her alone she said "you can't tell me what to do!" Then the girl ran to her mother to tell her I was telling her she couldn't play on the playground! Ugggh, some kids are kryptonite to our children's sensibilities and this girl was one of "those" We had to end up leaving because the girl wouldn't leave my obviously distraught daughter alone!

As Bombaloo wrote, from my experience, the best thing to do is to get out of there at the first sign of impending meltdown! It really will save a lot of regret later on.

Mama to Grace reminded me of a time when my son was playing nicely with a kid at the pool. I was so happy that he found a kid that would play with him, and play well. Then they were playing basketball in a pool and these 6 teenagers came and took their ball and wouldn't give it back. Well, my son freaked out and was trying to get the ball back and they weren't giving it to him, so the girl that was being particularly mean, my son punched in the face. Then these kids actually had the audacity to lecture me on how violent my son got and how innappropriate his behavior is and they called him a 2 year old right in front of me. After all of this, they STILL would not give the ball back even after admitting that they took it from them. I felt like punching them myself. I told my son to leave and come back when they weren't there, and he did. Unfortunately the really nice kid he was playing with got so freaked out that he wouldn't play with my son anymore. My poor kid was sticking up for him and it totally backfired.

It broke my heart.

mamatograce, Mommyjones - YES! I can completely relate to both of you!

This is exactly why I am pushing my school to do a comprehensive functional behavior assessment over a period of days on the playground to find out what is going on between my son and the other kids. Of course, he is always the one who is at fault. Apparently last week he took a toy back that he had "traded" with another boy, however this other boy had reneged on his trading deal with my son by not giving him what he promised, and then went to the teacher in tears because my son took his toy back! And my son is the one who gets in trouble!

What the heck!?! It is so frustrating, they hold our kids up to these high expectations but don't always hold the NT kids to them? How does that work? Oh wait, I know how it works, my son can't accurately defend his position because he is in verbal and physical meltdown mode so therefore anything he says must not be correct, no matter that it IS his perspective and maybe they need to help him work on that besides saying "well so and so said it happened this way, therefore that is the way it happened".

cutiecrystalmom

This is SO true. My daughter was "blamed" for the strained interactions last year until the other girl started getting into it with other children as well-then the teacher understood that it was the other girl's fault. But, I wonder-when the kids get older and "smarter" they think that they can target and pick on our children because they know they can't defend/stand up for themselves-then how will the teachers figure it out?. My daughter goes from ok to incoherent meltdown mode pretty quickly so they are unable to get her "side of the story" when something occurs.

I taught my daughter to hold her palm up to avoid this girl from physically touching her when she didn't want her to and the school actually scolded her for this until we had a conference and I TOLD them that was her defense mechanism and told them-look you can either have her hold her palm up or she's going to whack this girl upside the head when she invades her space-which do you prefer???? After that they were OK with the hand held up!! !!

well i remember beating people up on the playground when i was 6. idk what i my parents should have done about it though. i remember it was hard to stop because the other kids were doing it too and it looked like fun. peer pressure i guess. i really enjoyed hurting people so i kept at it until i was in 5th grade. i would say the peer pressure was the main issue. so maybe the best way to stop it would be to get your son away from the kids who like to rough house. if it is just him beating up the other kids without provocation, or a game they play, then that is an entirely different issue. i would also say that sometimes when i was a kid i had a lot of energy that i wanted to spend but couldn't because i was sitting in a chair all day. maybe an exercise routine would help spend that pent up energy.

I think a lot of it too could be the child's inability to realize when things become hurtful/bothersome towards the other children. My daughter can be hurtful/annoying towards our cat and I have to really stress that if the cat meows loudly or hisses that is it's way of saying "you are hurting me!". Same goes for other children. My daughter was playing with another child doing handstands and pushed her over roughly onto her neck-my daughter didn't realize the other child would be hurt by this. So it may be a case of being unable to empathize to a certain extent (think about what's going on in the other child's experience). My daughter thinks that if she would know to hold her neck rigidly, then so would another child. It is difficult for her to stop and do the perspective taking and wonder if the other child knows what she knows.

There's a second part of this issue, too, that I wish I could help you with, because I remember how hard it was: wanting to have some adult "not-Mom" time, and not being able to get it. I'm not particularly social and I found the kindergarten playground to be really stressful - but I did want someone to talk to that wasn't talking about Batman all the time.

<<hugs>>>

"Crashing" behaviors are something that OTs working with kids on the spectrum look for: they have meaning - in my son's case, he can't keep track of where other kids (or things) are, so he bumps into them. Other kids do it as a sensory-seeking behavior. Might be something to look into.

That being said, my son, who's a 5th grader now, did get better at playground stuff as he got older. I did have to watch him more carefully than Moms had to watch their NT kids, but it got less and less every year, and now it's pretty close to "normal" as long as he's on the playground itself, where he knows the rules. It's early in the school year, too - sometimes things improve dramatically after kids learn the structure of things (and it's not a bad idea to find out what the school does to deal with him and mimic it, so he knows the rules are the same even when school is out.)

I think my son has an element of this as well. He doesn't understand at the time, but when he realizes that he did hurt someone he feels guilty afterward, sometimes even putting himself in time out. Some of his is impulse control, which after taking on the 6 teenagers at the pool, he is now medicated for that and it's working really well so far. However, when he punched that girl he believed she deserved it, but still feels bad for her and didn't care about getting in trouble. He has the empathy to an extent, but not until after the fact when his brain is back to the status quo. I have tried to tell him about space too, and grabbing people especially around the neck. In that same pool he was trying to get a ball from another kid, and the kid turned his back and my son was hanging off of him from behind and choking him. The kid told him 3 times to get off and he didn't, then he head butted him and he still wouldn't let go, so the kid walked backwards and slammed him up against the side of the pool and that's what it took. My son didn't get hurt, but it did make him cry and it was a perfect teaching opportunity for me to show him how he can get hurt if he does these kinds of things. If he doesn't listen, if he invades space or touches in ways that kids may interpret as aggression they will react and he will get hurt. He has a hard time distinguishing aggression from play and knowing what the other person is interpreting it as, even if they outright tell him. I never really understood ToM issues until this. This was my epiphany and it's a difficult concept to teach when they don't get it because of their wiring, but you can't give up.

I have heard about crashing behaviors, and that's a difficulty knowing where your body fits into the world around you. I would definately have an OT check it out. That could be totally valid and I agree...very much worth looking into.

My son has an exceptionally large vocabulary, yet he has a hard time relating events that have happened to him. It takes a long time and a lot of careful, non-leading questioning to get a clear picture of what actually happened. There is another child at school who picks on my son at recess and whenever the teacher isn't looking, and my son has a hard time communicating it to his teacher. The other day, this boy punched my son in the face, and when my son told the teacher she called him a "tattletale" and did nothing. I have a feeling it is because she couldn't make sense of what my son was telling her, though I find it inexcusable that she called my son a name! Will be speaking to her soon about it.