Help! Trying to understand 10 yr old aspies emotions!

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OK. This is a 2 part question. One. Switching from one activity to another around the house is sometimes difficult. Everything takes extra time with him and it's impossibe for me to be in a hurry. I do what I can to allow extra time for him- waking him up early for school, giving lots of "5 more minutes, then you brush your teeth. 5 minutes, then you start your homework. 5 more minutes, then we eat dinner."etc. But sometimes, change is just spontaneous! This is life. Example- He usually gets dropped off to school first, but if were running late, occasionally I have to take his brother first. BIG problem. If we get in the car in the morning to go to school and I say we have to take you're brother first today, I get a pretty nice morning tantrum! My question is, how can I teach my son to manage himself in situations where change is inevidable?
Second question. My son seems to have 2 states of being. OK and PISSED. Pissed usually involves throwing something, (with reprocussions. not ok.) stomping around, refusing to speak and then suddenly BAM! he's back to his normal self. Sometimes this will last for 5 minutes, sometimes an hour or 2. Sometimes I know what set him off and sometimes I don't. Some days he gets out of school mad. Or I miss something that happens in the house. (he has 3 brothers, 1 sister)
He won't ever tell me anything thats happening with him. If I ask what he's feeling, I get the head down, nodding NO. Are you mad? "I don't know." Are you sad? "I dont know." Are you frustrated? "I don't know." Same with other questions. How was school? "I don't know." Did you have fun at grandma's? "I don't know." I heard you hurt your arm on the playground. What happened? "I don't know." Or I get the famous head down, shoulder shrug. Any question that has to do with him explaining something about himself is always the same response. I've had occasions where I knew he was having a hard time with a kid in the neighborhood( because his older brother told me), but when my 10 yr. old comes home, he is genuinely uneffected and has no intention of telling me what just happened. It makes me wonder what I DON"T know about his day. And it makes me wonder what he DOES with all these emotions he's feeling. He is feeling them, right?
How can I teach him to express himself with words? Does he need help identifying the emotions to begin with? I WANT TO UNDERSTAND MY KID!

Flexibility about change can be taught little by little but for some it may never be something they can achieve to any great degree. In my experience, the worst thing I can do is be in a hurry. I decided that it does not matter if we are late to school sometimes. I used to feel that it was terribly unfair to my older NT child when we were late because of the ASD child but the older child and I have come to accept that being late is not the end of the world. That being said, there are times (I try to make them as few as possible) that I simply MUST be somewhere at a certain time. DS then has the choice to get in the car without his coat or in his PJs (or whatever it is that he is refusing to do) OR getting ready. At such times, I try to impress upon him WHY I need to be somewhere at a specific time like, "Other people are counting on me to do X and I promised that I would. I need to keep my promise. You would want mommy to keep her promise to you right?" If he is not too dar down the road towards a meltdown, this logic can make an impression upon him.

If it still comes down to brother has to be dropped off first (or some other unavoidable change in routine), I personally would give a warning that that is going to happen BEFORE we get into the car. Once DS has something set in his head about what is going to happen next, it is far more likely that he will meltdown and for us once we have gotten into the car, it is too late to do anything other than what he expects. That's just us though. It is tough to gauge what is the right amount of warning time that a particular kid needs.

On the transitions around the house, we bought a Time Timer http://timetimer.com/ and use it to indicate how much time is left for the current activity. The visual aspect of this vs a regular kitchen timer seems to work pretty well. My friend often asks her daughter, Do you want 2 minutes or 5? Thus giving the child some control over how much longer she gets to do the current activity before she is required to move on (of course she always picks 5 but I do think the sense of control is helpful for that particular child).

On getting him to use his words about how he is feeling - this also requires baby steps. The How is Your Engine Running techinique or variations on it are popular. THis gives the child vocabulary that they can relate to better to describe how they are feeling. Tony Attwood and Carol Gray talk about doing "Social Autopsies" this is where you sit down after a tropubling incident has occurred and talk through what happened. I believe they recommend that you wait long enough that the child has had a chnace to calm down but not so long that the imporatant aspects are forgotten. ASking questions not jsut about how your son feels but about how he thinks other people involved might feel or what they did and said are important parts of this process.

It appears that, for some reason, he doesn't want you to know his emotions, or doesn't even want you to understand him. Perhaps he has been feeling misunderstood for years. The example of switching activities looks like an example. I can only go by what you wrote here, but it seems that you're more interested in getting him to comply with the requirement of handling change, instead of trying to understand why change is so difficult for him.

If he, like a lot of AS people, has authority problems you're only going to make it worse by trying to force it out of him.
I can only speak from personal experience, but I'd say that his emotions simply get bottled up. And perhaps he doesn't really know what he's feeling either. He may know the raw emotion, but a lot of AS people tend to have problems actually naming these feelings.

About the problems with change, I can again only give my own experiences: When I'm busy with something, I am often very focused on it, much more so than an average person (so I'm told). This also means that I have a lot of things in my head, that have to do with the task at hand. Planning ahead, keeping track of things, stuff like that. So if I'm forced to change my focus, everything that I held in my head is suddenly dropped, without the ability to give it a proper place. Best case, it just gets lost, but often it is worse. You can compare it with juggling, when you have five balls flying around in the air, you can't just suddenly stop or they will fly everywhere.

As another analogy, which perhaps explains more about why we are so very jarred by unexpected change: We are often ten steps ahead, trying to plan what we will be doing, how we will be reacting to the things that come. So if something changes right now, all that planning ahead is suddenly lost, we're thrown into the present, and suddenly we have to start working twice as hard to make those ten steps again. Compare it to a chess grand master, who is suddenly defeated by an amateur because he made a completely unexpected move.

One of the first breakthroughs we had in therapy was when my son tried an activity where he had to sort different phrases into four emotions: sad, angry, happy, scared. He put every single phrase into either the "angry" or the "happy" categories, and the therapist working with us said "that explains a lot of the behavioral responses you're getting, right? If he thinks every emotion is angry?"

It took a LOT of therapy work to get my son to properly identify emotions in himself, but he finally realized that he does feel sad and scared, and started to label those feelings as such. I think one key moment was when our book group was reading a really sad story (Hachiko Waits) and an older boy admitted he'd cried...my son finally realized that it's OK to cry and be sad.

Think about the environment boys grow up in: nobody except bad guys and losers ever, ever exhibit fear or sadness (except in that very stoic sort of way) in any media. Batman doesn't cry and is never afraid, but he does get mad. Same for Wolverine. Same for Han Solo - and when Luke Skywalker gets scared, confused and sad, his hand gets cut off and he falls off a building. These messages are extremely hard to counteract, and I think Aspie boys look to media for modeling social expression.

Part of DS's IEP became identifying his emotional state every single day, and making sure he fine-tuned it (his emotional meter seemed stuck at 11) with words that identified the degree.

DS also doesn't manage change well - a few months ago, I started parking on what I thought was a closer side of the school. He freaked and almost wouldn't leave the car. I find he handles things better if we can warn him both about the change, and also that he might "feel weird" but that the feelings are normal and will pass.

Thank you for you're suggestions and insight and for sharing your stories. I'm new to Wrong Planet and I'm sooo relieved to be able to talk about some of this stuff with people who understand!
BOMBALOO I love the idea of the timetimer and I'll be purchasing one right away. Of course he will HATE it at first (New things..another big problem maybe someone could address...does anyone know of someone like this? Anything new, he hates- is almost MAD about getting it. New shoes, a new book, gadget, toy, anything! Eventually he warms up to it but it may take a few days. Christmas is difficult!) Anyways, I'm getting the timetimer!
REYNAERT,your right- he HAS been misunderstood for years, and to some degree still is. He definately shuts down often. I will keep in mind the way you said you deal with change. That's the kind of stuff I want to know! Because I don't simply want him to comply at all costs, I'm here because I want to learn the "whys" of all of his difficulties so I can better help him.
MOMSPARKY Good point about boys and the media. Also, WHERE do you live where you can get something written like that into his IEP!! ! My son has the cheapest most one-size-fits-all IEP you have ever seen. The teachers don't even do a lot of the accomedations we have written in. He's having a rough school year for sure. (IEP meeting in April. I'm sure I'll be commenting about THAT like crazy on here when the time comes!)

No, we STARTED with one of those. After we finally got an appropriate eval on our own, we started listening to their suggestions, and ASKED for that, along with a pragmatic speech test & therapy, a 3-card "break" system, extra support in math, and social skills classes - and we asked what the curriculum for the social skills class would be.

What I've learned regarding schools: schools are generalists. Our kids have very specific issues. Make sure they are addressing YOUR specific kid. There's a sticky on IEPs at the top of the thread, check what your insurance will cover, find a neuropsychologist, and have them "bless" your IEP recommendations.

My DS always notices new things, sometimes its amazing the details he picks up on, but he doesn't automatically hate them. When you get the time timer you might try keeping it in your bedroom or someplace he would see it but rarely then move it out to a place he would see more often after a few days, then to a place where he could see it every day, etc. before you ever try to use it with him.

I also have a 10-year-old Aspie son. So, I have some understanding...mine is similar.

First - the 5 more minutes is helpful. Timers are great - he can look at them, and since he is fascinated with clocks and numbers, this is a big help.

Change can be very difficult. Luckily my son actually does pretty well with changes in routine. He is very un-like many on the spectrum in this way. He is pretty good at "going with the flow" for many things. It is odd - we have 3 aspies in the house and none of us is big on routine.

It is really important to understand the difference between autism meltdowns and tantrums. Tantrums are behavior that the child has control over (for the most part). During a tantrum, most kids can yell and communicate at least something about what is going on. During a meltdown, most ASD kids CAN'T communicate. The parts of their brains that process hearing and speech pretty much shut down during a true meltdown. It is difficult for them to have any control during a true meltdown. Note that visual processing does not seem to be affected, so writing messages like "I can take a deep breath", "I can go to a safe place", "I can calm down", etc. Somehow the "I can" statements help empower the child to take control and the written instruction gets through to their brains better than verbal. Also, you can write a message on a white board, put it in front of the child and back off. That also helps keep YOUR emotions out of the situation. I have found with my son that trying to talk to him during a meltdown or even just getting too close can sometimes escalate things.

The thermometers for emotion are helpful. My son's school is working with him on rating his emotions using one. On a scale of 1-5, he is generally a 1 or a 5 and he goes from one extreme to the other in seconds. We are working hard on helping him develop 2, 3, and 4. It is hard to stop a meltdown when he goes from 1 to 5 in under 10 seconds. He has actually been making some progress on this over the past few months. He was at about 5 seconds. Now, he is starting to get some 2-4 emotions and we are getting closer to 30 seconds before meltdown mode. Still not a lot, but it is great improvement.

As far as discussing things that he doesn't want to talk about, I find that the best time to talk to my son is when we are in the car together. I read this as a suggestion for talking to teens (meaning NT teens), but it works great with my son also. This way, I am facing away from him, but I am not appearing to be ignoring him. Since I CAN'T look at him, it is not so intimidating for him and he seems more comfortable talking to me. Remember that it is really hard for many of these kids to really tell you how they are feeling. My son can't even answer "what is your favorite food?" because there are too many possible answers and he can't sort through them and he is worried about giving the wrong answer.

Good luck! One of the things I have learned from wrongplanet is that 10 seems to be a really hard age. They are starting to have some hormonal changes, school is getting more into writing instead of just reading, work is getting more abstract rather than just learning facts...there is a LOT going on and it seems to hit these kids really hard. My son did great until the beginning of 4th grade. But, the past 5 months have been really bad. I have been told that it gets better.

Hang in there and remember we are there to help.

WHOEVER, YES YES!! What an awesome idea about the whiteboard! Because it's true, when he's in the middle of it, getting near him or trying to talk is impossible. Things definately escalate. And I hate to say, the older he gets, the worse it gets. It's somehow "acceptable" for a 3 or 4 yr. old even to flip out occasionally. But by age 10...not so much. It makes sense somehow that he can still visually communicate...he seems to remember things about his life visually, and I just really, truely noticed that for myself the other day. My oldest (21) said something about the year 2006. My 10 yr old immediately says to himself, "Oh yeah, I was in kindergarden in 2006." I thought for a second, did the math, he was right! How did you know that? I asked. He replies, like I'm a dumbass, "I looked at that year everyday on the blackboard in kindergarden!" Ha!

Anyways, I'm gonna try the whiteboard at home for sure, but I wonder. What about everyone else? For example, I have a hard time with him and his 12 yr. old brother. We actually just had an episode about an hour ago (!) where he was playing outside in the snow, he got mad about something and in the process of trying to whip a lawn chair at his older brother, whacked HIMSELF in the face with it. He ran in the house to the basement to be alone, but CRYING which I haven't seen him do for ..maybe a year, at least? I gave an attempt to see the hurt eye, but I know to leave him alone at a moment like that. So after about half an hour he came upstairs and let me eventually check him out. After a 10 minute discussion about the proper way to ice an eye, I got an icepack on that thing! Left him alone for a while to calm down some more, then went back to have the discussion. Why people don't throw chairs or do physical things to hurt somebody when theyre mad. How you have to just walk away when you get angry. How bad he would have felt if his brother had this hurt eye right now. It's frustrating because I feel like he doesn't even HEAR me. And I have no knowledge about how to get his siblings to be patient without causing resentment.

You mentioned school. My son doesn't have any behavior problems at school, surprisingly. (Academic, yes.) At school, he's a different kid. He is literally in shut down mode. He doesn't speak to anyone, not kids on the playground, not teachers when he needs help. 5th grade has been really hard.

Thank you WHOEVER for you're encouraging words. I'm glad I found this place.

I totally understand the idea that things that are at least semi-appropriate for a 2 or 3 year old are definitely NOT appropriate for a 10 year old.

I know how difficult things can be with siblings. I have a 7 1/2 year old son with severe ADHD. The two boys just feed on each other. Either one or the other by himself is pretty easy, but the two together is horrible sometimes. I just can't seem to get them to leave each other alone some times. At least in some ways it is nice that they both have problems so we have to ask both of them to be extra understanding about some things with the other.

Good luck - just know you are not alone.

There is a difference between task switching and changes in schedule. He is probably switching tasks as fast as he can so I would not perturb that. As far as schedule switching, with a teenager or an adult I would reason by asking does it really matter if the schedule changes as long as the end result is the same? However at 10 he is probably still too young to attempt this approach with. Instead I would tell him some days you are going to take his brother first, and some days you are going to take him first. In fact, you might take his brother first for a whole week, and just let him tantrum. He will eventually get used to it. However before embarking on this I would ask him is there any specific reason he likes being dropped off first?



A lot of kids who aren't on the spectrum actually do this. I wouldn't ask him how he is feeling when he's angry, because first of all, it's rather clear he's angry and upset, second of all, he might not have the insight to express with words how he feels, and third of all, it's frequently not in the nature of males to cope with problems in such a manner.

You can try asking him why he is upset by running down a list of scenarios, but he might not be receptive to this while he actually is upset, as he is too overwhelmed with emotions.

He likely seems fine once he's over it and proceeds about his business as if nothing ever happened because children generally just don't dwell on their emotions like adults. Their brains are changing very quickly and they get distracted easily.

Certain medications like SSRIs can also cause rages in children.

" Instead I would tell him some days you are going to take his brother first, and some days you are going to take him first. In fact, you might take his brother first for a whole week, and just let him tantrum. He will eventually get used to it. However before embarking on this I would ask him is there any specific reason he likes being dropped off first?"

I think that's a great idea CHRONOS because once he thinks that's how were SUPPOSED to do it, that's acceptable. I may just call a new rule. "Some days we are taking you're brother first. Some days we are taking you first." If that's the norm, maybe in time that will work. I'm gonna try it. However, I can imagine "Some days" may give cause for concern, because WHICH days are they? is probably going to be the next question.......WILL he eventually get used to it? I don't know.
I'll stand my ground.
I've asked him MANY times if there was a reason why he didn't wanna go first, or early to school. This is what I'm talking about with the communication problem. I get "I don't know" or a head shake "No" or dead silence. It makes me think there IS a reason and he just won't tell me. I DID figure out that if he gets dropped off before a certain time, he has to go into a different building first to line up before he goes into HIS classroom in the mobile. (We live in Chicago. 1/2 of our classrooms are in a trailer, rather than in the actual school. Nice, huh?) That transition is probably difficult for him. I ASSUME this is the reason for hostility on some mornings, but if it's not that , it's simply the fact that his brother is "supposed" to be dropped off first, since that's what usually happens.

I have the exact same problem with my 10-yr-old. Everything is "I don't know" or "I don't wanna talk about it". He will occasionally tell me about something that happened at school but the majority of the time, it's like pulling teeth to get anything out of him. This is especially true when it comes to how he's feeling or asking him why he did something.

I finally found out a week or so ago that he thinks in images as opposed to words. Apparently that's common was AS? (just got the diagnosis a few days ago so I'm still new to this). So, most of the time, he says "I don't know" because he doesn't have the words to explain it. Knowing that he thinks in images, though, has helped some in the last few weeks. For example, instead of asking him, "Why did that make you mad?" I've started asking things like, "What images popped in your head when that happened?". He's been able to describe some of his thoughts to me like that, though it's still difficult for me to understand and probably always will be as I am a very "verbal-oriented" thinker. My hope is that he will eventually get to the point where he feels more comfortable with talking about his feelings but right now I think he mostly just feels like nobody will understand and that there's something wrong with him because he thinks differently than other people.

I completely understand your frustration, though. I'd love to be able to talk to my son about his day and how he's feeling and it can be maddening when it seems like he's constantly shutting me out.

AS kids tend to be rules kids, and they develop and apply rules to everything. So for your son, one rule in his head may be that he gets dropped off first. When that doesn't happen, a rule has been broken, even if he doesn't have the words to say that is what it is. One way to address that is to make sure things don't happen consistently enough for it to feel like a rule, but that doesn't work for all kids. Another way is to simply honor the rule for as long as the child needs you to: just like all kids, kids with AS grow up and mature, and over time become able to handle things they could not before.

Sometimes you have to pick between being on time and having everyone in your family start the day in a decent mood. In elementary school, I picked the later. In middle school, the consequences for tardies increased, but so did my son's ability to meet a schedule, so it worked out. I think we can take our time letting real life hit our kids - just because they have to accept certain realities someday, doesn't mean it has to be today. Meter it out, let him learn one thing at a time, adapt the world to him just a little bit longer, to the extent you can. It is so hard for an AS child, there are so many ways the world is running fast ahead of them, and they never get a chance to catch up, which makes them feel like they can never win. If you can slow the world down and just let him catch up, it really helps.

[quote="DW_a_mom. Meter it out, let him learn one thing at a time, adapt the world to him just a little bit longer, to the extent you can. It is so hard for an AS child, there are so many ways the world is running fast ahead of them, and they never get a chance to catch up, which makes them feel like they can never win. If you can slow the world down and just let him catch up, it really helps.[/quote]
Totally what I needed to hear. Today especially. Thank you!

Hey moms, I just wanted to offer a suggestion to your request. My daughter just hit 13 and we struggled with the emotions, meltdowns and total silence around age 10 too. What worked for us was a journal. She was allowed to be totally silent as long as you was writing or drawing a story about what happened to set off the tantrum or meltdown. I've also be a BIG advocate for allowing expression in all forms, even cussing, although my husband hates it. She has learned to express herself verbally in the past few years but still reverts to the paper when she can't get out the "why" of her emotions. If you go with this angle set up the guidelines and what you expect as well as what is allowed ONLY on paper. It was shocking getting my first full length page of "F* this world I wanna die!" BUT what a difference in how she feels afterward. We have noticed a drastic drop in meltdowns since we started this writing thing. Granted we have noticed an increase in emotions due to hormones but it's still working. We are also discovering an extremely expressive and emotionally creative side of her we only saw in her drawing before.

I look at my daughters emotional struggles in terms of a bucket. The average person might get an emotion of anger and deal with it by venting to a friend or letting it go because it just wasn't worth getting mad about. This is like adding a cup of water to the bucket and either choosing to empty the bucket then or waiting and emptying it later. Now with my daughter and I'm guessing with other Aspies, that bucket has a lead weight in the bottom of it. She can't just lift it up and dump it out. She's forced to deal with the cup of water for anger, on top of the cup of water for frustration (better make that 3 cups), and lets add a cup of happy and a cup of sad. At this point her bucket is nearly over flowing and it's only 3pm. The meltdown is going to come as soon as ANYONE adds another cup to her bucket. And really it could be any emotion. Before she could write things out, the meltdown was only like kicking the bucket and spilling out a few cups worth. Which meant multiple meltdowns on bad days. Once she started expressing to me the things that bothered her, it was more like taking a smaller bucket and scooping out larger amounts. Oh and by writing it out, she also found some words she could say out loud to help make herself understood.

This is by no means a "miracle pill". The fix is in communication and continuous attempts at doing what works for us and for her specifically. At this point I feel confident that she will be able to look at someone else and tell them how she feels, someday soon. Right now she's only able to do this consistently with me and occasionally with her father.

Hope this has helped
Jen