q. re: teaching difference between "on accident" v

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my 5 y/o son has ADHD and ASD. he has a lot of impulses that he feels are out of his control. he just turned 5, so i don't expect him to be excellent at controlling impulses, but he doesn't seem to understand about impulses vs. "on accident". or maybe i just don't understand how to explain it yet. he keeps insisting that certain behaviors are accidents. i keep trying to explain that no, that wasn't an accident, that was an impulse, you may not have felt you had control over that impulse, but that is not the same as an accident. so far i seem to be getting nowhere, and he keeps insisting. if i could get him to understand the difference, maybe we could work on impulsivity. also, he refuses to apologize for his behaviors that stem from these impulses, because he sees them as "accidents" and doesn't think he should have to apologize since he didn't "mean to" do them. an example would be that he kicked me when he got angry with me when i set a limit and he later refused to apologize, because "it was an accident." any advice?

Maybe skip the language of "accident" and "purpose" for now. Maybe he really feels like he doesn't have control. Who knows? Arguing about linguistics doesn't seem to be working.

Maybe talk about "expected" and "unexpected" behavior. Expected behavior is behavior that is expected in a given situation. Like being kind, giving personal space, keeping hands to self. Unexpected is like touching others when they don't want to be touched, interrupting, being rude, etc. Maybe if you phrase it this way, he understand that there is expected behavior and he is expected to try his best to have those behaviors.

Perhaps a token system will help? I find that kiddos with impulse control learn how to control impulses best by 1. Increasing Sensory input and 2. A token system that rewards their efforts.

As he gets older you will be able to bring back "accident" or "on purpose" but it isn't worth the argument if it isn't working.

Boy, do we have this one - and my son is 11 now.

Part of the problem, as outlined above, is that my son often loses control completely, or isn't in control of himself - and, so, from his perspective, everything is an "accident."

We actually had a breakthrough on this the other night, because I'd caught him in an extremely complex series of lies (he was playing games on the computer instead of doing homework, and had taken several steps to make sure he wouldn't be caught.) and he spent the evening terrified because he thought he didn't have control over that and was going to backslide into bad behavior.

I sat down and explained to him the difference between this situation, breaking down the number of purposeful steps he'd been through to deceive me, and an impulse-lie I'd caught him in the day before. I showed him that he had numerous opportunities to choose his behavior after the initial impulse: he couldn't stop it, but he could have owned up to it when I asked him directly. Finally, a light went off in his head, and he understood! He's actually started telling the truth when caught in a lie now, because he understands he has control over that part.

Now, he's 11 - I'm not sure this is a battle worth fighting in a 5 year old. When DS has impulse control issues, we say "you need to find a way to stop yourself" but we don't try to talk about intent, as I don't think it's relevant to the situation. We discuss strategies (for instance, when he was 5 and couldn't keep his hands off stuff, we taught him to twiddle his thumbs, so he'd have to take a step before acting on his impulse. Didn't solve the problem - but it helped.)

We also discuss that you have to apologize for accidents if they hurt someone, if that's why you're having this discussion.

thanks to you both who have replied so far. i think the first step to controlling your behavior is to take responsibility for it, which is why we are stuck on this one. but you are right: arguing over linguistics won't help. that is one thing i wanted feedback on. my son is only 5, but he might have a receptive language issue. sometimes i am really confused about how to get things through to him. yes, i do want him to learn to apologize, and that is a big part of the issue. i think he needs to realize somehow that his actions, "accidental" or not, have impact on people. he scores low on empathy, so this is something we need to work on. i tried to explain to him about how the other morning when i stepped on the cat's paw, it was an accident, and i immediately exclaimed to the cat "i am so sorry!" while i petted his head, and i was telling the cat i was sorry and that i didn't mean to do it, but what i was sorry about was that his paw was hurt, etc. maybe for my son it will click sometime with practice. any other tips, or ideas, or experiences, anyone?

A couple of points -

The first step of apologizing is accepting responsibility. You may want to address the issues regardless of if they're on accident. Meaning, if you accidentally knock over milk you have to clean it up the same as if you throw it on the floor.

You are responsible for your actions either way.

Then, you need to determine what will help repair the issue, so with the milk analogy, you clean it. If its kicking someone, you need to find out what will help them feel better. IF AN APOLOGY WILL HELP SOMEONE FEEL BETTER YOU DO IT REGARDELESS OF ON ACCIDENT OR NOT ON ACCIDENT. The emphasis is on doing what's required to repair what has been harmed.

I personally hate training our children to "say sorry" without understanding why or how it helps. I think at 5 the on accident vs. impulse may be too abstract, so I prefer taking responsibility either way. Then again, my parenting strategy has never been about punishing so for me, it doesn't matter if it was "on accident" or not, we just work on being responsible.

I think this may be part of your problem: at least with my son, his own behavior was often just as inexplicable as anybody else's. The first step in what we know as "taking responsibility" is actually acknowledging that you had something to do with what happened - and that's a big, big leap.

Modeling is good, but keep in mind that the kind of modeling you're doing might take a long time for an NT 5 year old to copy. I think you need to talk about things as "happening" rather than implying intent, and then the apologizing as sort of a chore or rule that you "do" when certain things "happen."

So, when he steps on the cat, you say "Oh, the cat's paw is hurt. When that happens, we check if the cat is OK and say I'm sorry!" You're probably going to get a lot of apologizing for behavior he has nothing to do with when this works - but keep in mind, at least in my experience with my son, this is an expression of how difficult it is to distinguish intent. I am guessing more apologizing is better than too little.

I remember in college, "I'm sorry!" was a phrase I used so often that I got teased about it. When a professor brought it to my attention, I immediately apologized...in other words, I still have real difficulty (especially socially) understanding when something I have done has negatively affected someone else. I have the script, but like a tourist with a phrasebook, it may not be the appropriate response even if it's the only one I've got.

Also when you teach your child to apologize, you may be actually teaching him to say sorry every time he does something on accident or upsets someone or just does things because he wanted to or because it was poor impulse control and not even mean it because he had learned it's something you are to say when it happens. Then he will wonder what exactly are fake apologies and would wonder if he had been doing them the whole time and why are fake apologies so wrong if he had been taught to do them. To this day I still wonder why I was taught this and I am sure it was never their intent. But I still think apologize when you tick someone off or do things that upset them and it's a hard habit I am trying to break because I realize not everyone accepts them and people stop accepting them after a while when you keep doing it again and again. I remember feeling confused about why apologizing was a crime and why was my mother all of a sudden changing that rule on me when she told me don't apologize if it's a lie. Uh hello, isn't that what you taught me as a child? Is that your way of telling me you were wrong? But I didn't have the words back then to ask her why teach me such a thing and then tell me it's wrong.


But how do you teach an autistic child the proper way of apologizing so they aren't parroting it they are actually fake apologies? As a child I had not idea why I was apologizing. Then I figured out "Oh you say sorry when you do bad things." Oh you say sorry when you do an accident" "Oh you say worry when you make a mistake." and then I was over doing it and people would then tell me I didn't need to be sorry.

I can't tell the difference between a fake apology or a real one when I do it. Like if I apologize to someone to get them off my back because it would make them feel better because I had apologized, is that a fake one? To me it's a real one. So people not buying my apologies makes me not want to apologize at all because I see no point to it. I was taught it was supposed to make things better and people forgive you and move on. That is how things were in my childhood. If a kid said sorry, the teacher would go "She apologized" and drop the issue. I eventually learned saying sorry is a way to get out of trouble and it makes things better. I used to see it as their problem not mine because I apologized and I still see it that way. But I also feel now what is the point?

It is helpful for us to draw out these scenarios in "comic strip conversations". To use your example of him kicking you when he was mad about being told no, you can draw out what happened with stick figures and speech or thought bubbles. This gives the child an opportunity to see how his actions made other people feel. So in this example, when you get to the part where he kicks you, your thought bubble will say somthing like, "Ouch, that really hurt! It hurts and makes me feel sad when someone kicks me." You can also give him the opportunity to tell you what he was thinking and/or feeling in that moment, if he is able to express that. Check out Carol Gray's website for more on how to employ these. If your kiddo is visual like mine, this might be a good tool.

Thank you, everyone! Your thoughts and insights are helpful. I am new to this. My son just received the diagnosis of Aspergers, and I think he is "growing into" it, though the ADHD was apparent very early. I have been doing a lot of reading, but sometimes I feel incompetent. One reason I feel that way is that I am an extreme empathizer, and my son is an extreme systemizer, and wrapping my head around trying to communicate with him is sometimes very confusing/ befuddling/ frustrating. I have a lot to learn, too.

I feel your pain. Sometimes I have such a hard time communicating with my son or understanding what he is trying to communicate to me. It takes a lot of effort and creative thinking/problem solving. I used to pride myself on my ability to think of new and different was to solve problems at work but my son has humbled me completely in this arena! The upside is that I feel my brain will never get dull, he keeps me thinking all the time.