what is this?

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My son just screamed "POO POO HEAD!! !" while playing Wii. He knows we dont like that, and I called him inside. I said shut the game and come in here. And he started to cry hysterrical that he didnt say aything, it wasnt him, he didnt say anthing wrong. He said his sister did it. NO she didnt I was watching her she was not talking, and I know her voice. And I know his voice, and I KNOW it was him. WIthout a shadow of a doubt. I hear him, he was yelling about losing. It WAS him.
He continued to cry and insist he didnt say that. He does this other times too. He may answer me and then say" it wasnt me, I didnt say it. "

I mean crying like crazy, hysterical crying. What is that? DO I worry he has something else going on? Does he REALLY THINK he didint say it? I asked him why I would be telling him he said it if he didnt, and he just cried I DIDNT I DIDNT!! ! He knows he is going to lose his games, but I told him if he lies about it he will lose them LONGER. It is better to tell the truth the punnishment will be easier, but he INSISTS he didnt say antyhing. Then he says it was him , then he goes upstairs to his dad and crys it WANST him.

How does one deal with this situation? Not the first time, he does this as we are talking, I will say something, he will give a wise answer then CRY it wasnt him. Seriously, do I worry about some other mental issues here???

Thoughts:

Have you given him other words that are OK in your home to use, when he is frustrated with losing a game? If so, you might want to remind him about the words that you do and do not want spoken in your home.

I doubt he is deluded into thinking he did not say what he said. I do think he was trying to avoid punishment, and naively thought a lie would do it. The language just probably slipped out, and he did not want to be accountable. Response inhibition is not normally a thing aspies and auties are good at.

We have trouble with response inhibition and games, right now, ourselves. My son gets frustrated, and he will slam the game etc. The fact that your son does not do that, and is at the point of fine tuning his verbal reactions, is way better than where we are.

I would (not during or right after playing a game) have a calm talk reiterating why you do not like that language and maybe asking him what options he would like to use instead for when he is frustrated. Maybe just say, "I am frustrated with this game," or something. If he were physical, I would suggest punching a pillow. I really do think he just needs help with how he vocalizes frustration.

Both of my kids have done this, for different reasons, but I don't think it means you are dealing with anything more than autism.

Here is what I would suggest:

At this young of age, you might find it helpful to initially give no punishment after telling the truth. And phrase it with "I heard you say poo poo head. If you tell me the truth and apologize, there will be no further consequences. If you lie and tell me you didn't say it, I will take your game away for 2 hours (rest of day/whatever your consequences are usually like)." But when he does admit to it, you do need to have a conversation about why that language is not allowed in your house and what you will do the next time you hear it. I would then remind him each time he starts to play the game "Do you remember the consequences if you use bad language?" Just so it's prompted and fresh in his memory.

Once you get him to reliably tell the truth, then you can start giving lesser consequences after truth telling and greater consequences after lying. To skip straight to that, IMHO, is too big of a leap to some kids and for kids who respond very strongly to punishment, any punishment will set them off.

When he gets older, I recommend 2 consequences: 1 for whatever he did that you do not approve of, and a separate one for lying. Once that pattern is established, sometimes you only need to set consequences for lying, because the thing that they lied about may not actually warrant punishment or may be better dealt with in another way.

I think there might be another possible explanation. The concept of lying is pretty slippery for most young kids and I think even more so for ASD kids. I think what he means is that he really didn't MEAN to say it out loud and he really regrets saying it. When we have these issues, I refuse to engage in any type of argument. It is REALLY counter-productive for us when I argue with him that I heard him and I know it was him. I give him an acceptable alternative for something to say when he gets mad and we move on. I don't think punishments are effective in this type of situation.

Your son is very nice, that words made me smile. I'm not an English speaker and maybe I don't understand how much heavy his words are, but... he has to learn to control his reaction when he's at school or in public. That's important. If words come out at home he has to learn he doesn't have to deny. I wouldn't tell hm off, it's something many of us do...

Poo Poo Head is mild.

We run into this with DS a lot - frequently, he's totally unaware that some words slip out of his mouth (I know this, because it isn't always profanity...sometimes it's just whatever private thoughts happen to pop out.)

When confronted, he will often (he doesn't have a sister to blame) say we are lying, or insist he didn't say that. I think that is because he really doesn't have a filter that differentiates between private thoughts and those that he said out loud, and he's genuinely confused.

So, we're working on it globally. A good technique was mentioned above: words to replace the "bad" words that really work in frustrating situations. (DS currently uses "Pooperdoodle!" which is not perfect, but doesn't get him in trouble at school. Slightly silly is helpful.) Also, all the other times that he blurts out a thought he thinks is private, we ask him to try again, but this time just thinking that thought without saying it.

We punish for lying, it leads to a meltdown but we stick to it. My daughter understands the lying bit. There have been one or two times that she did something, said she didn't do it, and I honestly believe that she thinks she didn't do it. I think for kids with AS it is very hard to tell the difference between the monologue of thought in their head and what really occurs. So maybe he thought about saying "poo poo head" with no intention of saying it, but when he thought it, it came out of his mouth sounding no different than his own internal monologue so he never noticed that he actually, physically, said the word.


Just a thought bc I know this has happened to me many times and when I was a child I could not tell the difference between real events and realistic but imaginary events. Once I made my parents search the mall for the store that sold "Body parts" I was 100% convinced that there was such a store and that I had been there and I'm pretty sure it's because I had a very vivid daydream about it one day. I became obsessed and talked non-stop about it for weeks making my parents take me to the mall several times just to look for it. I was 4.

Just saying I think there is a possibility that he isn't exacty lying.