Parenting techniques anyone?

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I'd be grateful for advice on what techniques have worked in your family and how to keep it together...Of course there is guilt when you feel you can't handle the AS childs behaviour and maybe it's true that it is OUR fault sometimes as parents but I really want to be the best Dad for H and would like some help (Books, Techniques or fellow experiences)

Perhaps you can list some of the specific behavior at issue?

As for books,I have found Tony Atoods latest book,to be very insightful.

My son is 6, and we've discovered that one of the best ways to handle his meltdowns is to first help him calm down, even though it sometimes feels like we're coddling unacceptable behavior to do so. Conventional wisdom says that you don't cave in to a kid who is crying/yelling/having a tantrum because it sends the message that s/he can get what s/he wants by being a little tyrannical. We've discovered that really isn't the case with our Aspie. He will sometimes have moments of clarity during his meltdowns where he asks us why he can't stop - he'll tell us he wants to stop being angry and stop crying but doesn't know how. Sometimes as a parent you expect compliance without question, but we've discovered that even at 6 years old, our Aspie has a much easier time dealing with things when we apply a little reason. We explain as best we can why we expect certain behavior and most of the time he gets on board once he's calm. We have days where we blow it - sometimes it takes every last ounce of energy you have just to stay calm, and there are times when we fall short. Anyway, the thing that helps my son calm down the quickest is if I take him somewhere quiet, hold him and let him cry it out. After he gets it out of his system, we can talk about what happened and try to figure out why. As he gets older we're trying really hard to get him to walk away from situations that are making him angry and then find a constructive way to deal with the anger - as in, go have the tantrum in your room instead of yelling directly at someone, go run it off in the back yard, go turn on your music and try to relax, etc. We're starting to be able to redirect him in those ways if we can detect the oncoming storm early enough. I don't know if or when he'll be able to do that on his own, but we're going to keep trying. Some days are good and some not so much, but we try to make him understand that we love him no matter what and that we're only trying to help him get along.

one major thing that reduced the amount of tantrums our son experienced was consistency. he knew that every monday morning he would wake up, get dressed, and then eat a waffle with syrup. he'd then watch 30 minutes of tv. after that he'd play with his toys for an hour . then we'd go to the grocery store. when we returned from the store, he'd watch another 30 minutes of tv while waiting for his lunch to be ready. nap was just after lunch...you get my point, i hope. a predictible routine solve the majority of tantrums. of course, sometimes we had to divert from the schedule~and we fully expected our son to have trouble. we've also found that talking to our son in the midst of a tantrum is useless. he is too wound up to make much sense. early on we had to help him through his tantrums, as he would get so out of control that we were worried he'd really hurt himself. we'd practice calming techniques when he wasn't tantruming,l in hopes that he'd be able to help himself in the midst of a tantrum....i'm sad to say though,that he's only recently figured out how to help himself calm down during a tantrum ( he's almost 15 now)

Well from an aspie perspective htese are the things that helped me..

For tantrums:
my parents either handed me a pillow sack full of old dishes (from garage sales) and told me to bash them against the wall. Made me go jump up and down and tumble on my bed or got my dog to calm me. Something about am 80 lb english setter laying down on top of me was remarkably calming. As I grew older my parents substituted a large punching bag for the dishes. I could punch, kick to my hearts content.

For daily life/school:
Every night my parents talked to me about the next days plan - including school stuff so I knew step by step what to expect. Part of the agreement with the school was that they would not change the plan without letting my parents know. We also talked about the day after in terms of what I should do and goals/tasks.

In school I self directed - basically did whatever I had planned to do. At the start of the day I handed teacher a list of the materials I'd need for the next days plans and my teacher gave me the stuff from the previous day's list. So long as teacher did not touch me or do other annoying things I would not hit or bite her. Whenever I felt like I was loosing it I just went to the cloak room and spun and rolled on the floor in the dark - very calming.

Overall evaluation:
I made national honor society and graduated first in my highschool class and 25 out of 600 some engineerins in my collage class. I'm an aspie but I function well - abet differently. If you've ever had surgery or been in an MRI, bone scanner, or an ICU -- I probably designed some of the circuitry used on you. Oh yes - I'm also married, a scuba diver, sailboat racer, and skier when I'm not kick boxing.

We make a SCHEDULE for our 6 year old boy every day. His morning schedule M-F is always the same, it is our getting ready for school schedule. We also have an afternoon when we get home schedule. As for other days, and school breaks, he helps us to write it out and we let him decide what to do during his "free play" times. This works WONDERFUL. Even if it is something he doesn't like to do, he will do it because the schedule says so. We make different ones for every day because each day is different, for example this day we go to OT at this time, or this is a church night, or we go to Grannie's house today. He gets to cross off the list when we are finished with something. Another thing we have done is made him a corner in his room where he can go to be alone anytime he wants to. Even if he is just trying to get out of an "undesirable" activity, he is allowed at least 5 minutes. We also have a list of the "rules" hanging up for him to see. It helps him to be reminded, and we have a "popsicle stick" system set up for following the rules. For every stick left he gets 5 minutes of computer time and so on. If he has 4 or less left them he gets no dinosaur (his greatest obsession) stuff (books, games, toys whatever). Usually once he is one stick away from losing his stuff he is really careful about following the rules. His OT set this up with us and it seems to help. Tantrums are still a mystery for me. If he just cannot calm down I will have him go lay in his bed until he can calm down enough to talk to me. (*not to his special corner since I don't want it associated as a time-out place for punishment). Usually this works. I put him in bed because he gets violent and aggressive and I am afraid he will hurt us or his younger brother. Hope this helps a little. If you want some examples of a daily schedule, just email me and I will send a copy of a couple of different ones.

How old is your child? Is it a boy or a girl? (Makes a difference, really).

What are the issues you are having?

As most addressed, the number one issue most have is the meltdowns. We've nearly eliminated the full blown ones by spending a lot of time figuring out what was causing them, then doing what was feasible to circumvent those things. Many were very easy fixes.

Rigidity is another one - our DS is like most in that he needs his days to be the same, and if not the same then he needs plenty of advance warning. In elementary school they made him a schedule out of oak tag and velcro, he was handed it every morning because even though math comes after PE every day he'd ask every day in PE "where do I go next"? out of anxiety.

To go to a different restaurant for our anniversary last year (we go to a pizza joint three saturdays in a row then to a buffet the 4th week, without fail) we had to take 6 weeks of driving by, looking at it on the internet, driving in teh parking lot, walking in just to look and get a menu, and finally we had dinner and DS sat quietly and was a prince through dinner.

Good luck!