Screaming rage!! !

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My son, 8 years, has Aspergers.. and when something frustrates hims (which can be many things).. he screams at the top of his lungs and is in a rage! He is so frustrated! He will hit me, my wife, or whoever he disagrees with - the violence is terrible. This creates a massive, and unbearable stress on me and our whole family. What to do. We are exhausted and incredibly concerned. We love him very, very much.

I hate to say it, we tried the GAPS diet and it really cured this problem we were having on a daily basis.

This is a difficult state for the whole family and my own daughter has had periods like this. It sounds simplistic, but what I did was really look at all of the demands on my daughter. I tried to reduce those demands drastically. You need to look at it as a crisis, and things demanded of your son, things which frustrate him, need to be removed as much as possible. For my daughter this meant no activities outside the home except for school and she was given a lot of leeway with regard to alone time-being able to eat alone in her room for instance, dialing back on requirements such as chores. At first it seems like taking huge steps backwards but it is needed at times of crisis.

Then, once you get back down to a calmer baseline, you can once again slowly add responsibilities to your child, as they are able. This volatile state your son is in (if there are no other mediating factors such as medication side effects etc) is a sign that he is overloaded and under too much pressure, so basically he blows up at the slightest issue.

At one point were basically home bound dealing with this, and it took a long while to gets things calmed down. It's horribly unfair to the rest of the family to have one member require this sort of drastic change for the entire family, but if it results in calmer times for everyone then it is worth it.

And the suggestion by the previous poster to look at his diet is a good suggestion as well.

I would agree with the PP. Behavior is communication. Unfortunately for our kiddos this communication is often not very effective because the people on the receiving end don't really understand it. The behavior you describe is a person screaming out that he is in intolerable distress. It sounds like he is living in fight or flight mode a good part of the day. Perhaps school is just too much for him or he isn't getting enough support there. Perhaps riding the bus is a constant source of sensory overload. Perhaps his clothes bother him but he has never said anything because he doesn't know that things can be different. You have to be the detective to figure out what the sources of his distress are and eliminate them or mitigate them as much as possible. Once you have achieved some sense of normalcy, you can start working on learning emotional regulation and coping mechanisms.

Good advice everyone- thank you for your responses. He is not on medication. We tried Zoloft .25 and he was calmer but punching us way to often. Will look into the GAPS diet..

My advice is not helping you to avoid this screaming aggressive attacks (therefore good advices have already been told by others), but for me (if everything I tried to avoid these failed) the fastest way to pass that screams attacks are to let them go the way they are. The last thing on earth I need in this mood is someone trying to conversate with me, that only makes them worse. I am best to be left alone, then it is easiest for me to let them go. And I normally want to let them physically out. I dont need to hurt someone in reality, or destroy something precious. But it really helps to have ways to punch that anger, stress, fear and so on out in a physical way. May it be by kicking into the (brick) wall, may it be by punshing the couch, may it be by throwing my bed stuff around. As long as I "did not allow me that" myself before, the worse they got afterword, the less control I had. With me accepting this breakouts, it normally led to an massive untidy room, but no real damage.

So the best possible way for me and my surrounding, if everythings failed to avoid that: Screaming, throwing things around, punshing something - crying - doing a walk or biking (the body is after such attacks full with stress and activity hormones, doing something helps to reduce them) - doing SI - sleeping (Normally I am physically completely exhausted after such things.). And all of this without people always trying me to get me into "entertaining and talk" modus. Maybe you have the possibility to fix a mat at the wall or such things, so he has an location, where he himself can let this anger go?

My daughter was also violent when we tried Zoloft. She had less anxiety but more aggression. Did you recently stop the Zoloft or was it a while back? The reason I ask is my daughter had residual effects of the Zoloft for 6 months after we had tapered and gone off of it. People have told me it is "impossible" but I know it was the Zoloft so you might keep that in mind as well.

People react to stress and that stress varies from person to person. The healthier you are, the better you are able to navigate through it. If your body is intoxicated (much like drinking too much alcohol), you are not equipt to handle any stress. Toxins are toxins and the trick is to clear them. Just like the alcohol analogy, once you're sober, your able to think more clearly, drive safely, and behave more appropriately.