HELP!! !

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I'm at my wit's end. My son (dx'ed PDD-NOS) has been having these rages from HELL. Mostly directed at ME. I really try to do the right thing for him, but nothing seems to work. I have followed the advice of the professionals but being firmer with him escalates his behavior. I just want to cry. He gets this animal-angry look on his face, baring his teeth and wrinkling his face up, and GROWLING at me, and swiping at me as if he has claws. It is scary!! ! Has anyone else gone through this? It seems to be getting worse.

How old is he?

He is 4.5 years old

what is his functioning level? Is he verbal? Does he have a behavior plan? Does he go to school or get any services? I am wondering if you can ask his school or social worker for some addittional help...


sounds hard so sorry!

He is highly verbal and very smart. He is in a mainstream preschool and he has been having some problems there recently, so upon recomendation of his teachers we are in the midst of getting him reevaluated to see if he can get a SEIT assigned to him in school. Last year he was fine, but this year struggling with socialization and low frustration threshold. He also had a new baby brother last year and it is a hot/cold relationship between those two. His younger brother (Mr. Cheerful) is 17 mos and we are in the process of evaluating his developmental delays right now.

His former ABA therapist says my son is smart and knows what he can get away with with me, so he acts out because he can. I have tried the Supernanny approach but it only makes him rage more. So my husband and I have tried to do a less confrontational approach with him to help him identify his triggers and calm down before it escalates into a full blown rage attack. It helps sometimes, but these attacks are growing more frequently and I find myself walking on eggshells around him. I do believe he needs to understand consequences of his behavior but my husband disagrees because he feels the kid really can't help it. On top of it all, my childhood IBS has resurfaced (after a couple of decades!) and I think it is because of all this stress.

We found heading off meltdowns and preventing them to be most effective.

The hard part is figuring them out. With our son, he can tolerate all sorts of stuff, until he hits a threshold, and flips. So the combination of things is what can impact us. So, we need to be sure there's plenty of rest, food, sensory needs have been met, adequate down time (for my son, it's screens).

Consequences don't work for most of the folks here, when its a true meltdown (loss of control). Consequences are fine for naughty (poor choice, with understanding) behavior.

How do you differentiate/know when it is a true meltdown versus being naughty/angry over simply not getting his way?

I found all that "advice" about being firmer causes more of the problems I was trying to fix than anything else.

Typically people say that meltdowns keep going and going even if they get what they want; a tantrum usually stops when they get their way.

I would try to figure out what is upsetting him and try to prevent it before it starts. When my son was this age, it was next to impossible to do this all the time b/c something I could not control would invariably happen to set him off. So the odds are your son will still get "practice" trying to manage emotions even if you scaffold the heck out of everything.

Make a list of predictable things that you KNOW set him off and then when you are done see which ones you can prevent and which ones you can't. Then try managing it to see if this improves things. Kids on the spectrum are emotionally immature and have a lot of trouble managing emotions, so they sometimes need a lot of help. He may be acting like a 2 or 3 yr old, emotionally, so I would start treating him that way to see if that improves things. Lower your expectations so that he can feel successful and then praise him when he succeeds.

More details about what upsets him might help.

Thank goodness for this forum. I often feel like a total pariah not listening to those recommendations, as if I'm going to make my kid an even bigger basket case if I don't follow their advice.

I find it hard to figure out if it's a meltdown or a tantrum because the only way to know is to give him what he wants (even if unreasonable?) is to give in and see if stops his behavior. I just don't find this a nice test to administer, despite the fact that his tantruming to get his way isn't nice either.

Many of his current negative behavior stems from:
- not getting what he wants *when* exactly he wants it (food, a movie, a toy, an activity with me)
- not wanting to do something he needs to do (wear socks with shoes, get ready to school, get ready to go to bed, clean up his trains)
- not getting attention on his terms (if I tell him he has to wait a minute for me to do something for him, or not responding to his bossy demands right away)
- having to stop an activity abruptly, changing plans/routines on short notice
- sense of justice/unfairness
- not understanding that other family members are having a friendly dispute, not truly "fighting" with each other

Also, my other concern is that dancing around his sensitivities isn't preparing him adequately for the real world. He is going into Kindergarten next year and he lost his PDD-NOS diagnosis because he was doing so well last year after EI but has regressed somewhat this year. My hope is that he will qualify for a Gifted & Talented program, where kids are a little more bookwormish and maybe less cruel to each other regarding things like this. My concern is his low frustration threshold, and whether or not he will be able to self-regulate or if he will be overwhelmed by the larger class size. If I send him to a Special Ed school then I fear he will adapt more of the negative behavior of the lower functioning students. I am really conflicted because on one hand, I do feel like I need to be more understanding of his issues; on the other hand I realize he has to learn to adapt to the world and develop those skills, because the world will not adapt to him nor should it.

Your son sounds a lot like my daughter. She is VERY intelligent and is verbally advanced when it comes to her interests or pragmatic issues. She is 5.5 now, but she started having these meltdowns and rages at about 4.5 also.

At first we tried to tip toe around them which honestly didn't help, she would find new things to rage over. Then I bagan to notice that there were different types of meltdowns. There were those related to sensory overload and there were those related to "differences of opinion".

For the sensory related ones I try to find ways for her to cope, give her head phones or ear plugs if we know we are going to be some place loud. IF we are going to a busy place we take breaks and I let her have a book or video game. Also applying pressure to her (physical), joint compressions, and math problems help.


For the other type I either make her go to her quiet spot or if I can't make her go there I ignore her entirely. If I can get her to go to the quiet spot she may do math, read, or color there. As long as she is fussing and raging I Ignore her completely no matter what UNLESS she starts to hurt herself. It's ok to block that, but without saying anything. She has to be calm for one minute before she can leave the quiet spot. Now if the fit was over not wanting to share, or her little sister touching one of her toys, the quiet spot works very well. The quiet spot is not a punishment, it is all about emotional regulation. That is why she can't come out till she has been calm. A good way to find out if they are calm is to ask interesting questions like "What is our cats name?" or "name three colors". If they can do that with out a vein popping out of their forehead they are probably calm. Then you don't discuss what set them off unless they bring it up or until WAY WAY later. Never force an insincer apology and never try to convince them that they are wrong and you are right. They won't see it that way at this age with aspergers/ASD all they will really get is that they need to do it your way whether they like it or not even though their way is clearly better or else they will be put into quiet time and ignored. Once she is calm and comes out of quiet spot we DO NOT IMMEDIATELY DISCUSS what transpired before. If she brings it up herself in a reasonable way, then it is OK. If she is still confrontational I ignore her or put her back into the quiest spot.

If it is something that must be addressed right away like not wanting to put her shoes on to go to school then the quiest spot will not work because it will give her exactly what she wants, a way to not put on her shoes and a way to delay going to school. In this case I emply natural consequences. Last week she did not want to put on her shoes. There was snow on the ground. So I said, Ok, lets go then, right as you are barefoot and in your night gown. We went outside to walk to school. 2 seconds later we were back inside donning our shoes and other clothes that she had also been refusing. No issues since then.

Wow! Thanks for the good advice. This is what I've also been trying lately and although HE may not feel better about it, I know that *I* do, and now feeling that I'm on more or less the right track. The issue with going to school is not always about putting socks on or his coat, etc. Sometimes it seems as if he just doesn't want to do what Mom wants him to do at that moment, and that he will find any excuse not to. This is when I get frustrated, when the 50th thing I've managed to placate turns into 51 and I'm going to be late for work and him late for school if this nonsense doesn't end soon. Then I resort to doing something stupid like I did this morning, like threatening him that I will throw away his trains if he doesn't shape up! I was very upset with myself for resorting to that.

1) Difficulties with "needing" immediate gratification are really common. Some of them are things that cannot be helped, other things you can anticipate if there is a pattern, like say getting a box juice all ready and waiting for him after school, if you know he always wants one. Once you reduce some of the issues you can start scaling back and teaching skills. Have him practice waiting just a little bit longer for something. When he can handle that make him wait just a little longer... This way he can get practice at the skill.

2) With things that he does not want to do, you could try incentives for being compliant or if you want to work on a bunch of things at once use a token system where he gets a point every time he does something without giving you grief about it. Then reward him with a tiny reward for a few points, a medium reward for more points etc. How you set this up will depend on his ability to delay gratification.


3)I have an attention seeker also. I am not so good with this one. I am working on making him wait for attention while I finish what -I- am doing. My son is 7, so he understands this need in himself, so while impatient he kind of gets that I need to finish what I am doing too. Our biggest problem is he does this at school, too, which is leading to negative behaviors at school since he can't be the focus of attention all the time there.

4)Stopping activities in the middle and transitioning is really hard. I would scaffold this as much as possible, give as much notice as you can. There will be somethings you won't be able to warn him about. Use that to build skills before reducing the rest of the scaffolding, gradually. By scaffolding I mean for example, warn him 1 hr before bedtime, 30 min before bedtime, 20 minutes before bedtime, 10 minutes before bedtime, 5 minutes before bedtime, 1 minute before bedtime etc and keep and eye on him ot make sure he'll be at a stopping point when you need him to be (though if you have to give him an extra minute or 2 when you first start it is not terrible.

5) Justice and fairness can be used to your benefit once he understands that it is reciprocal and that he needs to be fair and just, too. We are not quite there, either.

6)I can see where the fighting would be confusing to him. I am not sure that NT kids would not be confused also. I would say try to explain that sometimes people have differing opinions on things and have to hash it out. I would -try- to keep it calm as over-emoting might be alarming to him if he is not good interpreting emotions which would be typical for a spectrum child especially.

I get you. My experience is for my son to get through the school day, he needs to have as much stress-free living at home as is reasonable. That does not mean you don't work on things. It means you reduce the stresses as much as possible and then gradually increase them to work up a tolerance. At least that is what works well for us.

My son is also 2e (gifted and disabled) and they can work around some of the behavioral issues if they want to. As I said, before, my son has a host of behavioral issues as well. Unfortunately I have found ramping up slowly works better then expecting them to be able to handle so many stresses at once. It would be like taking an NT 10 yr old and putting him in AP calc and AP physics etc. and saying sink or swim. it is not going to happen. You have to find out what he can manage and work from there. They have to have the fundamental skills first and then move from there. My 2 cents, anyway.

He frequently complains that I'm "always saying No" to him. So, one day he asked me to do something and I said Yes. And I pointed it out and said, "See? I *do* say Yes to you! I don't *always* say No!"
To which he replied, "OK mom! Next time you ask me something I'm going to say Yes too!"
KIDS!! !! !! !

He's 4.5 -- you can't teach him to adapt to the real world and develop self-regulation fast enough to keep up with NT norms at this point. If he's having trouble in preschool, it will likely continue into early elementary, so research the options in case general ed doesn't work out.

For my DS, he could finally handle a 4 yo preschool classroom when he was almost 6, and suffered terribly in kindergarten until the last 2 months. He would've done great in kindergarten at age 7 if only staying in that class had been a option. Now he's in a school designed for Aspergers kids -- he's so much less stressed and it has improved his behavior at home as well. My goal is to prepare him for the real world, but on his own schedule -- maybe that means he leaves home at 25 instead of 18, we'll see how it goes.

IMO at age 4.5 I would focus on identifying what is causing him so much stress, and accomodating as much as possible. When the rages are greatly reduced, you can start working on reducing the accomodation and teaching skills and flexibility a little at a time.