8 year old Aspie with physical aggression issues

Post Reply New Topic

hello, first time posting here. We are struggling with our 8 year old son (2nd grade - public school) who has recently taken a nose dive in terms of behavior, academics. He was diagnosed at 3.5 years old and has had an IEP since the end of kindergarten. At the forefront of our concerns is physical aggression as we feel that the school is at the end of their rope in dealing with him. Despite being followed by a TSA, he manages to put his hands on kids unexpectedly and for whatever reason. We have very recently started implementing an attachment based approach to discipline and we think we are seeing some positive results overall, but he is still extremely difficult to manage. I spend at least 30-60 minutes with him in the morning to help him transition to school, and then I try again to visit at lunch time to make him feel loved and supported. At school, the aide is very good at reading him, and gives him breaks often to let him recharge his batteries. Yet, anything can flare him up. We are about to get a psychiatric evaluation to possibly add medications but I am extremely reluctant to go that route. If anyone has suggestions on how to successfully deal with physical aggression issues I woul really appreciate it.
P.S. to clarify, he has been aggressive for most of his life but he was doing better in this respect during first grade, which was the first year he had a TSA with him. After about 2 months in second grade he started regressing and he has also started attacking adults, which he had never done before.

We had a heck of a time last half of last year, especially the last quarter. (2nd grade) Some of it was specific to our circumstances, but a big part was a social awakening that may be developmentally appropriate to your child. If there is new social awareness and interest (and failure), or bullying or anything like that, it can wipe out years of progress. pretty easily if not handled well.

He could even be self-conscious of being different or have different sensory needs. I will give you the good advice I was given and suggest you see if a (good) Functional Behavioral Analysis could be done to try to figure out the triggers. You want it nipped in the bud before it escalates too much.

DS is 8 (3rd grade). He was becoming quite belligerent at home during the first half of the school year, during which time he was also being severely bullied at school. Then we moved. He is not (so far) being bullied at his new school, and his behavior at home has improved tremendously. Unfortunately, sometimes it's hard to connect the dots except in hindsight.

Thank you both for your insight. We are having an FBA done as we speak but I have no idea if it will be good. It is run by the district, even if our advocate asked for an independent evaluation (IEE?). They did not agree to that. Our previous FBA (done a couple of years ago) was, in my opinion, totally useless. The specialist was different so I am hoping this will be more useful, but I am not going to hold my breath. We are also exploring moving him to a private school specializing on autism. Apparently people normally sue the district to have them pay for their children's tuition there but... in our case apparently the public school might be willing to pay for it without going through a lawsuit (this is how bad things are, I guess). In any case, this probably wouldn't happen before the next school year.
The interim IEP meeting is on March 3 where we'll get the results of the FBA as well as the evaluation from the psychologist who was, so far, not part of the team.
Overall, things are doing a "hair" better since we have started using attachment based techniques at home but physical aggression remains at the top of the concerns since it might occur out of the blue. I cannot leave him unsupervised for any short amount of time as things can escalate really quickly. It is sad to see this, given that last year he used to be able to play with his sister or peers without supervision for pretty good streches of time. I guess I just need to accept the new situation and try to slowly go back (hopefully) to where we were.

I just finished an excellent book that really fits your son's situation:

Lost at School: Why Our Kids with Behavioral Challenges are Falling Through the Cracks and How We Can Help Them... by Greene, Ross W.

The emphasis is on identifying what social and emotional skills the child is missing that is causing or contributing to the aggressive behavior, and also talks about how the usual FBA comes up short. The usual approach is to try to motivate kids to behave well using rewards and consequences -- this book says if you teach the missing skills, the behavior will improve.

My DS8 became increasingly aggressive and violent in first grade, to the point where the other parents staged a two-day boycott and half the class participated. (In our case the school district was dragging their feet on staffing an aide, and when they finally put one in place on a temporary basis, it was too little, too late.) We also had a useless FBA in kindergarten.

We pulled DS8 out and paid privately for a school that is specifically for kids with Aspergers/HFA (they'll take an occasional non-verbal kid, but otherwise all the students are mild/high-functioning). It was the best decision we ever made. He is really thriving there, the aggressive behavior has completely stopped, and he is learning lots of social things that are being explicitly taught. Once he adjusted to the new school (which took about 3 months), home life became so much better because he was no longer under huge stress every day. So if you can find a path to get your son into such a school, I say go for it!

Ideally the FBA will inform the behavioral intervention plan that the TSA and teachers follow. As others pointed out, they should then begin teaching replacement skills. The breaks that the TSA is using are good stop-gaps, but eventually he'll still need those missing skills. A good BIP will therefore incorporate steps to avoid problem behaviors, steps to teach effectivereplacement behaviors (e.g., relaxation skills, problem solving, asking for help, talking about the problem), as well as some sort of crisis plan.

Unfortunately, that's an ideal situation. Many schools will use all the right terms, but not really understand the concepts. Good luck to you!

Commenting on this because my son just started 2nd grade and has had an incident of aggression which is leading to an IEP change and consequences (has to go to counseling during Friday free time). Seems like 2nd grade is a key time for this issue to revive. In general, he is not aggressive, but I do see his inability to express himself when angry or frustrated. Want to come back to this thread and re-read the tips. Very discouraged right now. No Functional Behavioralist in our area, but perhaps can get some other psych therapy to help. Anyone with a follow-up on how things are going?

My son had some rage problems as well around that age. His therapist worked with him on some anger management, she made 'anger profiles' for him, his friends, and family; based on the angry birds book by National Geographic (http://tinyurl.com/onbftlf). Basically we all had to fill in a profile paper where we had to write down what makes us angry, how we get angry and how much (on a scale from annoyed to furious), ... That enabled him to talk about his angry feelings, something he was completely unable to do before ('I'm not angryyyy!' *stomps feet*). It helped him in a way that he could be more aware of how he felt & what made him tick.

I encouraged him to talk to me about it, but I also went drill sergeant on him whenever he would kick/hit me- I would take him out of the apartment and let him stand in the hall, saying 'no violence in our home'. Some of you might consider this a bit harsh, but I was scared it would escalate- I'm a single mom and I realized if I didn't solve this issue, one day he could easily knock me unconscious.

There seems to be some good advice already here and I also can't talk about the US processes.

However we had similar issues with my son and physicality. His were mostly tied to his red mists and his inability to communicate his frustrations. It is tough and very worrying but in our case it did improve. We worked very close with his secondary school (high school) as before that his primary (elementary) school were well meaning but clueless. Gradually he learned to recognise his own triggers and was given a time out card that he could use at school to remove himself from the difficult situation before all hell broke loose. He forgot to use it more than once but it soon became habit. At home he just went to his room or put on the Playstation (we limited that as he tried too often to pretend he was getting wound up so he could play). Other talk therapies etc were put in place to help him with his communication.

He now manages amazingly well and any blow up is now a surprise rather than a daily thing. The time out card disappeared long ago. He's 15 now and whilst the risk is always there it no longer weighs us all down with worry. The trick will be figuring out what works well for your family.

I'm telling you all this so you know that there will be light at the end of the tunnel. Good luck!

That's good to hear. Don't see the light yet . . . but there must be one. We may need to get started with some more focused therapy/plan again. Kind of feeling like one step forward, two steps back right now.

There are tons of posts on this subject listed in the Parenting Index stickied at the top of this board: it is a very common problem, particularly in kids of this age. We are now largely on the other side of it: DS started being violent at home at around age 3, it started showing up at school around age 8, and we struggled with it until he got an appropriate diagnosis and appropriate help at age 10-11.

First: what state are you in? Most states have some kind of free advocacy system, and it sounds like you really need an advocate to go with you to the school meetings. Some states even provide one for you from the state board of education, but the ones that don't typically have local charities filling those gaps. If you want to IM me, I'm pretty good with the google; I've turned up advocacy resources for many a parent on this board.

Second, I'd like you to look carefully at your child's communication skills: sounds to me like he's trying to do physically what he can't do verbally. Is he getting pragmatic speech therapy at school? Have his pragmatics been tested, and do you know the scores? This was a HUGE factor in my son's aggressive tendencies: much like a toddler in the "terrible twos," he wasn't able to identify or communicate his needs and that led to all kinds of frightening outbursts and behaviors that seemed inexplicable at the time. At the time, he was framed as a bully by the other children, whose response was to bully him back. A part of his FBA should be a breakdown of EVERY SINGLE INCIDENT: antecedent, behavior, and consequence/result; you should get this as a report EVERY TIME THEY CALL YOU.

I also want to mention this - which is my own experience and yours may well be different, but in case this rings true to you. When DS was in preschool, I volunteered all the time for much the same reasons you are doing. We finally figured out that his behavior got worse because he was constantly struggling with the transition of me being there sometimes and not others. I finally found ways to volunteer at the school so I could be present to the staff and faculty, but not in his classroom (so I did things for the upper grades instead of his own.)

Part of the reason a school is obliged to give an IEP for functional skills is that kids who succeed academically with major functional deficits are doing so because the parent is taking over the supportive role the school is supposed to play. In other words, your school is violating his right to a Free And Appropriate Education (FAPE) by not finding solutions, however expensive those may be, that don't require your constant intervention. This probably means, in your case, not only an aide, but a TRAINED aide.

Note: I'm not telling you that you are parenting him wrong by going to school with him. If you are doing this because YOU think it is best, that's one thing. But if you're doing it because the school isn't providing enough support to get your son through the day, that's something entirely different.

Thanks for the support and ideas! Our situation is a bit more complicated, as it is private school AND I work at the school as a teacher. For now, their solution is for ME to be his aide during lunch/recess (the trigger times). Takes away one planning period for me but their resources are limited. I have mixed feelings about it; we are talking through it and will see what happens.
There are both benefits/drawbacks to public and private school. Sometimes I wonder if this is the right choice for us, but I am sure we have all debated that at many points during an ASD kids schooling!
Resources in our area are limited, but just discovered a highly recommended online social skills class.

Keep in mind that in the US your school district is not totally off the hook for services if you attend a private school: I know Chicago has a special program where they bring specialists (speech therapists, etc.) in to local private schools. It can't hurt to contact your local public school district and ask what they can do for you; it can't hurt. At the very least, it sounds like your son's 504 rights are being violated (it could be argued that you sitting with him is NOT a reasonable accommodation) and private schools are bound by section 504 if not by FAPE.

Wrightslaw has good information on having a child with a disability in a US private school:

http://www.wrightslaw.com/idea/osep/private.school.pdf

And more: http://www.wrightslaw.com/blog/?p=2198

Might be worth poking around on that site a little more, this was just a cursory google. Not to say you should go in guns blazing, but if you politely suggest that the school might want to look into the law (might be difficult to do this casually enough as an employee...again, where the public school district might be helpful) that can often open doors that otherwise would be closed.

^^ Thank you! Good info. Met with the principal today and discussed their reasoning and our options. It actually went quite well. They really do want to find what works best for him, which was reassuring. It's great being at the same school as my child, but it does sometimes make navigating issues tough. I was very upfront with my concerns and questions, though, and was mostly pleased with her answers.
Life with a special needs child: always feel like you are fighting for something.

Have you tried an exercise routine to work his energy out?
I have anger problems when I'm not medicated, and nothing helps me more than regular exercise and nutrient-dense foods (I eat lots of sprouts of various kinds, which I grow myself and care for daily; vegetable sprouts are amazingly nutritious, so are bean, pea and lentil sprouts, as well as sprouted brown rice).