Embarrassing Public Behavior in HFA

Post Reply New Topic

How do you deal with a child with Asperger's who is doing something embarrassingly inappropriate, and won't stop?
DS recently decided to make a big mess at Sunday school (doing something he shouldn't have been doing), and when I arrived to pick him up and tried to clean it up he kept reaching in to keep doing it. And also arguing with me about why he should keep doing it. All while the teacher was waiting for us to get done and leave.
These situations (I rather frequently find myself in similar circumstances) raise these questions/concerns for me:
1. Because DS is so high-functioning, his behavior can appear bratty.
2. There IS an element of brattiness to what he's doing, but his ASD keeps him from seeing just how ridiculous he is making us both look.
3. If I don't scold him, I give the appearance that his behavior is the result of wimpy parenting, and that I let him, "walk all over" me.
4. If I DO scold him, I give the appearance that I'm a monster who punishes her kid for being autistic.

Please give me some kind of script for these scenarios. I feel so embarrassed that I'm tempted not to have DS in any activities, but I know that that's the opposite of what he needs. When DS played sports (he isn't currently) my husband was so embarrassed by him that he stopped attending games.

Maybe try to make him aware of the effect his behaviour is having on others, like the teacher. He may not be aware that he is being selfish.

I don't think you're doing him any favours by indulging bad behaviour - in the long run being indulged and allowed to get away with treating others badly will hurt him more socially than the ASD.

The specter of "raising a bratty child" can be a real challenge for anyone raising a child on the spectrum. Sometimes the stress of being a special needs parent makes you think people are judging you more harshly than they are. Looking back, I realize that there were many parents who understood what was happening with my son, but I often processed sympathetic looks as judgement. Every parent has had a day where their kid just won't behave; we just have them more often because our kids often can't behave.

If this is a regular occurrence, can you pull the teacher or another parent aside and ask for help? Just say "I don't want to leave you with a mess, could you help me distract DS while I clean that up?" If your son is disrupting the class by making a mess, you should probably approach the teacher and ask for a conference so that you can come up with a strategy to handle it together. This doesn't require you to disclose your child's diagnosis, you can frame it as "DS needs __________" (to keep his hands busy, to have things sorted a certain way, to take a break from other kids, etc.)

Asking for help will frame you as a parent who needs help rather than a monster or a wimpy parent; people do get it. Part of the problem is you (and apparently your husband) are telling yourself you *should* be able to "handle" your son by yourself - and that's not a reasonable expectation. We are not superhuman - high-needs children need extra attention and you have only so much attention to go around.

The other part of the equation is listening to your son and trying to figure out why he is behaving this way. What was his reason for making a mess? Sometimes you can short-circuit behavior just by finding a reasonable alternative, for instance, "The blue one is at the very bottom of the box! I need the blue one!" "OK, I understand that you want the blue one. Since it's time to leave now, I'll ask the teacher to find it and save it for you for next week. Right now we need to put everything back in the box."

Granted, often a child on the spectrum doesn't even know what they want - or is asking for something that isn't going to address their need. Then you have to do some detective work: is it a sensory need? Will a fidget help? Is it a misunderstanding? Will a social story or a visual schedule help? Putting on a problem-solving hat and looking for work-arounds also helps to frame you as a parent who is doing their best in a difficult situation, rather than wimp/tyrant.

He's only at Sunday school for an hour a week, and the teacher is a volunteer. She knows he has ASD, but I can't really expect her to do conferences and that kind of thing. I've told DS the next time he makes a scene like that it will be the last time he goes. I could handle it if he had just made a mess. It's the arguing and reaching around me while I was trying to clean it up that is so embarrassing. I may very well be on the spectrum myself, but I never acted that way when I was a child. Nothing I do, whether punishment or encouragement, seems to make any difference in his behavior, so maybe I should just save myself the grief and keep him home.

If I understand correctly these sorts of activities are designed to get the child to socialize. It sounds like this is lost on him. If he is more concerned with his activity than the behaviour of the teacher/volunteer and the other children then it isn't working anyway. I wouldn't bother.

I don't even think he knows who the other kids in the class are. One of them is a cousin he has seen (though infrequently) since he was born. She has been in church groups with him before, as well. He still does not recognize her or remember her name. Maybe I really am wasting my time with it all.

I face this question with myself and I'm middle aged. lol Social activities don't have the same value to me as to others. I do try to participate, but less and less as I get older. The truth is that I just don't get that much out of socialization. I feel that this is viewed as a character flaw in our culture and this bothers me. But over time I have realized that though I may care what others think, I have to live with myself. So I should maybe be more accepting of what I can't change.

Presumably your son is younger and more able to learn. But interaction with others is hard to force. I didn't start to get comfortable with it until my thirties.

Perhaps having someone work one-on-one with your son would be good. (If the goal is interaction.) Like a big brother or something. One-on-one is much easier than a group situation to learn socialization.

Does he do better in groups intended for autistic children? If it seems like it's totally lost on him, maybe it's over his head. Maybe he needs more specific instructions on how to socialise- which they give in groups intended for children with special needs. My son has been doing a program for several years now, which usually has a very wide variety of kids in it (including, every session, a couple with HFA). It's "gym class readiness", so the idea is to prepare these kids for mainstream gym class- they address a wide variety of issues, including following instructions, playing with a partner, playing on a team, etc. It's very much social skills oriented, although they focus on physical aspects for kids with physical challenges too (like I said, wide variety). They're also used to kids with very challenging behaviours, so they would most likely have advice for you in a situation like you described- and they wouldn't be shocked at all. There are even programs designed specifically FOR HFA in our area- social skills-oriented.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any autism groups in our area (I have looked and looked). There aren't even any support groups for parents.

The point I am trying to make is that you are assuming helping your son is a one-person job. It is not. You're going to continue to be frustrated unless you get the support you need to help you parent your son. Most of us with higher-functioning kids grossly underestimate how difficult they are to parent, and therefore have expectations that are difficult for our children to meet.

You don't have to ask for anything formal with the teacher like a conference, just ask for a little help. Let me put it to you this way: if your son was on crutches instead of autistic, and couldn't get out of the classroom - even with you navigating - without knocking stuff over, wouldn't you ask for help to clean up as you assisted him in leaving the room? Your child may not have a visible disability, but he still has a disability for which both he and you deserve support, especially from a church community.

While it can be difficult to find the "right" place for a child on the spectrum to learn social skills, sometimes you have to make the best of an imperfect situation. I also wonder if he's learning to push you and your husband's buttons to get out of situations where he's uncomfortable - it seems like he's been successful in getting out of sports, and you've told him that he can get out of Sunday school by acting up next time. While I wouldn't deliberately do anything to push a child on the spectrum past his limits (in that case you'd be seeing meltdowns instead of misbehavior), learning to tolerate an hour of Sunday school per week doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

Is it at all possible to get an older child to volunteer to help you, him and the teacher out? If the teacher knows he has ASD, she'd probably welcome extra support, too. A visual schedule of the whole process from drop-off to pick-up might also be helpful.

I read this yesterday and one thing I just can't stop thinking is why. Do you know what prompted it? I most certainly wouldn't automatically assume he was misbehaving out of the blue. I can certainly think of scenarios where I would feel in the right if in his shoes. Did the teacher or any of the other pupils do something to set it off. If that had happened to me, and I did something in response, I too would vehemently be against my mother trying to clean up that mess.

this part in particular

made my stomach clench.
Just that description makes me take a dislike to her. Reminds me of how we always get the blame no matter what caused it.

He was sorting something that didn't need sorting and wasn't being touched or used by anyone else. I know he likes to sort, and I know that's an aspie thing. But I also know that he knew it wasn't appropriate to be doing it there and then, and I don't think it was a case of I-need-to-do-this-or-I'll-freak-out. I think he just thought it was more fun than what the class was doing. Then he didn't want me to wreck his work by putting it all away in one container.

I think it is an impulse control issue. You can know something is wrong/not smart to do and have trouble controlling yourself. Impulse control is one of our biggest issues. Sorting is a compulsive need. My son likes to "help" organize things that are out of place in all sorts of places, even places like the supermarket. he really thinks he is being a big help, and it is a need for him to do it, inside him.

When my son was two, we attended a park district class for preschoolers. The minute kids walked in the door, the very wise teacher would direct them to a table with a pile of objects and some muffin tins or egg cartons. She'd say "can you help me? I need to sort all of these by ___________ (color, shape, size)" It was a big help getting little kids to sit down and orient themselves to the class.

Could you pre-prep the room with a muffin tin or ice cube tray and some things for him to sort? You could even bring a kit like that yourself. There are pre-colored pasta shapes made expressly for this purpose that you can get at school supply stores. He may actually be able to focus better if he's got an activity that calms him, and if it is done by the time you are ready to leave, then it shouldn't be a problem to get him to go.

It sounds like a little more than a prefered activity to me; it sounds like it could have been his way of coping with a naturally stressful situation (being with other kids is naturally stressful).

If the teacher doesn't mind him taking on his own activity, I would preface each class with "anything you move or sort will have to be cleaned up before we can leave, do you understand that?" If the teacher does mind, preface each class with a reminder that he is not to pick his own activity, and you want him for this one short hour to follow the class.

As for handling these things in general, I feel this is one of those time and place issues. Our kids have to learn time and place, that some things are just for home, that Sunday school class has it's own rules, etc. You can't have exactly the same level of permissiveness in all situations because the world doesn't work that way. So you aren't correcting him for wanting to sort; you are correcting him for insisting on keeping items sorted in an inappropriate time and place. Talk with him before class about which stims and self-calming activities are Ok, and which are not, for this unique time and place.