5 year old son Talking about killing

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my 5 year old son is having a really hard time at the moment I'm not sure if it is the lead up to Christmas in school that has made him take a turn for the worse but a lot of the stuff he is saying and doing are very mean and nasty. He keeps saying he is going to kill people he has threatened to kill his teacher and her family he says he is going to stab me in my sleep and chop me into pieces and he is going to kill himself, my 16 year old niece asked him tonight what he wants for Christmas and he said a piece of her dead body. He was diagnosed in March with HFA but once he had his diagnosis he had took a turn for the better and I never really had to follow up with any the information they had gave us but now he has became aggressive and anxious again I feel like I'm not in a position to understand if the stuff he is saying and doing is because of his autism, does anyone have any experience of their children speaking like this? He has also started kicking and punching his teacher in school any advice or information anyone can give me would be greatly appreciated, I live in the uk so if anyone can recommend somewhere I could contact for more help would be great thanks

I am not in the UK, so can not suggest a place for you to go.

But I would strongly suggest you find out where he is being exposed to so much violence, and keep him away from it.

My son went to a funeral when he was 4 (I have a huge family and family members of all ages go to funerals), and he was obsessed with death for awhile after. I got a concerned call from his school because he was saying things like "I want to die so I can come back as a rocket" and "I want to die because I hate my life", (when he was frustrated. However, kids (even really smart ones) are not really able to grasp the concept of death the same way we do before age 7 or so. So, even if he thinks of "killing someone " as a way to solve a problem with his frustration towards someone, he does not (probably) understand the full implication of what he is saying. But, sees he gets a strong reaction out of it, which makes him feel heard somehow (I'm guessing). I agree with KariLynn that he was exposed to this idea somehow, either by seeing it on a screen accidentally, or from another kid at school telling him stories.

During the holidays, the routines go out the window at school with all the parties and crafts, etc. My son gets really stressed out and regresses when his routine is broken, it makes him really anxious. This is very common with kids on the spectrum. My son has regressed A lot the last few days from this, plus the sensory overload celebrations/ school holiday shows bring. Could it be his routine, or some other new situation?

I think the things I would be most concerned about, and that stand out the most to me are:

1.Telling the sister he wants a piece of her dead body for xmas.

2.Kicking and punching his teacher.

It is hard to gauge the other things because I can remember as a kid, and other kids saying stuff like they were going to get a sword and chop up people they hated or shoot them or blow them up with a bomb. I mean kids can see even a innocuous cartoon such as Looney Toons and pick that up, not to mention live action movies or superhero comics etc. It is hard to know without context if it is something to really worry about, or childhood fantasy that should be overlooked. I think the issue is having your child labeled a psychopath for repeating something they saw in a cartoon, I mean think about that sadistic Coyote.

He would not be Clinically labeled a psychopath until he started acting out with bugs and animals. Autism and psychopathy are on opposite extremes. Autism has lower Theory of Mind and moderate to high compassion. Psychopaths have high Theory of Mind and low compassion. They know how to read people, are obsessed by people, and manipulate. ASD kids act out when bothered by people. ASD kids do not verbally express themselves well, so compassion is measured with EEG. ASD kids' EEG looks like controls when seeing videos of distressed or angry people.

Her son needs to learn constructive ways of meeting his needs. I would do an inventory of his constructive interests and keep him occupied in them, and give lots of positive encouragement. Give no visible reaction to his negative statements. Have zero tolerance for dangerous action. Ignore hitting a toy, but not a living being.

Get him into therapy now. This is all scary. It would be a relief if these were just his thoughts and fantasies and had no intention of acting them out but him all of a sudden kicking and pinching his teacher means get him help now.

Even if he wasn't aggressive and he only had the violent thoughts and fantasies I would still say get him into therapy because having these thoughts means he is depressed or stressed out or dealing with lot of hurt and frustrations.

Technically speaking, he would never be diagnosed as a psychopath because there is no such diagnosis. Furthermore, one cannot be diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder (the proper label) until after they are 18, although the symptoms must be present since adolescence (or maybe childhood...I cannot remember). Can't help but be a pedant here...sorry!

Second, I don't think that a 5 year old can really appreciate the meaning of what they are saying when it comes to things such as death and killing someone else. On the other hand, I don't think either of my children would have ever even been able to verbalize such things at that age because I don't even know that they understood that a person could kill another person. That was beyond their realm of experience or exposure.

Is it possible that he has found a way to express his frustration that gets the response he is looking for? Would it help to teach him how to use more appropriate phrases to express his feelings?

I am sorry you are experiencing this. It must be very stressful.

My son had some of these behaviors last year. Turns out he was being horribly bullied by two boys at school, which culminated in them luring and physically attacking him (they were all eight at the time). Since he left that environment, he has gradually returned to the sweet child he was before.
I think there's something very bad happening to your son, and the only way he knows to express it is by saying terrible things. Maybe he's being bullied, maybe it's something else. Maybe it's simply that he's really really stressed out. If you can find and eliminate the cause, I think your son's behavior will improve.
I don't think your son is a monstrous child. I think he's a sweet child trying to tell you something.

Thanks everyone for taking the time to reply, I think the lead up to Christmas is a very stressful time for my son and myself and my partner have also been working a lot of overtime the last few months so I think these 3 things together have lead to his behaviour deteriorating in school, although I cannot condone his aggressive behaviour with his teacher we are hoping once school is back to its normal routine he will go back to being settled as believe it or not this time last year he was 10 times worse, he was not saying the horrible things about killing but he was being very aggressive. He is obsessed with marvel super heroes and a couple of weeks ago I let my children watch gremlins and actually realised it was pretty violent and there was a lot of talk of killing after that so it could have been a factor. I really don't think he's being bullied he has a twin sister and I think it's the type of school that would pick up on this or even his sister would I hope! I have been speaking to a lady in the school and she suggested that we make a social story for him and she is going to take time to do this for me so hopefully this will have a positive affect and I am also not going to be doing extra hours at work. It is all very hard to pin point how he has had a backwards step in his behaviour but I can say that when he does hit he is usually really hyped up and stressed looking. I am also going to contact a few autism groups in my area I feel like I need to get more understanding of what may be going on in his head.

I think the OP is on the right track, but I wanted to clarify to the reading audience at large that this kind of talk from a FIVE (5) year old is NOT an indication of ANYTHING. Children at that age only have a limited number of words and, thus, may speak in what appear to be extremes, going from "I love you" to "I wish you were dead" in seconds flat. That is all within the range of NORMAL, creepy and unsettling as it is to hear. It is a parent's job to help the child find the right words that more accurately express their feelings while also teaching that the extreme words the child used are inappropriate. It is all best handled calmly and even with a little humor, while searching out what is upsetting or stressing the child.

I remember I used to talk about wanting to kill my student teacher when I was in 6th grade because she kept losing my school work and I hated having to do it again and I would have meltdowns about it and be saying I wanted to kill her and then saying "I wish I could throw her off a cliff" and I was serious but I knew I wouldn't do it because I didn't have a gun and there was no cliffs to throw her off of and plus I would get into trouble with the law. So I didn't understand how it can be taken seriously and get me expelled from school. I am surprised I didn't get suspended, instead I would be pulled out of class and be given an article to read about a kid being suspended from school and I can remember coming home from school and my mom telling me a kindergartner had been kicked out of school for talking about a gun. This was around the time the Arkansas shooting happened so back then this was starting to get taken serious and enforcing the no violence policy. In seventh grade I got a day of school suspension for saying "I wish I could slap the art teacher" because I had felt she lied to me because she had told me in class she would get to me next and never did because she kept going to other students and the class ended so I got upset and started crying hard. I didn't understand why it was a threat. Honestly I don't think I need to understand, I just need to accept saying these things are perceived as threats by others and there can be a consequence for saying them so the choice is mine.

I would agree that this type of language and behavior is not unusual for a five-year-old. Five year olds don't have the context for the words they are saying, and often say things to get a reaction - the stronger the reaction they get, the more likely they are to use or increase use of those words (which is why adults should watch their language around five year olds.)

That being said, it does strike me that this child is desparately trying to express a very high level of stress, and it may help if you "script" appropriate responses for him so he learns better ways to advocate for himself. For instance, in response to the dead body comment, you could say "did you mean to say you don't feel like talking right now?" or, if it works better, look him in the eye and say "say, 'I don't feel like talking right now.'" With the teacher, you could ask her to help script "I am really, really, really angry at you!" (or even better "I am really really angry about not getting that book!" ) instead of "I want to kill you."

My son turned to violent words when he didn't have the language to explain what was going on with him at school. DW is right, that's part of being five...but it is worth keeping an eye on, as my son started this sort of thing around age three or four and didn't stop.

My son's use of this type of language and his frustration and lashing out were in large part due to a deficit in pragmatic (social) speech. He had a vocabulary well beyond his years, but, similar to a small child, didn't have an understanding of the context of words - he thought of them in a very binary sort of way, like labels. This led to all kinds of confusion for him (for instance, imagine the way people react when you say "I'm going to kill you" when someone bumps him instead of "I don't like to be touched")

Most assessors looking for developmental delays will test pragmatics, but sometimes you have to request it - and keep in mind that a pragmatics deficit is not measured by percentile, but by the differential between articulation/fluency and pragmatics.