Violent meltdowns

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My 7 year old son is diagnosed with Aspergers, gifted and ADHD (which I think is just AS and gifted traits -- boredom at the easy work making him restless, fidgety).

He has had a terrible year at school this year. He's mainstreamed -- he is "too high functioning" for the ASD class apparently. I hate those labels. Speech and high intellect doesn't mean better control or ease of functioning.

He was self harming so now he has an EA, a strict visual schedule with visual prompt cards for transitions, regular visits to a quiet sensory room to practice calming tools (breathing, etc) plus a sensory diet...

...but he is still having major violent meltdowns where he attacks anyone near him (crashing, hitting, spitting, swearing, kicking, trashing classrooms) and also just randomly hits and lashes out at people and our kitties at home.

His triggers are many.

We trialled Adderall at his doctor's suggestion but it did nothing except seem to accelerate and intensify his meltdowns. He was still really fidgety and bouncy and unfocused unless engrossed in a high interest task.

Now the doctor has sent us home with a Ritalin prescription. I don't know if this is what he needs...

He is in psychotherapy once a week also, we use "zones of regulation" to help him recognize and label his feelings plus I am as calm and understanding as I can.

I also have AS. Our younger son is being assessed next month and my husband is likely ADHD/ASD too with a side of rage but refuses assessment/treatment.

Any ideas you can pass along to help with the meltdowns? Med ideas? I'm more open to real world advice rather than just reading product monographs.

Has he had violent meltdowns for most of his life, or is this a more recent development?

Can he explain to you at all why he has his meltdowns? I ask because starting around the age of 7, my daughter had some pretty amazing insight into what was going on with her. Her descriptions were sometimes kind of elusive and difficult to understand at first, but once I was able to figure out how to see things from her perspective, it was easier to figure out how to help her.

Does the school have a gifted program? Maybe he needs something "smaller" than regular mainstream? I feel for you, though. And what you are describing is not uncommon. The school districts simply don't know what to do with special needs kids who also have high IQs. Most of the self-contained autism programs have modified curriculum, which make them inappropriate for an advanced kid. But many intellectually gifted kids with autism simply can't tolerate a regular classroom. Are there specialized autism programs in your area outside of the school? If the school can't accommodate his needs within the school, they will likely be required to pay for out-of-district schooling if there is an outside option that is better suited to his needs.

Well, meltdowns are not new to him, no - but the violent ones used to only happen at home.

They started at school in October. His classroom is sensory overload for me frankly - plus his teacher did some dumb things in the first two months - like moving his seat three times especially after he had a "pre-first day visit" where he got to see the meet the teacher the Friday before school started, see the class room, pick a seat and choose a seat mate from the class list of names -- then she took it all away.

Gifted programming classes start in grade 4 - but he's only in grade 2 now. We know academically he can handle skipping grade 3, but not sure they will let him. We have requested advanced/enriched work for him since he could do the current work with his eyes shut and the school is finally giving him the advanced work.

Enrichment has helped my daughter. She scored kind of on the fence for gifted, and we decided to keep her in regular classes as we felt that the gifted curriculum might be a little too challenging for her. Not because of not being smart enough, but because she spends so much of her energy on social navigation. But she is less frustrated with her enriched classwork than she was with the regular classwork.

You might also want to speak with your school district. Even though my daughter is not in spec ed classes, this is the first year that she has gotten a teacher without a spec ed background. I will tell you, her 2nd grade teacher used to only teach spec ed and it made the difference between night and day for her. My daughter's autism isn't always glaringly apparent, but because of her teacher's background, once I cued her in on my daughter's issues, she was able to see them right away and intervene before the meltdown occurred. It might be too late into the school year for a switch now, but maybe for next year?

2nd grade was hands down the WORST year for my son. He went from bumbling along to barely functional in a heartbeat. I think that the level of expectations change in 2nd grade (no longer treated like "babies"). I also think that typical children experience some kind of developmental leap in 2nd grade so the gap between them and kids like ours suddenly seems much wider. Just to give you foreshadowing, based on my experience so far...things then get progressively better and 3rd and 4th grade, then there is another bit of a crash in 5th grade. This of course, may only hold true to my kids, but I have come across other parents who report the same kind of pattern.

I suggest as much advanced classwork as possible.
Keeping focused on intellectually stimulating things can help to counteract sensory overload.
Getting into a flow usually means automatic blocking of classroom noises.
In grade school, I was allowed to leave the classroom to go the library whenever I wanted, since I had partly independent study from 2nd grade, and mostly independent study for the rest of grade school.
It is really miserable for a gifted autistic child to be bored in class and have little interesting things to do for so many hours at school each day.