Agressive, offensive verbal behavior

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Hi all,

I just introduced myself at the other forum. My name is Kika and I am the mom of a recently diagnosed 5 year old boy who is a very verbal, very expressive child.
But... yikes. He is very aggressive verbally.
For example, if someone approaches him in the grocery store to make a comment, he will say: "shut up you idiot, I didn't talk to you".
OR, he will pick the worse feature on that person and bring that up right away as in " shut up you fat woman, I didn't ask your opinion"

With lots of conversation, he seems to be getting to a point that he is understanding this is not a good way to make friends, but he is still pretty aggressive, specially at home. Just last night, he called Dad a bunch of hurtful names and dad lost his patience and spoke very loud to him. He was in tears apologizing. I normally try to ignore the behavior, but I will lose my cool too at times, specially if he uses offensive language with me.

Any suggestions?

My suggestion would be to either get him into a social skills group or some play therapy with a therapist. Is he in school? You can get him assessed thru the school and ask for a social skills group to be placed in his IEP.

I would also have him evaluated for OT, Sensory, Speech etc. Don't leave anything out.

Lainie

Social stories? Especially with lots of examples so he gets demonstrations on what is and isn't appropriate. It may just be the case that he doesn't know what is and what isn't appropriate, and needs to be told, especially with alternative examples. On the other hand, he may be trying to provoke a reaction - some young aspies use extreme language or other methods to try and provoke an obvious emotional reaction from another person. Because we don't see the subtle indicators, when we're trying to work out how others' emotions work we can try to create more extreme examples and work from then. Again, social stories explaining why this is hurtful is probably the right answer.

I'm not a parent, so I don't have a particularly good handle on social stories - you'll probably get a better answer from someone who uses them with their children regularly - but in essence they're very short stories explaining social behavior through example. One of the important things for parents to understand is that what is often obvious to NTs (neurologically typical persons - anyone who isn't autistic) can be a complete mystery to autists. So really, nothing is too basic when you're using these to explain things to the child. If I were at home, I'd look up some examples, but IIRC the sort of thing you're trying to construct might look like this:

I'm a little concerned with how he learns this kind of language. I know my son has learned negative language from movies (even family-oriented stuff has it). But my son doesn't always understand the context of stuff, so he blurts stuff out at odd times.
But this description sounds really deliberate and learned. How would a 5 year old know that fat is a "bad word" and then use it against someone?
What I'm saying or suggesting or wondering is if there is some negative event happening at home or school or somewhere that this boy is dealing with. Is there a lot of fighting, tension or chaos?

i don't mean to sound judgmental, but.......you really probably need to get control over the angry outbursts going on in your house. i'm not saying they're your fault~ just that your son seems to be picking up on all the negatives and not so many positives. i'm sure there's plenty of positives at your house......it's odd what our kids choose to pick up on. i have a student who, even though we praise him consistently at school for good behavior and appropriate language, will still resort to offensive language when overly anxious.
also, perhaps paying less attention to the offensive language and more attention to the positive language would help~ i know this is difficult. i've found with my student in particular, that the more attention we pay to his offensive language~the worse and more profane it gets. he seems to find it funny when people put up a fuss.

If he's like that at 5, you need to get onto the problem at home immediately.

If he's abusive at home, you need immediate timeout (5 mins).

It's harsh but if you don't do it, he could get hurt once he gets to unmonitored social situations.

Cruel to be kind.

I'm thinking of two possibilities.... ONe being Tourette Syndrome. Does he have tics too? Sometimes phrases come out like that and it's not something done on purpose. Does he just shoot these out on a one time basis, or is he always like this? And ask yourself, when did this actually start?

Another is a mood disorder. I know of a woman that has a child who has AS and also has a mood disorder. You should hear some of the doosy's this guy will come out with.

I would first try some of the things the others have suggested, as... is he hearing this stuff on a normal day to day basis, and if he's not, then I would look further.

Lainie

It seems he is remorseful about it, so I would wonder if he's seeking attention. In any event, most people won't be as understanding as mom and dad, so nip this problem before it becomes a bigger one. I've been doing social stories with Barbie dolls with my daughter, trying to teach her how to interact properly with her peers and some of the things people like to hear you say. Tomorrow we're going to work on positive ways to get someone's attention without being rude and repetitive. It seems to be working, and she enjoys it like we're just playing dolls.

Thank you all for the great insights.
Situation at home: yes, there is quite a bit of aggression at home. Earlier this Summer, I sent my 17 year old to anger management and that seemed to have helped a lot. Also, husband is a screamer. BUT, we are very careful about swear words and we always follow up with the family when there is a tense situation. We sit down, we talk about the chaos. I know that doesn't take the chaos away, but its the best we can do for now.

I am pretty sure Marcus, my son, is conscious about this. He will catch himself when he starts saying you stup... but I noticed that the more upset he is, the worse his language gets. Last night, he was calling me names as I was getting him ready for bed. He said he could do anything he wanted. I told him that he could choose to treat me that way, but if that was the case then I was not going to spend time with him. He was thoughtful after that. Interestingly enough, he took himself to bed and asked Dad to read a story for him.

It sounds like he is trying to push his boundaries doesn't it? I am not sure how much of that could be something else tho. He does have ticks, but he seems pretty aware of the impact of his words. As for attention, he gets plenty of that, constantly. Maybe that could be a problem too

I need to learn more about how to construct social stories. Can someone point me to a resource?
It really is hard to distinguish how much of this is because he is spoiled... oh no...

Well, he sounds as if he's modelling what he's hearing. Even if you don't swear-he's likely picking up on the tone and pitch.
I'm now having to define and explain all sorts of cuss words for my 7 year old. My husband doesn't like it, but the more relaxed and bookish these discussions are, the less likely he'll be to blurt something out in anger.
But yeah, you can't yell and insult and not expect your son to pick up on it.

best of luck !