Understanding Consequences

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I am having a very hard time with my 9 year old Aspie. Consequences have no effect on him. I understand he has impulse control issues and it is very hard for him to think at times about the consequences but it is very frustrating trying to explain why something is not acceptable and should not be done again just to have him do it again.

This week he took a small pocket knife that he took from his brothers room to school. The blade was luckily not large enough to be considered a "dangerous weapon" as far as expelling him goes. He did get in school suspension for the rest of the week. He was spoken to at length at school about why it was wrong and could put others in danger. We spoke again at home, he was very remorseful. We have removed ipad, TV, favorite toys, outside time.

So far yesterday and today he has been awful at school, it is as if he does not care because he is already in trouble.
I am at a complete loss on what to do. I know he understands the consequences as he can repeat them back when asked but it is as if he does not care.

I have tried what little therapy my insurance will cover and it has been no help.

This is surely gonna draw angst, but...

In the first 12 years of my life, the only person who I gave the slightest heed to was my father, and this only because from the time I was old enough to walk he would hit me with a belt if I acted up. Time-outs, having toys taken away, monthly therapy, detentions, none of it made the slightest ding on my behavior. I would act out all over the place with everyone else, but when I knew my father was around or he was expected soon, I suddenly dropped everything and became the most perfect little angel on earth. To this day he is the only person who I will never raise my voice to, despite me now being a full grown man who dwarfs him by about 7 in. and 100 lbs.

And no I didn't turn out to be a psychopath or resent him because he beat me. Quite the contrary in fact, I'm more thankful every day of my life that I was raised that way. From the time I hit adolescence I've never had problems with the law, didn't get in trouble at school, and have received nothing but high praise from friends, family, teachers, and employers about my conduct and attitude. Once I was old enough to understand and appreciate how my actions affected other people, I was golden; but for the first part of my life the strap kept me in line. Honestly, I believe children, and above all kids with Aspergers, need absolutes and structure in their lives, because the ability to reason about the consequences of their behavior isn't acquired until one hits a certain age. Up until that point, it's just going with what one is told to do, but they still have to be given motivation to follow the rules. For me, the only real motivation I could appreciate to behave was not being hit with a belt. I hated it at the time, but to be honest, I think my childhood would have been much harder and more confusing if I hadn't been whooped.

First, two caveats:

1) I am not a parent (but I was once an ASD kid)
2) I was brought up during the unreformed 1970s, and my experiences during that decade have inevitably influenced my outlook

Have you considered giving him a good hard smack on the arse/back of the legs as punishment for unacceptable behaviour?

While physically chastising children is very much out of fashion at present, it does present the following aspects which might make it appropriate in your case:

1) He doesn't perceive the social consequences of his negative actions, due to the perceptual limitations of his condition, and no amount of reasoned explanation will make him understand it.
2) School suspension is largely meaningless (if not outright incomprehensible) as a supposed 'punishment' since it will only be experienced by him as boredom, which is not a sufficiently-negative outcome to reinforce good behaviour
3) However, if such inappropriate behaviour were to be punished with a good hard old-fashioned slapping, he would soon come to understand that such behaviour would have directly adverse outcomes for him, in the specific form of physical pain and emotional distress
4) In time, and if this regime were to be pursued thoroughly and without exception, he would soon (through the usual methods of operant conditioning) come to associate a physically-painful outcome with his negative behaviour (the link would between behaviour and punishment would have to be clearly explained to him, if this course of action were to have any hope of success)
5) Ideally (but not necessarily) this should be accompanied by a reward schedule applicable to good behaviour
6) This punishment should be treated by its practitioners (ie, you the parents) as a temporary surrogate to make him averse to such negative behaviour, because it provides a directly-appreciable form of negative outcome, instead of an outcome that is inflicted upon others
7) As he matures under such a regime of reward and punishment, if those punishments and rewards are accompanied by easily-understood explanations of why those outcomes were applied to him, he will come to associate his negative experiences with negative social outcomes, and his positive experiences with positive social outcomes
Until finally he is able to perceive negative outcomes in advance of punishment, and therefore avoid them instinctively

Eventually of course, in the fullness of time, he will attain a more mature understanding of the social aspects of such negative behaviour, but that may only arise as a result of the sort of regime described above.

"Smacking a disabled child? How dare you even think of such a thing!"

Yeah, right. There's no use trying to reason with a creature that can't be reasoned with, so communicating with them on a strictly consequence-based emotional level is the only way forward.

You wouldn't try to talk a dog out of sh*****g in your hall, would you? You'd rub its nose in the s**t and kick it down the garden for a few hours.

(Please note, I am not comparing your child to a dog -- just providing an example in which one must communicate on the only basis understood by the misbehaving individual)

And if it's got to the stage where your child is taking a knife into school without any understanding of the implications of such behaviour, then I would say that drastic action is called for before he starts demonstrating other forms of delinquency.

Feel free to throw as much s**t at me as you please, I happen to firmly believe that the correct response to some childhood behaviour is a good hard smack, and that due to your son's limited appreciation of social consequences, such responses are the most practical in their type, most likely to be readily-appreciable by your son, and more likely to provide him with a lasting unconscious association between antisocial behaviour and negative outcomes

Just some thoughts..

1. What you have grouped together as misbehavior he may see as completely isolated. He may not see his misbehavior on the second day as related to the knife incident, where as for you it's incrementally bad. Even if you feel like a broken record, and it doesn't seem to sink into his head...repeat, repeat, repeat. Bring up different scenarios that might apply also.

2. I don't agree with corporal punishment. My dad used the belt with me, and it just made me bewildered, defiant, and increasingly stubborn.

I'm an Aspie parent to an aspie son. What has worked well for us is discussion, and a lot of support through the school system. Not saying it will work with everyone, but a counterpoint to keep in mind.

Good luck.

If I had my way, the law would be amended to include the right to smack other people's children.

I bet that would cut juvenile delinquency by >50 per cent overnight.

I also endorse beating up children.

Though I am an autistic, I am also a mother of an autistic child, and that trumps everything else. I so feel for you. As a parent, I always have worried, on every action I have made in parenting, that I was doing it wrong. With an autistic child , for many reasons,that increases a hundred fold.

My youngest son, when he was small, was a lot like your son, and I have to admit, it scared the heck out of me. I don't know all of the reasons for his behavior [I myself was almost disgustingly well mannered...and miserable] but I believe that part of it had to do with the hypocrisy of the NT culture. There are so many illogical "just because that's the way it is" rules, that are frustrating to autistics because so many of the rules are stupid...and unfair. It becomes difficult to differentiate between rules that really should be followed and those that we are supposed to follow 'just because."

Also, your child probably does not fit in. Not because he is not smart enough, or kind enough, or adorable, but just because he is different. And our kids hear crap like "If you're nice to people, they'll be nice back." And, because of a few differences in neurology, that doesn't apply to them much at all. And that's so painful to find that out, so why believe anything you're being told, why not bring a knife to school[ hey, maybe some of the other kids will find that cool]

There is so much more. I don't know what to suggest. If you are not doing so, pick your battles VERY carefully. Talk with him about the idiocy of certain rules, explaining that some rules are different than others and that some do have a logical basis.

When he says the kids are being mean, they are. When he says the teacher is mean, she probably is too. Make sure that he knows he is an incredible kid and that you will always love and respect him. Please respect his need for alone time and don't expect his responses to be identical to a typical NT kid, because he is not an NT kid. I will not say he is probably a better person than most NT's, because that would be construed as autistic supremacy, which is not allowed here.

I'm sure your kid is incredible. You obviously are. One more thing, do not be affected by the negative judgements of NT parents [or non-parents] who presume to know your child better than you do, and tell you that any problems are related to your inferior parenting. Just pick your battles exceedingly carefully, and hang in there Mom.

My Mother talked at me to the point that I would BEG her to hit me and be done with it but she wouldn't beat me as a punishment (although sometimes she would lash out in a moment and hit me on the face or head, but she was always ashamed of herself when that happened).

I literally wished she would beat me up, it was THAT boring having to listen to half an hour of lectures.

My father never beat me up at all (except once - memorable occasion that) but he did threaten me with his belts and I was consequently terrified of belts for much of my life. He would double them up and do that snapping thing - ugh. so, yea, in that case the threat of violence worked. When he did beat me up finally (with the belt), it was humiliation more than pain that was upsetting. Also the fact that I did not deserve the beating, but that's another story.

The funny thing is, my mother will tell you that I was a model child and she never had any problems with me, which is complete nonsense, but she did get me to the point where she just had to give me a 'look' and I knew what was coming and would start to behave myself.

I am so glad I'm not a child any more. Being a grow up is a pain in the ass, but being a child and constantly being told how to be is even more pain in the ass.

you will just have to find a way of punishing your son that gets his goat. get in his head and find out what will be the most effective deterrent.

Punishments don't seem to make much difference to my sons behaviour but rewards do - if it's something he's very into. I'm very against smacking/physical punishment anyway but I think if you're trying to drive home the moral reason why taking a knife into school is a bad idea (someone could get hurt) then smacking him for doing it would likely be quite confusing for him.

Immediacy of rewards and punishments can be very important. As has been mentioned, he doesn't fully get the social aspect of his actions or the consequences. Social punishments and explanations might not even be negative to him. If he's not associating his action of bringing a knife to school with his punishments then the punishment will be 100% useless. The best way to make a strong association is to have things close together in time, which is why things like spankings can work really well. It's immediately negative in response, preferably to an action you just did, not an action that happened 8 hours ago when you put the knife in your pocket.
The immediacy aspect is probably even more important for a child with a learning disability or a developmental disability as this sort of learning likely doesn't rely on faculties that might be impaired. For instance, people with anterograde amnesia, (unlike Sammy Jenkins in Memento) will learn to not touch objects that shock them, even though they'll reporting having no idea why they won't want to touch something.

Personally, I'm rather alarmed at the school for suspending him for simply bringing a knife to school. Compasses are just as dangerous weapons and he'll probably need to bring one of those in a few years time to school. It's one thing if he repeatedly is bringing a knife to school, and of course would be far, far worse if he threatens to use it any way, shape or form on someone. Why did he bring it to school? Did he know before that knives are taboo at school?? If no one said 'you can't bring knives to school', then this incident wasn't his fault. At all.
Truthfully if someone told me something like 'Now think about what you've done' in this situation, I'd think I'd done nothing wrong since I hadn't harmed anyone. (Ever the difficult one I am, I know)

I didn't need to be hit every time to mind and learn the rules. All it took for me was a time out or losing my favorite toy because those were the worst things for me, same as being yelled at and being made to leave places. Punishments worked for me. I also remember the days of losing my favorite TV shows or computer or not being able to leave the yard or having to stay in my room for days and could only come out for school or going to the bathroom or to eat or to brush my teeth and then it was back to my room again, especially after homework. I remember all that felt so horrible then but it did get me to mind. It was as if talking to me about it and telling me don't do it again didn't work but sometimes it did work because I have memories of being told to not do it again and giving me a reason and I would listen. But yet I didn't care if I was punished in school for things I do because I cared more about being treated normal than different and that was what I was upset about, not because of the consequence.

Of course my mom will tell me the reason why I didn't find my third grade teacher mean or my fourth grade teacher was because she taught me to follow the rules and didn't let me get away with it and these teachers made their students work and follow the rules and to a kid's perspective, it's mean so they think all grown ups are mean when they make them follow the rules and give them a consequence for not following it. Then she will tell me there are some kids out there who don't care about being punished so no matter what the parent does, the kid never learns because they do not care and she calls it a mental illness. I never grasped how can a kid not care. To me it was the most horrible thing in the world to lose a toy or computer or not being able to leave my room when I wanted to play on the swing set, etc. so it got me to follow the rules. I learned if I didn't follow them, there are consequences so my mind concept is "If you don't follow a rule, be prepared for a consequence, if you don't care about it if you get one or not, then don't follow it." But of course I understand now as an adult why there are rules like speed limits and why you should wait at a red light even if there is no traffic. I actually learned as a child that I had to follow rules or I get into trouble, not because I understood why it was wrong. I only knew it was wrong because my mom said so or my teacher says so or the school or the duty ladies on the playground. But hey just as long as I was following the rules, my mom didn't care why I was following them. At least it would keep me out of prison in the future because I wouldn't want to go to prison so I would be following the laws.


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