Effective punishment for aggressive child? Help please

Post Reply New Topic

I think we need to differentiate between the punishment and intervention. When a situation occurs where someone is a risk, be that third party or the individual in question then at the time it may be necessary to do something physical to prevent the situation becoming significantly worse. The immediate safety of those concerned has to be the priority. To me that a case of intervening not punishment.

However, punishment implies a planned consequence of an action. In other words if 'x' happens the consequence is 'y'. When you have someone with an issue with being overly physical, disciplining with a physical consequence seems counterintuitive to me. All it does is teach that when something is not going your way the response should be physical. I'm certainly not saying I have the answers as it is clearly a complex situation and is very easy to make statements when using a keyboard. However there needs to be a more hands off approach to the planned consequences for the undesired behaviour in my view.

A medium-long term observational case study on the child, completed by his parents and key workers in collaboration with supervisory observations could provide patterns in his behavior. While you are identifying the triggers consider if punishment in the interim will further complicate matters, I?m sure you are mindful of the consequences of experiences in childhood. Basic boundaries need to be learned, and punishment like reinforcement has its place and time. The above posters have provided alternative management strategies. Personally I would err on the side of caution until I understood the finer details.

I'm a parent. I have Aspergers. My step son (who I raised from 1 year old, he's now 7) also has Autism and has been difficult as he got older, BUT we managed to keep it in check and control it. I will explain a few things from a parents point of view and how we coped and dealt with it.

Before my son had his Autism diagnosis we thought he was a naughty child. And he got punished a lot. The only punishment that worked for him was sending him to his room and removing his xbox, and iPad. He loves Minecraft, and we allow him to play it. So when we remove that, he knows we mean business.

We didn't know a lot of this was probably related to Autism. But what we was doing was working. We never gave in to tantrums, we completely ignored it. And we tried to quickly correct bad behaviour from the beginning. At school he was getting into a lot of trouble hitting other kids, spitting in food, not listening in class.

So, we got him a book that we put in his school bag for the teacher to write in. He comes home and we read what the teacher has put. If its a good day, he gets a treat and his xbox/ipad. If it's a good day, but with bad behaviour he doesn't get a treat, and we sit down and talk to him. He still gets his iPad and xbox, but very limited time on it. If he's been bad he loses his xbox and iPod and we don't allow him to watch his bedtime movie on his TV. If he's been very bad, he will spend some time in his bedroom, in his bed.

And this worked amazingly. Because his behaviour at school took a dramatic turn. His mathematics is amazing, he actually got an award for it. Teachers are impressed with his maths level. And we encourage and push this, because it's a skill he has in that area. Believe it or not, I actually think Minecraft plays a massive part in this for my son. It's actually helped him learn and expand his mind. Crazy, but true.

He rarely comes home with a bad mark in his book. And because of this he rarely gets told off and punished.

We have issues at home with answering back, being cheeky etc. But no different to any other child. We enforce punishment consistently, and we enforce praise consistently. He loves praise. He loves being told he's clever and smart. And we do this a lot.

If we had known he had Autism from the onset, maybe we would have approached discipline differently. But, had we done this he may not be who he is today. He's now a well behaved, polite, young chap who I am very very VERY proud of.

But, he will slip up from time to time. And because they are so infrequent we don't really punish him for the slip ups. Although we will speak to him and make it known that it's not acceptable. He knows this. I think he probably gets over stimulated at school at certain times and that's when there's issues. But, he's at the age he can understand now.

For us it's an equal balance, with more time given to praise rather than punishment.

I think although a child has Autism, you can't completely neglect discipline because it's not their fault. Children are cunning, and very smart, and they will play on it if you let them.

We've all disagreed with parents rules. That's normal for a lot of children. We've all (I think) thrown a tantrum, or stormed to our rooms screaming and shouting. But one thing I've always known is that I was loved, and that my parents have always had my best interests at heart.

Thats the most important thing I believe.

I know you're question is related to working with children, but I wanted to give a little background on living with a child with Autism.

I agree with you PlainsAspie. If this were Reddit I'd give JayJayUK some gold!