Violent Outburst at Daycare...

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I am cross posting this from the Parent's Forum. I want to get your take on it to so as to hear some of your keen insights. This forum always gives me excellent insights into the thought process of my soon to be step-son, and helps me better relate to him.

I heard something disturbing when I went down to visit my girlfriend and Billy, her 10 year old Aspie son. The other day at Daycare, he wasn't getting his way with a group of kids playing video games, and he attacked a 7 year old and started to choke him. Fortunately, one of the aids pulled him off before any damage could be done.

His excuse, which is ALWAYS his excuse is "I couldn't help it! It's not my fault!" Which as far as I'm concerned is a complete lie and a cop-out to try to avoid punishment. Meltdowns can't be helped. I understand that. Acting violently towards someone else when one doesn't get one's way is just brattiness. When punishment is dealt out, usually a loss of privileges, it is followed by an every increasing cry of "But I'm SORRY!! !" and he can't understand why the punishment is being given out after he says "I'm sorry".

We are less than two months away from moving in together. On Thursday, we have an appointment to tour one of the few daycare's in the area in which we are going to live. He has been in his current daycare all his life, so they are tolerant of his infrequent outbursts. I worry, however, that if this new behavior of violent outbursts continue, he will be thrown out of this new daycare.

When explaining to him what this would mean to the family, he was told that mom would have to quit her job in order to watch him in the summer. His response was "So? I'll just sit in my room and play video games all day!" Well, mom got very upset at this attitude, and told him that no, he wouldn't be allowed to play video games at all if his behavior caused her to have to quit her job. She also said she would get rid of Rexie. Rexie is a stuffed dinosaur that he has had for four years and is his most prized possession. It is a nasty snot, drool, and funk encrusted thing that makes my skin crawl by its sheer nastiness (sorry, OCD). His response was "But I LOVE Rexie!! !" Again, no consideration for the events leading up to losing Rexie.

I'm really trying to get through to him the idea of cause and effect, actions and consequences, but he is doing everything in his power to resist. His idea of punishment seems similar to me as a cat: There is no reason for him to ever be punished, and anything you do that you call punishment is just you being mean to him.

Any advice on how to get these ideas through to him would be greatly appreciated. Also, to help him to understand that the world doesn't revolve around him.

...although once we move in together, I'm inclined to let him believe what he wants, but let the punishment stand and let him figure it out on his own (as was done to me), and have further outbursts afterward lead to further punishment.

Mind you, I want to do what's BEST for him! Not what is EASIEST! My main interest is to help him become a happy, functioning member of society who will never experience the receiving end of the criminal justice system.

Thoughts?

Well maybe explaining to him about why violence is wrong and what the consequences would be might help. Like tell him if he kept doing those things, he might end up getting arrested someday and having it on his criminal record and it make it hard for him to get into college or get a job. It can hold him back. Also if he needs to know that how our country works, you need to be responsible for your actions, if you can't, you don't belong in the real world and you need to be locked up where you are safe from hurting other people. Mentally ill people get locked up when they are not held accountable for their actions, they go to a mental hospital. people with disabilities still, get locked up in prison if they are found guilty for their actions. AS is not a cop out or a get out of free jail card. It won't work.

Aspies rely on logic and they need to find rules to be reasonable why they shouldn't do this or that. What kept me in line as a child was fear of being punished and I hated being punished so it made me listen. I was Rule Boy. Even though at times I would be Logic Boy because I would do things anyway and then I get in trouble because they never told me I would be punished if I did X. But I did ask lot of questions growing up and it drove my family crazy. I wanted to know why why why why to everything.

Personally, I don't buy that 'meltdowns can't be helped'. In my experience, a meltdown is a direct result of being continually pressed and pressured after a visible shutdown. Blowing up at someone who will not stop harassing you and hitting at them might be considered a meltdown. Attacking another person for doing something that annoys you is not an Autistic meltdown, it's criminal assault. At the end of the day, we as Autistics have to be held to the same standards of civilized behavior as anyone else.

Sounds to me like this kid has been handed Autism as an excuse for bad behavior and he's using it as a free pass for anything. That starts with his parents and caregivers - mostly his parents, and I don't mean you. Autistics need help and compassion in a great many areas, but they don't need to be mollycoddled and spoiled any more than any other child.

Autism aside, I'm just going to spell it out cold for you, brother - at 10 this child's personality is already fully formed and you are not going to change him. A hitch in the military might, but that's a few years away, and the years in between are likely to be a very long nightmare.

Been there, done that. Good luck.

create a consequence chart.

It will have two divisions: expected behaviors and unacceptable behaviors.

The first division will be expected behaviors. maybe a set of columns for what good things can be expected if those behaviors (chores, maybe?) are followed.

The second division will be rows of completely unacceptable behaviors and what they mean in terms of negative consequences.

Mention that the consequence chart is not up for debate. Post a copy in the child's room. He may destroy it as retaliation. Also mention that you have many copies and that they will be expected to know what is on the chart.

Worked wonders for me as a kid.

I wonder if part of the problem might be that he isn't "generalizing" what he's learned about how he feels when things happen to how other people feel when things happen to them.

Lots of us develop the ability to work out logically what other people are feeling, but it does take some thinking. If he doesn't realize how frightening it must be to be grabbed by the throat, he may only think in terms of, "I have a problem; it can be solved by grabbing this other child; therefore, I shall grab him."

You get this sometimes with AS. I don't know how it is for him; but sometimes I have to re-learn things to some degree when I apply them to a new situation. For example, when I first learned to use a fast-food restaurant, I only knew how to order at one small place across the street from the college I attended, and only ever ordered the same things, though I had nothing against other items on the menu. Eventually I re-learned ordering other things, and then ordering at other restaurants. Now I can go to many places. Ever time I had to re-learn for a new situation it took less time than the time before. Generalizing is not as hard for me as it is for some people, but it is harder than for many.

If this boy can understand his own feelings, but doesn't apply that to other people, then maybe he needs to be taught how to work out how other people feel. It may not actually have an immediate effect on his behavior, because learning that kind of thing is intellectual and not instinctive; but he does need to learn it, and it seems like he may not yet have done so.

I also agree with writing down what consequences he can expect. Make the situations as general as possible without being too general; if they are too specific, they leave loopholes, and if they are too general, they are hard to understand.

I know exactly what he feels when he says "I can't help it". He may be lying, but I felt the same way when i was younger, and when I told my parents 'I couldn't help it', they never believed me.

If you make a consequence chart, involve him in the procedure. Talk to him about what he would do if "X" happened. For example, if someone at day care hit him, what does he think the consquences should be? I find this helps a lot when dealing with a rule-breaking student: ask them what they would do in the same situation. (The answers, "Nothing," or "Let him do what he wants," show up a lot less often than you might think.) When you apply a situation directly to him, you enforce the action/consequence relation as well as make him think about why such things are wrong in the first place.

Another tool I use as a teacher that might help is called a "Think Sheet." The Think Sheet requires the child to think about what they have done. There are three questions. The first is, "What rule did I break?" The second is, "Why was my behavior wrong?" and the third is, "What will I do in the future to avoid breaking this rule?" So for example, a student of mine might answer, "I broke our no bullying rule by calling someone 'stupid," "My behavior was wrong because I said it to hurt someone's feelings. It was a mean thing to say," and "In the future I will think about whether what I say will hurt someone's feelings and not use bullying words." Writing it all down really makes a kid think. (If your step-son-to-be is not a writer, make him sit with you and tell you the answers out loud.)

This scares me. Because I know an autistic person who has that kind of violent outbursts when she doesn't get her way. The problem is she was... something even beyond the usual mollycoddling. Can't even describe how messed up the parenting was. And now she behaves like someone without a conscience. She is an adult now. She has decided several times that people and animals who don't do exactly what she wants right then ought to die. Then she makes every attempt to kill them in ways that would be lethal if not caught -- poisoning, etc. And yet the mollycoddling still goes on. It is absolutely terrifying and I try to avoid ever for any reason being in her presence.

I also know people who were like that as kids and grew out of it. But it required serious help from their parents. The other suggestions people have made sound good. But I just wanted to verify that spoiling a kid with these tendencies can and does produce adult monsters.

This might seem like a bit of a strange idea but one method which (i believe) helped me learn about cause and effect was by playing the boardgame Mousetrap.

Im not sure if you're familiar with the boardgame but basically at the end of it you drop a ball is dropped and it takes a route which finally makes it drop the trap on the mouse. I think it showed me how something i do (ie dropping the ball) can affect something else.

Im not saying it will help him, but i think it helped me, but you might want to also try methods/techniques which might seem a little "outside the box" which might help him.

Here is a link to the wikipedia page of mousetrap if you're interested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_Trap ... rd_game%29

It almost sounds like he's just completely not realizing his own behavior IS the cause, and the negative (thing being taken away) is the effect... so I wonder, even with the charts, if that will really help when it comes to being in other settings other than home, unless there is a chart made for each place.

When he has something taken away, make him earn that back by doing good things. Maybe even from when the countdown on the behavior starts, start taking small things away until it gets to losing the big thing.

It would be like a buildup to it. That way, he's seeing he is losing things DURING that behavior, rather than when he chooses to stop. Because maybe as far as he is concerned, once the behavior stops, he should get his item back right away... my daughter does this. I will count to 3, and she stops at 3 and a half, then gets mad that I took something away. She is NT. She's only 5, but it's a huge manipulation/control tactic that she tries.

She does the whole "I'm sorrry" thing too... I really don't know how to stop it. I just say things like "well, you weren't sorry 2 minutes ago when you were doing it". Same with my son actually...

last night he hurt his sister because he was overwhelmed and had to stay the rest of the evening in his room. He kept yelling "I'm sorry" over and over, but I finally told him, "Well, if you are really that sorry, then you will find another way to react next time." He stopped.

First, I don't have kids.

Have you ever read any of Temple Grandin's work? You might want to check it out. She is autistic, and she wrote that she didn't stop hitting other children until she wasn't allowed to ride horses any more. She also didn't stop chewing with her mouth open until she saw something else doing that. Similarly, she wrote about someone who wouldn't stop spitting on her teacher until the teacher spat back.

I'm not sure what an appropriate punishment is, but I don't think this behavior can go unchecked.