punish or accommodate autistic kid for mealtime behaviour?

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We are at our wits end in dealing with our high functioning 9 year-old son's anti-social behaviour at meal-times and would love to hear suggestions for better ways to cope.

The problem is that our son wants to partition himself from his 11 year-old sister. He places cereal boxes on the table to block his view of his sister due to her "gross" eating habits that disgust him (which no one else seems to notice). This seemed to work for the last 2 years. Recently, however, our daughter has started to take offense at this insult and pouts about how she is being singled out. She now refuses to eat at the table with everyone else if our son is blocking his view of her. Our son doesn't seem to have a problem with anyone else at our table. He even seems to be able to cope ok when our family eats at restaurants (which goes pretty well actually). It is only at home that he raises a fuss about needing to block his view of his sister.

Consequently, we have started siding with our daughter and told our son he is no longer allowed to block his view of her at the table. This has led to an escalating battle where we punish our son for non-compliance and send him to his room early at night and take away computer and TV privileges. We have told him that both he and his sister will get special deserts if there is peace at the table and no one disrespects anyone else, but that doesn't seem to suffice.

This has been going on for a week now.

Are we wrong to start insisting that our son treat his sister with more respect at the table? Should we instead start coming down hard on our daughter for being upset with the strategically placed boxes on the table that block her view of her brother and tell her she has to accept that her brother has some disabilities and stop getting upset over it? Should we stop trying to eat together as a family for meals and just let the kids eat in their rooms?

Finding something positive that motivates your son to change his behavior will be key. He will be able to be more rigid than you and more negative, so punishment probably won't work.

I don't think it is helpful to punish your daughter. Your son's disabilities do not need to lead him to behave in this hurtful way, and your daughter should not grow up thinking you don't support her. Or that people with disabilities are cruel.

What do you think is behind your son wanting to exclude his sister?

I feel that you're making a mistake by taking away your son's TV and computer privileges and sending him to his room early. Your son is going to be looking back on those punishments many years later and posting about them here on WP if you keep on doing that. I feel that he's going to be posting about how unloved and unaccepted he felt by his own parents. You could ask your son which things about his sister's eating habits he thinks are gross. You could also have it so they're not facing each other at the table. I apologize if I've offended anybody with my answer. Childhood punishments seem to be a hot button for me.

all people escalate their unacceptable behavior when it is first questioned. if the questioner stays firm, usually the behavior will change.

1). He shouldn't get a pass on table manners because he's autistic. He seems capable.

2). Personally, I wouldn't lop on extra punishments and I wouldn't get emotional. I'd do this: calmly explain everything beforehand - no barricades at the dinner table; they are hurtful. Bothersome protests are also not allowed at the dinner table. When he's ready to accept these rules and follow them, he may join the family for dinner. Until then, he may stay in a calm, quiet place getting ready. When the family is done with dinner (an appropriate amount if time has lapsed), dinner time is over. If he missed he chance to eat, calmly explain that he may try again in the morning at breakfast and assure him that you have faith in him.

3). To make it easier on everyone and more likely to work, change it up dramatically for a while to side-step bad habits. Is it nice outside where you live right now? You could spend the summer mostly eating meals outside and cooking on the grill.

4). Alternatively from number 2, and particularly if your family has experience with conflict resolution, you can calmly sit down with the two kids, state the problem and ask if they have ideas for solutions.

It seems like he is just screwing with his sister.
Too bad that he has pattern of interacting with people in negative way.

Sometimes I have to look away at the wall or close my eyes because sometimes other people gross me out when they eat and it makes me physically ill. Maybe you can tell him that he can look at the wall just past her but not put up boxes. I don't think he should have to look at her but he can't put up boxes.

maybe he has developed misophonia which is common on the spectrum and includes a hatred of things like hearing other people eating,maybe he has a bit of a phobia about being watched by her whilst he eats;she might be giving him more eye contact than other people do.
maybe he dislikes his sister for some reason.

Let him keep the boxes, and explain to the sister that he puts those there because he DOES want to stay at the table with her, but he has sensory issues that cause some of her habits to distress him. Tell it to her in private in case he really does hate eating with her on top of the sensory stuff.

My guess on why it doesn't bother him in restaurants is because restaurants are noisy and busy. He's distracted from or maybe even can't hear what he finds gross.

Do NOT punish you son for his auditory defensiveness/misophonia. Do NOT invalidate your daughter's feelings, but explain to her that it's not her fault and does not mean that she's a bad person.

I'm going to say your son is wrong on this one.

However, you need to get him to articulate what it is about what his sister does (and not you or your husband) that offends him.

Sibling rivalry is normal with NT kids, and AS kids will have their version of it. If it's something tangible that your daughter can work on, it should be addressed. If it's being picky because of sibling friction, it needs to stop with him.

The real world won't tolerate him acting this way when he is an adult. You might as well start teaching him right now how to properly behave when eating with others because he WILL have to do it later in life.

I would put the cereal boxes and any other "center pieces" away off the table so it's more effort for your son to get up and block his sister.

People are right, the world will be harder on your son because of his autism and his behaving rudely will make that worse.

If he were really bothered, he'd be better off learning how to block things out internally.

Do you think he might only do this at home because at home he can block her or at worst get sent off to his room and be alone? He may protest, but actions speak louder than words. Does he seem to prefer being alone? A lot of times being alone is experienced as positive by kids, and adults, with autism. There are less hurtful ways to build alone time into his day.

This just doesn't sound like a skill he lacks, it sounds like a choice he makes. From your example he sounds rigid about rules. Not liking the sight of another child, his sister, licking her finger really doesn't seem like a sensory issue to me.

Being sympathetic is good, but in the end, learning to eat with others even if they annoy us, and learning to live with and in a world where things don't happen the way we want and people don't necessarily conform to our view of what's right and what's wrong---well, you want him to learn this stuff to manage as an adult. People don't always do what we want. We have to learn to live with that. I think it's our job as parents to help our kids, on or off the spectrum, find ways to do so that make their lives better, not worse.

This is a generalization, but what would be unacceptable for a NT kid is also unacceptable for an autistic kid. But the correction technique's are usually quite different.