Successful Discipline styles for our kids?

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I have been struggling with discipline for my daughter who is 7. She is very strong willed and adamantly wants it her way many times throughout the day (as is typical with children much younger). I have read several books on disciplining (not NT discipline books) and I have been trying to implement the tools they recommend. I have been fairly successful using:

Collaborative Problem Solving

Active listening and acknowledging her feelings

Giving Options

I am still having some issues. When my daughter becomes upset and I feel myself becoming upset due to her physically lashing out at me, I will try to withdraw. She will follow me and insist on continuing to yell and carry on. I have tried to lock my door which just further escalates her. She will then pound on the door and become hysterical. I really need to find a way to "step back" at these times so I can regain my composure and effectively utilize the tools above. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Also, I have never been successful at giving her a timeout. She will refuse to stay in her room-she will just run right back out. I have tried to close her door but she will escalate and pound on the door. I have thought about putting an outside lock on her door but feel this might be cruel or dangerous. Anyone have any suggestions? If I utilize positive reinforcement it works amazingly but in those times when I need to address negative behavior such as hitting, kicking or yelling at me I would like to find an effective time out procedure.

Also, she refuses to sleep in her own bed. This is partly my fault as I have been too relaxed about allowing her to sleep with me. At one time she would fall asleep in her bed (if I laid in there with her) but would come into my bed in the middle of the night. I have been trying to go back to that and she has been adamantly refusing to lay in her bed. On the nights when I have tried to force this issue, she was awake until midnight or later, tossing, turning, talking to herself or purposely trying to keep me awake, saying she was too "afraid" of her room. Suggestions?

Another problem is that her current focus is a tv show and she has gone from not watching tv at all to wanting to watch it 24/7. She always watches the same shows over and over and over. I have not let this become too much of an issue as I understand she is "vegging out" when she does this. But now I am starting to become concerned that it is unhealthy and excessive and that I am unable to stop it. Should I try to start limiting the tv time? Or let it play out?

These are the major issues right now. If I could get a handle on these things I feel I would be much happier about her current level of functioning. I have come a long way in addressing other issues but these are the ones that are constantly weighing on my mind. At times, especially when I use the techniques above, I am very successful at getting her to comply with acting properly (with manners) and understanding when she has misbehaved.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Wish I could give you some hope, but a human being's personality is pretty much fully formed by the age of 7. If you haven't instilled discipline and respect for others in them by then, you're going to be fighting that battle for years to come. Then law enforcement is going to have to fight it for you.

Well, I will have to disagree with willard here. The human personality is not fully formed by the age of 7. A person's personality changes throughout their life. However, the parent's ability to modify, or affect the child's personality does decrease significantly around this age. This doesn't mean that your child can't change their personality, but it does mean that they will have to be the ones to do it, and not the parent.

That being said, have you talked about the situation with your daughter? The problem as you say is getting into a situation where your daughter is all emotioned up and unable to exercise a rational thought process or calm down. At that point, things like 'discipline' or more accurately threats of punishment, will do little to help. Your child is just to far wound up for those to be effective, and threats do little more then add more fuel to the fire and wind your child up further. Perhaps the better thing would be to talk to use the collaberative problem solving methodology, and come up with a solution that you can both agree to. For example, when your child is feeling threatened, she is allowed to go into her room without being bothered. When you are feeling threatened, you are allowed to go into your room without being bothered.

Explain why this is, what purpose it serves, how it will help, and why it is important to follow through. And then the next time this happens, try to say something along the lines of, 'per our agreement, I am going to take a 5 minute break, we can continue talking after the 5 minutes is up'. And then go ahead, take a break in your room, and ignore her.

Is she on any medication? Some of that medication can cause children to have horrible rages.




And if you keep putting her in the position of not being able to sleep, you will cause permanent disruption to her sleep cycle and she'll not get the sleep she needs and this will manifest in more behavioral problems.

Many children with AS have some type of sleep disorder. They may have nightmares and the uncertainty of sleep, and a dark room, combined with the imagination can cause severe anxiety.

You can try a few things....
Have her go to sleep earlier when she can hear that you are still up and watching TV or doing chores.

If she's afraid of under the bed, get rid of under the bed. Take the box spring and mattress off the frame or put a bunch of under the bed bins there so she knows there are no spaces for things to hide.

Try a sufficiently bright night light or keeping the hall light on for her.

Put a TV in her room and allow her to keep it on to a show that makes her feel safe on the condition that she doesn't watch it and tries to go to sleep.

If that doesn't work, and she has siblings, you might have her share a room.

Or I think it would just be best to stay with her until she falls asleep on the condition she goes to bed earlier so you aren't kept up. Or let her sleep in your room until she out grows it.





I did this. My father would eventually force me outside. She should get out to get some exercise. I think my parents finally limited me to something like 8 shows a week and for some reason, once the TV was off I didn't seem to mind.

My daughter would respond in a rude tone at my requests and I would just keep saying things like "Is that how you would like to be treated?" I would also make her repeat her response in an acceptable tone. There were some days I could not believe we both got through. I wish I had known what was wrong. I could have probably made quicker progress because I know now she probably had know idea she sounded so rude.

Fifth grade was when things started changing but when she reached Seventh things got better and we are laughing more than screaming.

She used to wander into my bed but I made it clear that it was my bed and my comfort came first. I did not stand for her kicking or blanket stealing. It gradually tapered off. I also bought her a memory foam pad for her bed (like I have on mine) and she no longer comes into my bed.

She is not on any medications. I have attempted meds but she always had negative side effects or they stopped working-now I am very leery of the meds and the Drs who push them.

I have had insomnia pretty much my whole life and know what it's like but what I see in her is far different. It is literally like she can't stop moving at night. She wiggles, and chews, and fidgets and just cannot stop. For her, to do this alone is unbearable. She is not a person who can go lay down and fall asleep (I can't either but my problems are more with my mind racing which may be what is happening with her only it is manifesting physically with her body racing as well).

She is actually asleep in her own bed now. I laid with her from 9pm until just now (it is 10:53pm here) she finally went to sleep. It is not the lack of lights because she has several nightlights and light strings. She is literally afraid to be alone. She says there's people watching her or mean people in our house. I have talked to her about this numerous times and in the light of day she can reason with it, but at night all her fears are amplified and she has true anxiety.

As I stated before, I have come a LONG way with reducing her outbursts and meltdowns! A LONG way. And I can determine on days where she has them now that I should have "read the signs" but I can't always be 100% attuned to her and responsive to her needs when I have demands and responsibilities that must be met. I have known for a while now that typical discipline doesn't work for her-I spent far too much time (years) following the advice of others by counting, attempting timeouts, removing cherished items, none of which had any impact at all. My brother is also an aspie and all of this brings back memories of him absolutely being unaffected by consequences as a child. It just made him more angry and more distant. I do not want to do that but I don't want to err too far in the other direction either. I need to find a way to balance giving her understanding of the frustration that she goes through but also making sure she learns "the rules" of life so that she doesn't end up in jail or institutionalized.

I do make her change the "tone" of her requests or responses and apologize for any rude behavior. I do not respond to her unless she says "please" (this has taken all of 7 years to instill in her!). Any hitting or physical lashing out is just too far over the line for me and I feel something must be done-even if she is not meaning to do it or is in overload. I just am trying to find out a good method for deterring that. She used to injure herself and I was able to stop that-now she very, very rarely does that-only about once per year when we have the "life altering meltdowns".

I realize it is a slow process and every child is different. And I suppose just writing it out here as helped me in gathering my thoughts on what I need to be addressing. It is such a slow journey-one milestone at a time. And that has become my mental slogan these days-"one day at a time".

I'm pretty sure that when she said she was "afraid of her room", she meant that literally. Think about objects in her room that could be scaring her at night. Now, think about how they look like from her eye level. In fact, do this exercise: crawl on your elbows and knees around a room with the lights off, and look around. I'm sure everything looks vastly different than how it looks like from the height of 5'4" (average for an adult woman):
* A five-branched floor lamp might look like a weird contraption towering over you.
* Outlets might look like little faces staring back at you, especially if mounted vertically
* Spaces under furniture might look like ominous spots of darkness
* A TV set has weak reflections in its screen, making them look like ghostly apparitions
* A refrigerator might look like a big box that towers over you and makes a buzzing sound
* A toilet might look like big gaping hole
* Certain paintings might look frightening from a child's height perspective

As for "people watching her" or "mean people in the house", it sounds much more serious. On a bright sunny morning, when one night's bedtime is already gone, but the upcoming bedtime is still far away (this is important), ask your daughter what exactly is giving her ideas about the "people". While I had tons of nightmares as a child and was afraid of numerous objects in my own home, I never "saw people". It sounds like something more serious than AS-induced fears because as we all know, aspies have trouble relating to people in the first place.

There is a theory out there that most of children's fears stem from loneliness. Perhaps your daughter can sleep in the room with you, on a separate bed. Or, if she has siblings, perhaps they can share room (with mutual agreement, obviously). Or get a pet; dogs can do a great job at making a child feel safe.

I am much older (a teenager), but I still do this. In fact I did it the other day. I completely lose it at injustice and will not give up if I know I'm right, or if I am angry and don't know how to solve it with regular words. I'm sorry I have nothing to offer, and it probably sounds bad that I still have these problems at my age to you. I get stuck and yell the same things over and over, and will follow someone and pound on the door. It's bad.


I was terrified of sleeping alone when I was around her age. I was really scared of quite specific things, but things that couldn't leave the room. Like aliens, or murderers. Imaginary things. To sleep now I take melatonin and calcium magnesium, but I am no longer afraid. Nightlights help too. For awhile I had to check each room I entered, I thought people were reading my thoughts and watching me. My childhood was anxiety and terror. :/


Once I got acquainted to the computer I couldn't get away from it and still can't.

So, basically no advice. But I just wanted to comment because it sounded strikingly like myself, and that hasn't happened before.

The people she's afraid of at night are people she's

1 seen in her dreams-she has vivid nightmares that she remembers forever-that causes her to fear going to sleep. She will obsess over a nightmare she had over a year ago where she fell off of a skyscrpaer and had to live with other people after she fell and couldn't see me anymore.

2 seen in a tv show. She doesn't watch anything violent but can be afraid of people wearing masks or being rude on iCarly. She doesn't believe that she won't dream of them or that they can't "find her"

It's not psychotic, it's just childhood fears that I am trying to deal with. It's just that it seems she is far more sensitive to her fears and unable to get over them and move on as would happen with an NT child.

I never said your daughter's fears were psychotic, but it's interesting that her nightmares have a strong human presence. My nightmares had very few, if any, people in them, and oftentimes, they either didn't interact with me at all or didn't understand me when I talked to them. The fears in nightmares revolved around chandeliers, which was triggered by an actual chandelier in my home that I was terrified of. The nightmares were very vivid and realistic, and were set in my own home, which made them very hard to tell from real life. They usually went something like this:

1. I'm standing in the foyer where the chandelier is, and it's ten times bigger than normal, has pointy spikes coming out in all directions, and makes howling noises.
2. I'm walking down the hall to get to the kitchen, but it never ends. I start running, but the hall continues on and on.
3. I'm in the foyer where the chandelier is, and it looks normal. Then, when I go into another room, it's there too. A minute later, I realize that it's in every room, even closets.

As you can see, my nightmares did not involve people. But now that you cleared everything up, it looks like the usual AS-induced nightmares, so your main concern would be finding a way to stop them from recurring.

Psychotic was a strong word to use but I wanted to make it clear she wasn't actually seeing people or hearing voices at night.

Any suggestions on dealing with the nightmares and the subsequent fears of having them again?

Thank you very much for your comments. I am interested in your perspective because you seem to have the same issues as my daughter. Is there anything you can think of in the heat of the moments when you become "upset with injustices" that would help calm you? Is there anything I can do to help or is there anything you wish your parents would have done for you?

I have tried melatonin and it does help her fall asleep more quickly but I was/am under the assumption that you are not to take it everyday or it stops working. Do you take it every night?

Thanks so much! Your posts really help.

FYI - My son's P-doc is a brilliant Aspie who has given tremendous insight. He started DS on Melatonin on the first visit saying that sleep regulation was #1 before he wanted to look at any other meds. DS now takes melatonin nightly and it really changed everything for us.

DS used to have night sweats and couldn't sleep through the night, the melatonin has REALLY helped. We buy it at Trader Joes in a 1/2 mg chewable dose. This is about 1/6 the recommended dosage, and worked for a long time. We have increased to two tabs now but DS has gained probably 40# since then, so the increase doesn't seem to be a concern. He started taking it 5/08.

My mother will sometimes distract me. She will ask me to do something if I'm not full-upset, like a fun chore or a snack or something, or lead me to my room and not let me out of it if I am more upset (as in, holding the door). When I'm calm it is much better, I don't think there is much to do but wait until then, because I'm not capable of a rational conversation when I'm just shouting the same thing over and over or hitting and throwing things.

Does she hurt herself? If not I think it'd be okay to put a lock on the outside of the door, as long as you were still within the general area.

I've thought about typing to my mother things, because it's obviously easier and I probably wouldn't get so stressed out as easily but I have yet to set anything up like that.

I take melatonin every night. Sometimes it stops working, and if this happens I just stop taking it for a week and get back on it. The liquid calcium + magnesium makes me really relaxed and sleepy, which helps too.

I'm wondering at this point if your daughter is associating the fears from her nightmares with her room or her home. Have you had a chance to find out how she sleeps in an unfamiliar place, like in a hotel room or at a relative's she rarely sees. My experience was like this: I slept horribly at home, taking on average two hours to fall asleep and having constant nightmares; at my grandparents', where I slept over a few times a month, it took me less time to fall asleep and I had only occasional nightmares; and when my family visited out-of-town friends, I fell asleep quickly and had almost no nightmares.

Ask your daughter how she sleeps in places outside her home. Or try an experiment: rent a hotel room for a night, under a pretext that you daughter will easily believe and agree with (such as "the electric company is fixing the wiring, and power will be out"). See how she falls asleep there, and try to replicate the pre-bedtime routine the best you can. In the morning, when enough time passed after sleeping, ask your daughter if she saw or heard the same things she sees and hears at home. Find out the answers, and work from there. Well, let me know what you think of this.

It's funny you should mention this because she does sleep better when we are on vacation. I thought it was because she was more tired. She doesn't complain about not being able to go to sleep when we are in hotel rooms. What does this mean? Do I need to move???