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Hi all, I’m a single mum to an 11 yr old boy whose autistic with a learning disability and need some help. He rages over the littlest thing and kicks holes in the walls, inner doors, smashes things up, 4 TVs so far. I don’t know what to do. He only got his diagnosis in February 2021. He gets support at school but we don’t at home. He goes to lots of clubs/ activities and never runs out of energy.

Well, I can say from experience he'll stop punching holes in the walls the first time he contacts a stud and hears his wrist go pop.

Welcome aboard!

While I have no experience in such matters, others do.  Please stand by or check back in later, as more replies may take a while.

Welcome to WP! Very few of us can offer professional assistance, only advice based on personal experience, but you might find some useful input over at the Parent's Discussion forum. I hope you'll find some answers here.

From my personal experience, I find anger results from stress, or frustration from the inability to resolve often minor issues that are beyond my control. I'm adult and stay on my own, so if I break things I have to replace them myself so have learned to control my frustrations to a large extent, but I used to break some cell phones and mother things from anger when they didn't do as they were supposed to! I've had plenty time to resolve my issues and work out solutions, or walk away until I'm calmer.

Kids very often appear to have boundless energy, and this is good when channelled in the right direction, but to control his outbursts you might need to watch his diet and perhaps make some adjustments, such as more fresh fruit or vegetables, avoiding excess sugar, salt or processed meat.

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

I am not a parent, but I have a question; the question being if you don't mind me asking:
What is your son's caffeine intake?

Welcome to WP!

One thing that may help is to provide a consequence for bad behavior.

For example, if you have him sit on a chair for 10 minutes (which can seem a long time to him) for breaking something. You can also ask him if he knows why he is sitting on the chair. This verbal inquiry can reinforce the impression on him that there are penalties for bad behavior.

Multiple things could be going on, but one thing I learned early on with my son is that traditional parenting ideas rarely worked with him.

What worked was managing his environment to reduce his stress.

Children instinctively keep all their stress and negative reactions inside during their days in the outside world, only releasing the deluge once they get home. Seeing a deluge like you describe suggests to me that a LOT of upset, stress, confusion and pain is building up inside of your son through out his day.

You note that he has a large list of activities, but be aware that even if he enjoys them, they are likely overstimulating for him. Most parents are aware of the potential for over-stimulation for toddlers, who don't know how to self-pace, but a connected concept can apply for ASD children. Interaction with the world takes a lot more out of an ASD child than it does a nuero-typical child. The world is an extremely confusing place for ASD children, and trying to deal with it all is mentally exhausting for them, regardless of how much physical energy they seem to have. Combine that with some of the developmental delays common with ASD, and you can get unacceptable behaviors. Unacceptable behaviors are often a child's way of telling us how much distress they are experiencing.

These behaviors may be related to melt downs, and we have lots of threads with advice on helping a child learn to manage his own meltdowns. I recommend searching the forum for some of them. It's quite a lengthy process I can't write up right now, but I think the same protocols will help your situation. Identifying items of stress, controlling the environment to reduce stress, recognizing the signs of pending overload in your child, diverting him into self-calming activities before he overloads, etc.

It is highly likely that by the time your son is raging, he is no longer in full control of his own emotions or actions. Hence, the recommendation to follow meltdown prevention protocols. When an ASD child has reached that point, so much is miss-firing in his brain that he is literally in physical and mental anguish and incapable of rational thought. My ASD son describes meltdowns as the single most horrible and painful thing he used to experience in life. My son, now a young adult, hasn't had one in ten years because he will do ANYTHING to avoid them, and learned his mitigation and self-calming techniques well.

Short term, encourage your son to choose and engage in a repetitive physical activity that can be self-calming. We call these stims, and they serve a valuable function for ASD children. My son was a pacer, back and forth and up and over furniture, all the while talking out some fantasy scenario and waving his arms. My son was also a chewer. Both turned out to be essential activities that aided him in putting his thoughts in order and relieving stress, and his overall behavior improved a thousand times once we stopped trying discourage them. Swings, trampolines, chewing on hands, hand flapping, etc are all common ways for an ASD child to relieve stress. The key is usually for it to be repetitive physical motion. Restricting it to appropriate times and places is fine, but give your child as much leeway with this valuable tool as possible.

Good luck.

What was your son diagnosed with?

"Learning disability" is a different concept in the US than it is in the UK. In the UK, it means some sort of intellectual disability. In the US, it means something like dyslexia in the absence of an intellectual disability. The advice would be significantly different if he had an intellectual disability versus if he does not.

Does he like sports like football, or like auto racing, or something like that?

I hear stories all the time about kids who smash walls, break things. He is 11 years old; he might be able to be reasoned with. Have you had talks with him about what he does? I don't mean where he's criticized. I mean more like "Why?" Why do you smash the TV, even though you love TV? I was somewhat that sort of kid when I was that age, though I didn't destroy things as much.

I was diagnosed with autism, with "brain damage/injury," with schizoid personality disorder (a little later).

I feel like he needs, mostly, a nonjudgmental ear to listen to him.

Please do not interpret anything I say as a criticism of you. Parents have a hard job even with the most "normal" of kids.

My son was like that. He's not ASD but he's diagnosed with ADHD and ODD. In any event, I feel your pain.

He outgrew the behaviours by finding activities he loved, where he could excel. I think it improved his self-confidence and helped regulate his nervous system. He's now living very successfully on his own in Australia, doing the things he loves. One thing we found out in his case, is that he was allergic to red food dye. It sounds weird but it actually contributed to a lot of his physical outbursts. Homeopathy and naturopathy can work in conjunction with medical doctors to rule out any environmental triggers, or chemicals that might upset his system. Zinc deficiency is also common for some kids with those severe outbursts. Counselling and home-schooling or alternative education opportunities may be helpful for your son. Some kids just don't belong in mainstream schools, even with support. They're far too overstimulating with so much noise and activity all around.