Son becoming aggressive......I would like to point just one thing out--our kids are all different and the severity of sensory issues as well, for each of them. I used to feel the same way--do back and let them feel what they are doing--until I went to quite a few lectures given by the Autism Society, and then talking to the KU Psych. Autism is sensory. How they process things is different than an NT--including pain. So, be careful with how you approach this--if I tried to bite or hit Taylor back, she could not deal with trying to feel the pain and, would either go into total meltdown or react in total fear (an unhealthy fear). Again, autism is sensory-related. How we feel things is different. Be very careful when using this approach. It can make things much worse, if your child is unable to process touch of any kind. Auttie, how you are talking is exactly what would happen to Taylor. I hear ya, kid. We do the collaborative problem solving with our very very verbal five year old. I am convinced now that his anger/rage issues are not sensory overload but mood based - anxiety and maybe even some depression I"m not sure. We are using extrinsic motivation with him - stickers on the fridge. He earns stickers for not hitting period. We started with ONE big goal. No hitting. And he earns a sticker for morning (doing well at school), afternoon (with therapists) and evening (with family) with extra stickers for doing extra things - like complimenting someone, asking with a nice voice, sharing, doing a chore etc.We count stickers on Friday night and if he earns over 10 he gets a prize. Over 20 he gets two prizes. We go to the dollar store or I get him an ice cream or something like that - we have no $ so its not like I'm buying him lego sets lol. But right now he's all about earning his stickers and if he starts to hit I'll tell him - remember to use your nice hands , show me nice hands . He can earn a sticker for 'turning it around' if he is going in to a meltdown and stops himself. For us this is working . Good luck. Each child is different - on the spectrum or not - you have to find what works for you and for him as a parent. I know I'll take some heat for this, but we use aversion therapy. Psychiatrist said it worked for him. If my boys start to get aggressive they get back whatever they are doing. When I met my boys they were out of control and got aggressive when you told them no (tantrum not a meltdown). I was covered in scratches and bite marks to my elbows. The first time I bit back (which is the same I did and would do with my own children) he never bit me again. When he would get really mad you could see him want to, open his mouth and start to bite and would then stop which proves he is able to control himself. It's been years since I had a problem with DS. All it takes is a look to get them into line. Before I came along all these behaviors were reinforced, If DS wasn't happy no one was happy. I'm sorry but that is not how life works. If he is not happy he can be not happy all by himself. It is similar to the use of force contium that police use, you use just enough force that is needed to get the situation under control and no more. Thanks for the encouragement- sometimes I just need to hear that others go through similar problems to help me cope. I never spank my son (maybe 3 times in 4 years) because it always makes him escalate and get further into the meltdown, so I don't know why I thought it would help with him the other day  He woke up thrashing around last night and acting completely wild- unsure if he had a bad dream or was upset because he had a wet sheet from his diaper leaking- but I had to hold him down to change his clothes.
The time out technique I am using is to put him in his room with the door shut for about 3-4 minutes. He hates this because when he is upset all he wants to do is hit me or scream at me- so it does work pretty quickly. I am very solution oriented too so I am going to keep trying something until this stops. It has been really trying lately- I look at that sweet face he has and it makes me melt but oh can he be a pill  Thanks again for the suggestions- I appreciate it.[QUOTE=kllylynn]I know I'll take some heat for this, but we use aversion therapy. Psychiatrist said it worked for him. If my boys start to get aggressive they get back whatever they are doing. When I met my boys they were out of control and got aggressive when you told them no (tantrum not a meltdown). I was covered in scratches and bite marks to my elbows. The first time I bit back (which is the same I did and would do with my own children) he never bit me again. When he would get really mad you could see him want to, open his mouth and start to bite and would then stop which proves he is able to control himself. It's been years since I had a problem with DS. All it takes is a look to get them into line. Before I came along all these behaviors were reinforced, If DS wasn't happy no one was happy. I'm sorry but that is not how life works. If he is not happy he can be not happy all by himself. It is similar to the use of force contium that police use, you use just enough force that is needed to get the situation under control and no more. [/QUOTE] they say you should never do that ,i have autism .if someone hit me back when younger an i was aggrisse i think i ewould have lost it .Taylor began hitting out of frustration--first, when we didn't always know what she wanted and, second, out of overload from a sensory issue (usually, sound related). I have done a lot of BT with her, including re-direct and her showing me what she is feeling on her springboard (before that, pecs). If she is mad, she says so. If she is scared, she shows me by pulling me to the area where she is hearing the sound. We have taught her, "gentle touch", where she rubs our arms instead of hitting, or giving a hug if she wants to be calmed down--she will take my hand and put it either on her head, for me to rub it or her back, so I can do deep pressure massage. I started showing her how to help me know what she wants, and now, without prompt, she does it. It took a while to get her to this stage but, life is so much better now that she has found an alternative way to express her feelings and/or frustration. This was also a very tough age for my dd. I think alot of it does have todo with communication, as it was a time when she developed in many areas, but because of lagging skills in language, was more prone to striking out or melting down. Your son may be feeling highly frustrated because he can't communicate in an effective way, so hitting becomes his first choice rather than his last resort. I would work on getting at the source of his frustrations. How you do this depends on his language level. Also, the more collaborative problem solving you can establish, the better. He may be frustrated if he feels everything is imperative, that is, one-way in your communication with him. NT kids can more easily address this, for ASD kids, I think it's much harder and that's where the challenging behaviors can present themselves. I'll put in another plug for collaborative problem solving. It sounds like you are encountering the worst problems when you are in "my way or the highway" mode. If standard privileges/consequences discipline is not working, than the problem might not be one of motivation, but some type of skills deficit (for example, verbal expression, executive function, ability to read and send nonverbal social cues) that prevents the child from processing the naturally occurring frustration. If the problem is one of self-regulation, escalating the imposition of parental will is very unlikely to work. It is more likely to ratchet up the frustration, thus leading to even greater overload, and eventually the sort of brainlocked meltdown many of us have experienced. Even if standard discipline is working, the proactive version of collaborative problem solving is really useful. The best solutions are the ones that prevent problems. My philosophy is to do whatever works. I don't want to say to the parent who uses aversive techniques to not do that if that's what works. However, many, many children on the autism spectrum would get worse from this. Many LIKE the sensory input that hitting or biting gives (this may be part of why they do it). Also, an inability to express the anger that builds up due to that treatment can cause serious fury/rage in the long run, creating even worse aggression. One of the key features of autism is an inabilty to understand the world from someone else's point of view. The "I'll do to you what you've done to me" technique does not take that lack of empathy into consideration. Still, if it works and is not creating worse problems, it certainly makes sense to continue using the technique. I'd just be very, very cautious because it is a risky tactic.Just adding that I would do anything with my asd kid in terms of discipline that I'd not do with my nt kids. I have had it out with other parents for years because I don't believe in spanking. We have always used grace based discipline or gentle parenting (you can google lol) which basically means we try to talk and problem solve, taking breaks if needed (the actual real concept of time out - where the adult can take a time out too if needed) and the collaborative problem solving approach falls in line with that kind of parenting for us.Aversion therapy is a form of psychiatric, mental health or psychological treatment in which the patient is exposed to a stimulus while simultaneously being subjected to some form of discomfort. This conditioning is intended to cause the patient to associate the stimulus with unpleasant sensations in order to stop the specific behaviour. I'm not sure how a psychiatrist would tell you that biting back is aversion therapy. I've worked mental health for years and have never heard that concept. Also adding for those considering aversion therapy of any kind, with anyone that it should only be done under the care of a psychiatrist/psychologist. And also adding, since I'm up at 4:30am with insomnia that if you read anything on dealing with children who bite - biting back is generally considered counter productive with NT children, with a child on the spectrum I'd not even go there. One of my parenting rules taken from somewhere on line is "The behaviour that gets rewarded gets repeated!" If you want to know more about aversives, google LOVASS. Aversive therapy is still a part of ABA -- A part that has been roundly rejected by most parents and most of the education community since ABA seems to work well without it. The Me Book, written by Lovass and heralded by the autism community a few decades ago, goes into detail about aversives. Like all other parts of ABA, careful data is taken. If the negative behaviors are extinguished, the aversives have been deemed to have worked. My biggest problem with this (besides the obvious distaste for inflicting pain on children) is that it can so easily backfire -- and has. However, there are situations in which the aversive therapy is kinder than what the child is doing to himself. One situation which Lovass uses as an example is that an autistic man had been so self-abusive that he had actually gauged out his own eye. Aversive therapy saved his other eye. Of course, aversives provide quite a slippery slope. Lovass-trained educators were using rulers rapped on the knuckles to keep kids in their seats. Aversives can be very emotionally satisifying to the adults. None of us likes the behaviors we sometimes have to put up with, so lashing out (literally) is a natural urge. If we parents get "permission" to use corporal punishment under some kind of "therapy" label, I'm afriad it will be an abused tool (no pun intended). I certainly do not want to be someone who advocates aversives. I don't. I think they're awful and ripe for misuse, especially by people who are not the parents. But at the same time, I don't walk in the shoes of the parents who use these techniques. I just hope the techniques are used as a last resort and that they really do improve the child's behavior and not just exacerbate it or suppress it until the child is big enough to give back in kind.We always look into what's causing the problem and try to deal with it. Like if he wants to go somewhere and can't instead of chasing him away from the coats 50 times, I'll just lock the coats in the pantry. It's not like we just slap them around for everything etc. DS did get aggressive last year at school. He got mad and slapped his aide in the face. He then got really sad, he put his hand out to her and rubbed her face, very softly and started to cry. We have reinforced hugs and kisses to get what he wants and we let it work so he doesn't go back to aggressive behavior. He is almost 4 and he has just now started to become aggressive with just me it seems like. He will get told no or stop to something he is doing wrong and he will come over and slap me or try to. I have tried time out, spanking his hands (that backfired) and telling him no and that is not OK. It was better today- no slapping- he seemed to do it to me after being at dad's for a few days and away from me. Is this an age appropriate thing- an autism thing due to frustration??? Help!!!  It could be either. I would ignore the hitting, and re-direct him to say something like "I'm mad" (...if I'm remembering correctly, your son is verbal...), if it's just minor hitting right now re-direction might be enough to stop the behavior...he might not imitate it right away, but with consistent redirection, that might be enough.
[QUOTE=babyboy2005]He is almost 4 and he has just now started to become aggressive with just me it seems like. He will get told no or stop to something he is doing wrong and he will come over and slap me or try to. I have tried time out, spanking his hands (that backfired) and telling him no and that is not OK. It was better today- no slapping- he seemed to do it to me after being at dad's for a few days and away from me. Is this an age appropriate thing- an autism thing due to frustration??? Help!!! [/QUOTE] dose he have langue .i would remove him from you everytime he hit you an not pay attt to him say nothing .after awhile he will learn this is not ok .or you can say no hitting you need to use your words .some of it is normal age stuff 3 an 4 years hit when they get frusted they dont have the langue to allways express what bugging them .an it can be some of the autism ,.if he only hitting you when he not getyting his way that a nt thing has nothing to do with autism .all kids do stuff like that when thdey are mad .one of my neices was a biter an she nt ,.not everything your child dose is from the autism sometimes it just being a kidHittin him could be feeding into a sensory thing.I know my son when he was young, when he did something like your son, received exactly what you gave your son.After a while, he would come to me and say "smack me" I knew then it was sensory, it did not take too long to figure that out, so now removing myself from the situation i.e. meltdowns seems to make them shorter..go and figure..my self esteem is in the gutter..because I want so much to help him but I make matters only worse. By the way it is a heavy input he wants, he hates light like hand lotion, but loves it when his brother would crack his knuckles...of course that does not happen any more.We had a similar issue at age 3 / 4. We extinguished it using time outs (book 1-2-3 magic). I know you mentioned that you tried time outs and it didn't work. Do you mind me asking how long you tried? One thing I've found with my son is that it takes much longer, especially when he was younger, for techniques to work. We did the 1-2-3 magic approach to time outs consistently for over a month (multiple times per day) in response to hitting before we saw the behavior start to change. My son is a people person and not one of those kids who is happy off in his own world so he did not like time outs. And at that age, a time out meant locked in his room for 5 minutes because getting him to sit on a stool was not a possibility. (Note: I would sit quietly in the hallway so I could hear him the whole time so he was in no danger locked in the room.) For weeks it felt like what I was doing had no impact, but eventually over a period of months of consistency the behavior extinguished. One of my key mistakes I made in the beginning with my son was giving up too soon. I'm a pretty action oriented immediate gratification type of gal so when I'd try something a few times with no reaction, I'd give up on that approach and try something else. I was constantly switching tactics trying to find something that worked right away and I finally learned - with alot of coaching from our therapists - that nothing was going to work right away LOL and that slow and steady would win the race. |
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