10 year old Is this the beginning of self harming?

[Anothernamevariant]

Ds has mild aspergers, he gets frustrated when things don't go the way he'd like, he struggles to deal with his emotions, he's not violent, he internalises a lot of his feelings.

He has told me that he has hit himself to control his anger and frustration he has felt in this past. We talked about it and we talked about him being kinder to himself and how he could talk to me if he thought that would help. He promised not to hurt himself again.

That was a few months ago, then yesterday he was getting frustrated about a 2 min talk he has to prepare for school, I had helped him edit it for flow and ease of delivery but he found the whole process overwhelming and while I was making the dinner, he went upstairs and cried his eyes out - I had no idea he was so upset about it. We talked again and he said he was annoyed with himself because he knew that crying wasn't going to help and he had wanted to hurt himself to help him deal with the anger, he didn't but I'm worried that he is thinking about hurting himself as solution to his problems - I have no idea where is came from and I really don't know what to do for the best.
I don't want to over react and make a big thing of it, just in case drawing attention to it makes it worse, I'm not sure what I should be doing....he seems happy in his life, I don't think there's an underlying problem other than the pressure he puts on himself at times.

Would welcome some advice.

[misscph1973]

Sounds frustrating, but I think you are doing the right things. What we give attention, we get more off. He will probably be better after he has given the talk.

Can I just ask how you manage the Aspergers? It's just that I have been reading a lot about the role diet in relation to disorders like Aspergers lately and I am curious to hear what parents do.

[Anothernamevariant]

His Aspergers is mostly mild and he is in the fortunate position that he has learned how to behave in situations. We notice it comes in waves though and we are currently going through a massive dip, after a period of rapid progress, it seems stress related, the only thing I can think of is the KS2 Sats - the school are a bit obsessed with results.

We have removed gluten and sugar from his diet, we did it for a month but it had no effect on his behaviour at all. But in general he eats a pretty clean diet....everything is cooked from scratch and he only eats a small amount of bread anyway.