Do you “let” your kids speak to you like shit

My DS hardly speaks to strangers which gives him limited opportunity to be rude to them!

Do not let it go. It is easier to correct and guide now than when they are 15. I work with teens and when they have been allowed to do this their whole lives they think they can do it to everyone. This impacts on school, college, friendships -
everything.

If he is fine in public then he DOES know what right.

My son has asd and autism and is nearly 19. He has turned into a lovely boy with me, though can still be rude and abrupt. He was very hard work when he was younger.

The thing that worked for me is working on our relationship. It's really easy to be trapped into a negative spiral. Do fun stuff together and have a laugh doing things you enjoy.

On the bad stuff you don't always have to do consequences - I hate those parenting books - so unrealistic if you have a kid who is naughty 50 times a day - talk about a negative cycle. Just tell them off and move on - consequences if they swear at you or are violent. And lead by example. Speak kindly, no swearing etc with adults in the house.

It's hard isn't it

My child said she was going to kill me the other day.
I'm confident she wasn't going to but I can't seem to stop these bad things coming out of her sometimes.

Following in case there's anything useful

The thing to do is to talk to him when he’s ok, point out it would be scary if he were still doing this when he’s bigger, and ask how you can work together to manage it better.

He might like to-
burn off his frustration bouncing on a trampoline
have loud music through headphones
tear up cardboard boxes
go for a run/walk if there’s anyone to go with him
use a punch bag (though not if he already gets physical)
have a pillow fight.
swing/hang
blow up and then pop balloons- if he does it himself, puts a sweet or a treat in before knotting it, then has to burst it by sitting/squeezing etc- no sharp things allowed.

It can be hard to find the time for these kinds of activities, but they help with regulation and are a key priority.

Do stand your ground: continue to correct and model. Don't give up. Always mention an alternative way to phrase or kinder tone of voice. It's exhausting but not pushing back, however gently, indicates acceptance.

I also do my best to ignore the threats like you describe and do what PP said about trying to connect. We were signposted to various groups and parent support after getting the diagnosis - have you got anything like that?

ASD 8 year old here who is also very annoyed by younger sibling some of the time. I ignore a lot of the lack of politeness or gently correct and model like did I hear you say please can I have X. DH pulls him up more and they can end up in a bit of a battle which is not helpful for anyone. I am also aware of the constant criticism and try to make sure we aren't doing that so there is a good relationship and that is more important to me than if DS is blunt or not particularly polite

Oh dear. Unless he’s actually acquiring weapons, then what he’s doing is communicating distress- rage, frustration etc.

You need to answer the message not the words, if you see what I mean.

So I’d say something like
oh dear, your obviously having a really bad day, you must be really cross and frustrated to say such an awful thing. Do you want to tell me about it? Can I help you feel better? What do you need to help you relax and calm down because that’s a yucky way to feel!

I know your instinct is to match or even exceed his energy, by being louder and angrier to make him back down, or be openly tearful and distressed at how horrid he’s being.
That doesn’t make him feel safe though, and won’t change his behaviour.

Are you getting support anywhere? I know it’s tough.

OK it did still make sense - as not that many posts in between.

Sorry, I started writing this this morning and then haven't got back to it until now, so some of this might be irrelevant/thread may have moved on but I wanted to finish it anyway.

YY to not everything is PDA - according to MN so much is which was making me feel a bit frustrated, but recently listened to a couple of podcasts (SENDCast) with Clare Truman as a guest and she explained PDA really really well and I do think a lot of what gets touted as PDA online isn't really PDA - it could be demand avoidance, which everyone experiences to some extent, but demand avoidance by itself is not necessarily PDA. I think sometimes people do use "demand avoidance" and PDA interchangeably online, which doesn't help.

I think the logical consequences argument is interesting because I can absolutely see - it sort of "feels" intuitively right, and I used to be quite a fan of this idea, but lately I've come around to thinking that actually, the point of a logical consequence is not usually repair or education, it's supposed to be at least mildly aversive, similar to time out/loss of privilege etc. (e.g. logical consequence of not coming off game console at pre-agreed time = lose access to console for the next day). So the point of it is still to be something DC wish to avoid, and essentially they are going to experience it the same, and it's going to have the same effect, as a generic punishment. Yes, it might be that DC are slightly more agreeable to it because they see it as fairer than e.g. not coming off console = loss of pocket money/extra chore, but that's about it in terms of benefits. (And you can achieve this in other ways anyway).

Logical consequences also have one really big flaw which is that in theory you are supposed to tailor them to each individual incident, which means, a lot of the time, making up a consequence on the fly. This can be a problem because in the heat of the moment, most people go too harsh, or too long. In order to be effective, you actually want consequences to be fairly minor because the effectiveness of them doesn't increase with how harsh they are, (except that if the child is genuinely afraid then you will tend to get immediate compliance in that moment - this however has no ongoing effect to change behaviour, and has a lot of negative effects, so not recommended.)

And if you take it out of the moment and say OK, you're getting a consequence but I need to decide what it is, that's not ideal either, because you're taking the consequence away from the moment which hugely loosens the link that it has to reinforce that behaviour. It can also be scary for a child because they don't know if you're going to impose something very harsh or not. And I think it's confusing for parents - there is a thread every week asking "What's the logical consequence for X?"

So there is an argument for saying actually, it makes a lot more sense to have a generic, decided-in-advance minor and token punishment which can be used if you're going to use consequences, because it allows a parent who might be under quite some strain against a child who is really pushing their buttons to calmly and rationally respond with something that isn't going to be totally OTT and therefore be interpreted as raising the stakes/further conflict.

This.

We 'didn't allow it' with ds. Typical behaviour management techniques worked well.

A whole other story for dd. She's currently pretty well regulated and a delight to be around. But she transitions to Y3 in Sept and I'm expecting all hell to break loose, so we have to plan for the worst (school avoidance, clothing sensitivity, lots of swearing furious shouting from her). It was our insistence on 'not allowing it' in the early days that resulted in repeated escalations and incendiary responses. Until we worked out that our neurotypical response strategy would not/ could not work with her.

Dd is 7 and the same. But with her, she's basically a good girl, knows how to behave, is polite and loving etc unless she's stressed. It's like an impulsivity tic and is closely tied to how she's feeling and whether she's having sensory overload as a result. Because I understand her and know the signs, I'm beginning to let a lot of it go in the heat of the moment. So when she calls me dickhead, idiot or some other insult, I simply walk away. When she's in a calm state we talk about how she felt, how it made her react, how it made me feel, what she could have done differently when she noticed herself feeling uptight (a challenge, as she often doesn't recognise it until it's too late).

Dd is also time blind. Loads of visual aids - calendars, countdown clocks etc. She totally gets 'first this, then this' - she just doesn't always grasp how long 'this' takes and that causes her time management issues, then she gets stressed about the time pressure.

I have a tip OP.

Praise your DS when he can't hear you (but actually he can).

DS: wanders off to watch TV.

You: DH did I tell you, this morning DS was really helpful with...

My DD cannot deal with being praised to her face.

@BreakingAndBroke you are my new role model. Borrowing those!!

I dont let things slide, but I don't always shout. I've had some sass from my kids and some of the things i do to respond are:

"Try again"

"What's a better way to say that?"

look around dramatically behind furniture etc then ask "who are you talking to? Who are you speaking to like that? I know you aren't speaking to me like that"

Copy their tone of voice/volume/attitude and say something like "IS THIS YOUR NEW VOICE? DO WE ALL HAVE TO TALK LIKE THIS?"

(Be warned though, he's very no nonsense, you won't get any "oh just don't make demands on them").

Extremely good value. There are live office hours and he answers questions on the message boards too. There are quite a few UK families on the message board too (though it's usually him or his assistant answering questions, occasionally e.g. a UK parent will answer a question for a UK family).

He says anything digital is useless (and we also found things like those red/green timers where they don't actually count down to be useless too). DS had one TA that used to give him 2 minutes screen time and use a timer that had no numbers and of course he went bananas when it got to zero!

To posters saying you just “don’t allow it” (reinforcing with “do not speak to your mum like that, apologise”): this is exactly what we do.
But for one of our children this makes no difference when they’re in a certain state (Our other child has never been close to rude or defiant).
It’s not like parents of ND/challenging children are blithely allowing their kids to speak to them like crap. If a stern “do not speak to your mother like that” worked we’d all have no issues!

I have used every approach described on this thread: verbal tellings off, consequences/sanctions, a firm but non-reactive “do not speak to me like that, let’s try again when you can be polite.”
And often it works, often we go for months and months with no rudeness (albeit some low level defiance).
But when DD is a dysregulated mess and struggling to get to school let alone anything else, we do get rudeness at times. That’s why this thread has been really helpful in ways parents have approached it.

Assuming you “don’t allow it” just because temperamentally it seems enough for your child to be told “we don’t do this” isn’t particularly helpful in this context. The OP isn’t allowing it either but looking into what’s the most effective strategy, in the context of a child who has behaviours that can induce almost constant “don’t do that” responses.