Help me help manage my 6yo - possible asd

[Sprookjesbos]

Hi all.

My son is 6, almost 7. We are almost certain he is autistic - we have not started a pathway to diagnosis. Although we have always had some areas of difficulty with him, I feel like things suddenly escalated with him around the time he turned 6. Since then I would honestly say life with him has become harder with each month that passes. At the same time, he's becoming older, so he's sort of 'aged out ' of things like tantrums/ daily meltdowns being typical. Both things have happened in tandem and I've gone from having a child a year ago that only just got his Early Years Goal for self regulation (his teacher wavered on it but ultimately decided he did meet whatever that target is) to having a child that I feel is wildly out of step with his peers in this area.

We are being supported by our local authority 's education inclusion family advisor. It isn't a lot of help if I'm honest - a lot of what she's suggesting, we are doing already.

School are little help - he is fine in school. He is working above age related in all areas and rarely shows any problem behaviours in school. I think school think I'm either useless or mad when I suggest he might need support.

I'm not sure what's next for us but have a couple of specific questions I thought Mumsnet might be able to help with.

1. is it in any way usual for neurodiverse traits to suddenly escalate/ emerge rapidly at this point in childhood?

2. one of our biggest challenges right now is the complete inflexibility in his thinking. He can only see things from his own point of view. If he, for example, hurts me or his sister through his own actions, but he didn't mean to hurt us, he will furiously insist he has done nothing wrong because his intention wasn't bad so it doesn't warrant an apology. This sort of thing happens all the time because he is so lacking in awareness of others - he stands on our feet constantly, hugs too hard, will not respond to a request to stop something we can see is dangerous if he is focussed on doing it (like he just filters us out). He becomes so angry if his actions result in others being upset/ annoyed, which then escalates everything. Does anyone have any advice on how to best parent this?

I feel so lost at the moment. I feel like I've lost the boy I knew and I've got this stranger I don't know how to parent. Currently on holiday and his behaviour has been impossible. It is taking 90% of me and my husband's collective energy to keep him in a calm and happy place each day and I feel so unbelievably guilty about the impact on my poor daughter who gets what's left. I would greatly appreciate any words of wisdom/ understanding!

Hopeful bump for the morning crowd 🙏

My 5yo has exactly the same issues you describe. We are frequently getting lots of tears and rage after he hits us (well me actually) and very inflexible about stopping activities. Transitions are very hard.

I do suspect autism but we also have physical issues going on. He has sleep problems and I've noticed the rages he flies into are almost always because he's hungry. He's fed well but seems to need far more that my other DC! He also never wants to focus or stay at the table so his meals are often left. So one thing we are focusing on is lots of protein snacks available. My ds also has hearing problems.

I guess what I'm saying is if I were you I'd take him for a full gp check up, blood tests (anemia is an issue for us), hearing test etc. As well as pursuing and autism assessment.

Yes it is normal for neurodiverse traits to be sudden more obvious.

What happens is that the neurotypical children develop and leave stages behind. So you can't easily tell if a three year old having meltdowns if nt or nd. But the nt child grows out of that stage and moves on while the nd child doesn't.

So the nd child (can) look just like they have having slightly worse tantrums than a normal child - but they continue on past the normal developmental stage.

It's one of the reasons (less severe) nd is easier to spot as they get older as the meltdowns etc continue while others move on in their development.

With respect to the inflexibility in thinking, we taught social things explicity.

We told him that you apologise when someone else is hurt whether you meant to or not, and modelled it on a regular basis. We did a lot of apologising to each other around that time. We even apologised to the cat for stepping on its tail.

He was (fairly) happy to accept that and we moved on.

I can recommend social stories as something to look into.

@wantavespa thank you. I had considered a GP visit as a first port of call anyway. Maybe I'll just bite the bullet and make an appointment. It's difficult because DS is intelligent and questioning - I couldn't just take him to the GP 'for a Checkup ' for example or he would obsess over why. Tbh I could probably do that with my 9yo DD and she'd just go with it! Could I make an appointment to discuss him without him being there?

@Octavia64 thanks so much for this perspective. I absolutely agree with what you say I that he has continued with behaviours that his same age peers have left behind. In addition to that though, he has changed. We have new levels of rage and aggression, particularly verbal. So now for example he will try to hurt with words where before he would just cry. Maybe this is because he's older and more verbally capable but then I think he easily had the vocabulary for it a couple of years ago.

He is also way, way more rigid. It's almost as if he now feels he matches us in terms of intellect/ knowledge so questions everything we do and every decision we make.

Thanks so much for your thoughts on apologising etc. This is the road we've taken so far and I haven't known if this was the right thing or not. An example - we were out at a theme park yesterday (overwhelming environment for sure, not ideal for him). His sister nudged him off a bench because he was sitting too close to her. He screamed that she pushed him. Before I could intervene and sort out the issue between them he said "she just did this!" And then demonstrated what she did by thumping her so hard on the back she cried out and everyone around heard the smack. My and his dad were furious. We sat him down and told him that violence was completely unacceptable and he needed to apologise to his sister immediately and not do it again. He refused, sobbing that he didn't hit her, he pushed her because she pushed him first. I got down on is level and told him he wouldn't move from the bench he was sitting on until he had apologised for hitting his sister. He sat there with his dad for a full hour. I took his sister off to look round the shop etc. He eventually relented when DH pointed out to him his time to go on the rides he wanted was ticking away and that we weren't going to give in - he wouldn't the allowed to continue with his day until he apologised. He the came and apologised and we all moved on.

I know I don't need to tell you how exhausting it is!