Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

Chat

Join the discussion and chat with other Mumsnetters about everyday life, relationships and parenting.

Flip

1 2

Original poster

How to separate out the autism from the ‘naughty’ behaviour?

28 replies

Thunderclapped · 13/09/2025 18:16

DS is 6 and probably autistic. We’ve had a great summer where I thought he’d perhaps outgrown some of his autistic traits but as to be expected a new year at school has him appearing (to me) to be slightly disregulated.

So he’s behaving a bit babyish, baby voice, tiptoes, short temper, hands over ears sometimes. He insists he is loving school and there is nothing that would make it better for him - it’s perfect in his eyes.

But we’ve just had a really mixed day. He struggles in shops but he really wanted to go out to a specific place. We did and bought him a £10 book which he was thrilled with. Then in the supermarket on the way home he had a big meltdown over ‘needing’ to buy a teddy bear. We’re fairly firm with him, we didn’t buy it and were very clear that the behaviour was unacceptable.

But now we all feel a bit crap. I told him he appears spoilt and ungrateful which was probably the wrong thing to sat. Maybe he’s not in control of his impulses and behaviour. But equally maybe he is …

So how do I know what is due to autism and what is due to behaviour which would benefit from firm boundaries - it was verging on the kind of tantrum a 3 year old would have but we just about managed to avoid the screaming and clinging onto shelving units!!

OP posts:

BertieBotts · 14/09/2025 09:15

Thunderclapped · 14/09/2025 07:10

Thank you all for the thoughtful replies. It’s given me a lot to think about.

I think thinking about him as having a much younger emotional ability might be helpful. Sometimes when I’m not worn down I’m very good at empathising with him ‘I wish we could get that but we’ve spent the money, what would you do with it, let’s write it on your birthday list’ etc.

The pocket money thing is perhaps something to revisit. We always did it with a kids debit card which I think made it difficult to imagine. Maybe if I get a load of £ coins so he has a visible representation of the money. And to just let him completely waste it - this is something I find difficult because I know he’ll be disappointed when the moment has passed.

It does work much better with cash IME even though I find this difficult to manage because my own ADHD makes it hard to stay organised with having cash available. Smaller coins are also good and get them counting and adding up. I think for DS and his younger brother, I'm going to make sure they each have a wallet and a safe place to keep money at home so that this is easier to keep track of.

When you say you find it difficult because he'll be disappointed - one of the things my son's doctor said when he was diagnosed was that we should not rescue him when he experiences hard emotions. I thought about this so much because I wasn't sure what she meant but I think this kind of thing is it. I find with DS, because his emotions can really overwhelm him and like a PP described they can get so big that he then can't even take any useful lesson from that experience, I had tried to avoid situations or shield him from things that would be disappointing or (more so with DH) distract him afterwards or "fix" the situation to help him feel better. But actually if he is going to get more pocket money next week - that's not so long to feel disappointed. This has been difficult for me, maybe because I also have ADHD and have so many memories of deep deep emotional experiences I had as a child that adults seemed to dismiss or even be annoyed by. Janet Lansbury's writing has really helped me here - we can accept and empathise with their feelings without needing to fix it or worrying that they can't return to a happy place unless we make it better for them. They can - it takes them longer and they do need our support more than other children. But they don't need us to do anything other than listen and be there and love them.

Where they have trouble connecting past experience to current decision making I think one way to help with this is provide lots and lots of small opportunities to try again so there is always another chance, and lots of practice because they might need more low stakes repetition than other children. And also possibly some role play with the games at home. And then completely outside of either the moment of despair where they regret their choice, or the moment of pressure/excitement where they want to make a choice immediately, sit down and talk about the scenario and come up with a plan, which you try out and then come back to if it doesn't work. Ross Greene explosive child/raising human beings is good for this.

Original poster

Thunderclapped · 14/09/2025 10:45

RobustPastry · 14/09/2025 08:15

Brilliant post. 100%

OP I can really appreciate how hard this must be for you, been there myself. A spiky profile in your child is extremely hard to manage as a parent, it will feel very confounding of your own expectations and experiences, and also is it too complex for most schools to look into deeply enough to be able to really help your child or inform you on what your child might need or might respond to best.

i hope for you that when you have assessments done they will really help your shed light on the situation. I do feel that assessments have been key for me in understanding my child, along with then once i have had the reports and gained some key words from that, seeking out and speaking to a lot of other parents with kids in the same position..I feel that until I had the benefit of a professional description of the strengths and challenges my DC have, I was trying to manage the situation without being able to view the full picture. I was making mistakes like anyone would just chucking ideas around and seeing what sticks

so I’d agree that:

-some things will be skills to practice
-some things will be sensory sensitivities, which means they will always be there and will be heightened in times of stress
-many of the behaviours from our kids that we as parents experience as challenging are heightened by our kids’ anxiety. So if anxiety can be reduced in as many areas of the child’s life as far as possible, by even small contributions (so this obviously includes school, family and friend etc) then this will help reduce overall anxiety.
-reducing anxiety may not be achieved in ways you might expect. For example it could involve involving your kid in lots of exercise, or helping your kid to find the specific types of sensory feedback that works for them.
-your own parenting models and expectations you grew up with might not be reliable guides at all even though as stressed parents that’s usually all we have to learn on when we need to come up with a response and they are a core part of our idea of ourselves as parents.

And all of this is definitely a marathon not a sprint. ‘Put your own other mask on first so you can help others’ is said for a reason. Seek support for you, this is hard. Be kind to yourself.

Show quote history

very much seems like it’s too complex for school to look into so we don’t get much help there and I can see their reasoning. I’ll tell them that he struggles a lot more during school, we had some really big dips last year at home. But they say that he’s doing so well at school there’s nothing they can think to put in place for him.

We will focus on reducing the anxiety and try and find what works for him. He definitely struggles with uncertainty and perhaps after this summer of low demand and calmness we need to dig out the things like the visual timetable etc and just go back to basics.

OP posts:

Original poster

Thunderclapped · 14/09/2025 10:49

Crapola25 · 14/09/2025 08:08

Hey OP my son is almost 5 and diagnosed with ASD at 3. I also find it hard to find the balance of being accommodating letting the things that don't matter slide and having firm boundaries for the things that do but it's really hard. I'm sorry it's taking so long for the assessment as once you're through there should be more support - we have a psychologist that we see regularly for parent coaching and we try new strategies and we see an occupational therapist to help with the sensory issues. I don't take my son to toy shops very often because it's inevitable he has a meltdown because he wants 2 toys and I've said he can have 1. I find with most non ASD kids they will be disappointed but eventually come to accept that they are only having 1 thing. With DS we could spend an hour in the shop, he will have a meltdown, we end up leaving with nothing and he's kicking and screaming. But he doesn't learn from the experience. Each time we go again 9 times out of 10 it's the same thing. And that we find happens in general. He might be home and have a meltdown because the temperature of his dinner is not right, then he will become very angry and throw some toys, the toys get taken away but he's not bothered by the consequence, does not learn to not throw toys. It's really hard to manage. The best advice the psychologist gave was to keep track of melt downs, triggers, what happened before, during, after, time of day, look for patterns and try to avoid the triggers so don't take him to the toy shop if he can't handle it. Also as someone said before I find my son needs me calm to help him regulate so we avoid stressful situations.

This sounds very similar. There’s definitely no obvious learning from past experiences. We would often end up leaving shops where he had a plan to spend birthday money with nothing but a screaming child as he just couldn’t cope! We must have had a full year where we didn’t take him to any shops, we had times were if we had to pass through a shop we’d have to cover his eyes with a hat and carry him through (I hate how any place to visit has a gift shop you must pass through!!).

OP posts:

Flip

1 2