Challenging behaviour in 8 year old, is punishment appropriate?

[windyorwhat]

I have an 8 year old son who has suspected adhd or autism and is waiting assessment, we also suspect pda as he is very defiant.

Lately he has started urinating on things when he is angry, some examples are when his dad said he couldn’t have something he went into our room and urinated in his dad’s slippers.
He urinates on his bedroom carpet and if we make him clean it up he will refuse, he also urinated on his clothes, this is new behaviour that has just started in the last few weeks but is escalating to every day.
He has now started to use it as a threat and say if he doesn’t get to stay up or whatever he’s asking to do he will go and wee on his carpet.
How do I handle this? It is absolutely deliberate.

Our initial response was to talk to him about it but he has been quite honest and said it’s revenge when I’m angry with you.

This sounds incredibly difficult. You might get more responses on the SEN boards on here.

I think you have two options - one is go so absolutely nuclear that he is afraid to do it again and the other is the total opposite and not give him the reaction he wants. "I'll wee on my carpet" - "oh, that's a pity, your room / clothes will smell like a toilet. I expect that will be horrible to sleep in."

I'd go to the GP and ask for an urgent referral to CAMHS, they don't have a great reputation but they can sometimes help. And have a look at the PDA groups on Facebook which can be very helpful. Although this sounds more ODD than PDA (not that I'm a psychologist, just a SEN parent)

I think I would try a combination of letting it wash over you and natural consequences.

So, absolutely no reaction. But also not washing his clothes for him. Explaining the he can't have X because you've had to spend the money on buying new slippers or he can't go to Y because you've got to go shopping for new slippers instead. So consequences, but all delivered incredibly calmly.

This is what I'd like to try, but tbh I have to say my immediate reaction would likely be to go absolutely mental!

Thanks for your reply, yes those were the two things I was unsure of, going in with harsh punishment every time or by not giving him attention for it hoping he doesn’t carry on if he’s not getting a reaction.

I also should have mentioned that he shares a bedroom with his older brother so this is very distressing for him as he doesn’t tell anyone when he’s done it and it’s usually when his brother goes in and tells me there’s another wet patch on the floor.

You cannot stop washing his clothes as a punishment, that would be negligent and abusive and would be noted by any adults he came into contact with and lead to safeguarding conversations.

You need to deal with the emotion, not the consequence of the emotion. He's angry. Why? Talk to him about his anger. It's ok for him to be angry. Help him express it in other ways. Screaming, boxing, martial arts, excercising, etc. When is his anger justified? What part of it are you responsible for? Are you punitive? Are you too easy going? Are you unreliable? Or inconsistent with rules and expectations? Too reactive? Are you trying to be a friend and not a parent? Do you need to find your own therapy or parenting classes? Work on yourselves as parents if you need to. Has he suffered abuse or domestic violence? Has he witnessed any? I agree, get him into CAMHS, or find him private therapy.

I have a child with autism who is now older.

the problem with punishment here is that your child may see this as simply a way to behave. My dc did this for a while.

so his mental model was - when I do something mum and dad don’t like they punish me and this is meant to stop he doing it.

so he applies this to himself - mum and dad are doing something I don’t like so I will punish them and they will stop doing it.

obviously it doesn’t work in either direction terribly well but when you have two sides both behaving like that it can escalate very very fast.

my dc was about ten when he started doing this and you might be surprised how deeply deeply unpleasant his “punishments” can be.

you are probably better off trying to work on identifying emotions (so he knows when he is angry) and teaching him better ways of interacting with people.

so for example one thing you could do is talk through reasons for something so that he doesn’t get angry at srbitrary rules.

so for example - we don’t eat and drink in the bedrooms because it makes a mess and then it needs to be cleaned up. The kitchen and dining room get messy during dinner time and mummy has to clean that up.

then if he says about wanting food upstairs you repeat again WHY the rule is in place, and maybe offer an alternative (would you like your snack in the garden? It doesn’t matter if that gets messy)

this won’t fix things immediately (nothing will) but it helps build up reasons why people do things (which helps with theory of mind) and it also means he doesn’t slip into mummy and daddy are stopping me getting what I want because they hate me so I’lll punish them.

incidentally, on the wee I highly recommend a vax carpet cleaner. Does a great job.