AIBU - Son with ASD hit his Grandad!

[Vixen884]

I don't post on here often but I'm an avid reader and now looking for advice as I am fizzing inside! This could be long to include relevant info so sorry in advance.

My son has Asperger's, he is 12 and is generally very well behaved and loving. He does have a temper when pushed or feeling over whelmed, we as a family recognise this and know how to avoid outburst etc Discipline is always a discussion on his behaviour, followed by a punishment like no computers etc.

So anyway recently he has not been wanting to stay with Grandparents (they go frequently to help with childcare during holidays etc) due to how they treat him, he says they favour his sisters and he's always getting into trouble....So for example if he says to his little sister ' She has no brain' as siblings do bicker! They will tell him he's stupid and he has no brain, instead of saying 'That's not nice, how do you think that makes your sister feel? etc'. He takes this very literally and it's been building up to a point where today he was apparently called stupid for the 3rd or 4th time over a few days and he has lashed out and hit his Grandad as he felt so frustrated. He is a big boy for 12 and incredibly strong when angry so I think he gave his Grandad a fright who is also a big guy and not a frail man in the slightest. I'm just going to add in here as well that his Grandad is a very jokey person and it probably sounds worse here than how its meant to come across, I think his aim is to make my son feel the way his sisters do by saying the same to him but it doesn't work for someone who takes things literally and not in the jokey/hidden message way.

I have talked it out with the kids and have come to the conclusion that the Grandparents are well out of order for how they are punishing him. My son has been told by us there will be a punishment for him hitting his Grandad and he needs to apologise as its not acceptable at all! But AIBU to be angry at the Grandparents for not taking the time to understand his Asperger's and adjusting their discipline methods? Today after my son hit his Grandad, a passing comment was made to my daughter about how her brother was going to get knocked out?!?! WTF I am so angry, I just want to know I am not being soft and unreasonable before I have this out with some already difficult to deal with inlaws?

Thanks

Hi OP I am sorry for this situation and I don't think you will like my thoughts, but here we go.

I think IMHO that you need to be careful here how you speak to your inlaws about this incident. You are very angry with them and I feel it is very unfair. Either teach them how to deal with his behaviour, and allow them to look after him, or stop them having the looking after him contact.

Your MIL may have been a child minder before but I doubt if she was looking after a 12 year old and presumably she is a bit older now and may feel this is very hard work. If you go in very angrily you may find they both feel very unhappy about the situation.

I do not agree with the way they are handling the situation but to be honest compared to being hit their behaviour does not seem so terrible, especially as your son has used the same language on one (or both) sister/s.

Personally, I'd be hugely upset if me or my husband were hit by a 12 year old boy. And I'd most likely not want to have sole charge of him again after that.

My dd is most likely on the spectrum and we handle her behaviour in a certain way. She is not aggressive to others (aside from me very occasionally). My inlaws rarely look after the kids, maybe 5 days a year. And they manage fine but their expectations are quite low I think!

I think the banter needs to stop, on all sides. Because if your son does hit another person due to getting upset, it could lead to serious consequences, and you don't seem to be fully acknowledging that. I've had to work through dd's anger and I know it is hard so I am totally understanding how you feel this could have been avoided but maybe take this as a warning that you need to step up addressing how your son handles difficult situation.

I think the knocked out comment was what might happen from another person. I've had to tell ds (7) that if he keeps making fists at people he may get hit. It doesn't mean I will hit him!

I also notice your son doesn't want to go to their house or be looked after by them, could his anger have in any way been calculated to put a stop to the visits? Could you talk to him about the visits and manage them better, maybe he could stay in his room or whatever and the Grandparents be encouraged not to take the kids out too much, so your son has his own space?

I agree with others you need a support network and you need if possible to help your son with coping strategies for times when he does feel overwhelmed.

Anyway, all the very best, it sounds tough but I feel sure you will manage it well.

Sorry I've realised you said Grandparents but I think you said inlaws somewhere too, apologies if not.

OP also says her DS "throws insults around" and "often gets told off for insulting his sisters". That does sound somewhat like sibling bickering- but still not ideal and something I would try to minimise.

Accepting that it is more difficult to navigate this in your DS due to his ASD, I do think there is an issue if he can happily give insults but takes any such reply/use of same term as a grave insult. I understand it's not as easy as "just teach him not to do or say x, y, z" but I really would worry that at some point he's going to end up with difficulties if he engages in "banter" and "insulting" others, but then takes others doing the same to him so literally, and this this makes him very angry and upset. So, personally, I wouldn't be making excuses along the lines of "sibling bickering".

I can see why the McDonalds situation was handled badly- no teen (even NT) want to be told that they look stupid while they are in public.

I think that the people who brought up the banter are right. If he understands that banter is light-hearted then he must be ok with his sisters saying insults like he has no brain because it's "just banter."

You say he has a temper but you know how to avoid outbursts. This is perhaps not teaching him how to behave as an adult in society and not end up the wrong side of the law

I haven't a clue about Aspergers, so I wouldn't know how you go about it, but this is essential. I have experience of violent men and it is terrifying. I think there is an element, especially with the male of the species, where sadness, hurt, frustration, etc all come out as anger.

Oh op, I so empathise with you, my ten-year-old ds is also autistic and he would react in exactly the same way if he was repeatedly being called stupid. I do think that you or your dh need to discuss with the grandparents (depending on whose parents they are) that whilst you are horrified that your ds has lashed out at his gf, it is absolutely not ok to be repeatedly calling your ds stupid! That is akin to emotional abuse and my dh is a walking, talking now NC with his parents example of the destruction that those words can cause! My dh had absolutely zero confidence in himself and has only slowly rebuilt that confidence since going NC with his parents.

How is your ds's relationship normally with his grandparents? As with the current situation, I would be stopping contact for at least long enough for your inlaws /dp to look further into autism and causes of behavioural issues. As well as time for you to work with your ds and dd's to work out any triggers/ causes that may have contributed to the outburst and a chance to help your ds think of ways he can articulate his distress rather than physical violence. (At twelve, I imagine his hormones are causing havoc, my ds has started puberty early and we have had to almost start over again, as the strategies and aids that had previously helped our ds, are no longer working. We had three years with no meltdowns and hormones are definitely playing a role in our ds's new difficulties).

My ds thinks in pictures rather than words, that means that the inner monologue or filter that protects most people from the sometimes awful thoughts that pop into their heads, doesn't exist. Unfortunately, this gets my son into trouble. He can hurt the feelings of people he loves without actually meaning to. Thankfully, we home educate and my dd, my dp's and DB's are all aware of this, we still stop ds and explain how hurtful that his comment was and why. This gives ds the chance to apologise and fix the situation, he is mostly horrified when he learns he has hurt the feelings of his loved ones.

My Dad has read several books on autism, however, my Mum has sight problems and benefited more from attending courses on behaviour management etc which were run by the National Autistic Society. There are lots of courses on autism ran throughout the UK and I do think it would help your parents and in-laws if they could attend one. They seem to be unaware of both your ds's literal thinking and his sensory sensitivities, as it sounds like your ds was self-soothing and had pulled his hood up to retreat from the sensory assault that is a bright MacDonalds restaurant. Had my ds been there, he would be vocalising loudly and be stimming constantly. We have discreet ear defenders, a hoody and sunglasses that ds can retreat behind when he needs time away from his overwhelmed senses. These help him remain in a painful environment for slightly longer. It would be complete sabotage to remove his stimms/ coping techniques.

I think the issue with the hood is quite important. That’s a fairly typical thing autistic children and adults do to block out the overload the world around them causes. To turn that into an issue and to take the piss isn’t on. If your son doesn’t want to go and you can find a way of logistically getting around it, I wouldn’t make him. Trying to force a relationship on him is more damaging to him than not having one at all.

The lashing out is clear communication. There was likely to have been several warning signs to calm the situation down before it even happened - though I’m generalising.

Aspergers is a bit of a fucker. Often, people with it are held to a higher expectation of behaviour than what they are capable of managing. That’s why the comment someone made about making a blind person see earlier is relevant.

Op whay your d's might see as favoritism might be the gps sticking up for them. If they've known that he picks on them and know that they have to let it slide at times, maybe they just had to step in and make him feel like what he does to his sister's.

It doesn't sound like they are malicious to the children. Do you really think stopping contact is the right thing here?

Sometimes people with autism are held to a higher expectation than they can manage and equally sometimes their potential to learn things is overlooked because of their diagnosis.
Plenty of people with asd are able to learn how to manage their emotions better. Writing that off as an option when you don’t know the person solely based on a diagnosis and a few lines written on an Internet forum is a huge disservice to a lot of people with autism.

What I don't understand is why the GF would think it was remotely acceptable to call DS stupid repeatedly. How is that teaching him to behave differently? All it does is make DS feel crap about himself and trust me, he'll get plenty of that elsewhere. It doesn't sound as if GF has the faintest idea how to treat almost-teenagers, let alone ones on the spectrum.
And I think a lot of posters on here need to understand that it can be very difficult for autistic people, especially children, to put their feelings into words so they (we) get all this built-up frustration that eventually comes out physically. I'm not saying it's acceptable but it happens and although sometimes it can ease with age as you learn coping mechanisms, it doesn't happen for everyone. OP has obviously come up with coping mechanisms that work at home, hence why DS doesn't struggle so much there. Hopefully she can, over time, help DS to come up with others for different situations, but it's a continual lifelong process for many of the spectrum. I'm still learning ways of coping better with different aspects of life and I'm in my 40s.

Comparing teaching skills to kids with asd to teaching a blind child to see is basically saying it is pointless though.
No-one is saying that the op must teach her child these skills by the end of the week or even year. As a parent of a child with asd who has managed to teach her child a number of things that have not come easily to him I’m well aware it often takes years. All the more reason to start early imo.

Children really don’t learn to leap over gaps in their development by punishing them or telling them or their parents that they “really need to learn this”

I'm sure you are right, but then again, if we don't or can't teach them tactics to deal with their emotions in a non-violent way, they will become a danger to society.

And zzzzzzz your dismissive response of ‘oh we’ll just teach the asd out of our kids then’ when I suggested working on emotional regulation was uncalled for.
Of course you can’t teach the asd out of people. But parents and mainstream and specialist schools will teach certain social skills, calming techniques etc. Maybe they are all wasting their time and trying to teach the asd out of kids? Or maybe - while some things will be more difficult to learn and people with asd will always have some difficulties with social interaction, communication and imagination a lot can learn skills that will make their lives easier.
You obviously have your own reason for jumping down my throat for what you described yourself as obvious advice so I will leave you to it.

But then equally dangerous to society are the people who are aware someone has a disability and prods and pokes at them.

I was called into school near the end of last term. My son had pushed someone over at playtime and had missed breaks because of it. I was fine with that because he cannot do that. When talking to my son about it and suggesting apologising to the child he said that he shouldn’t have got right up in his face and started shouting loudly. So the autistic child is learning not to push because ta wrong and there will be consequences, and the child who gets into people’s faces and shouts loudly learns that if he does that there’s a risk he will get shoved back. Two important life lessons as far as I’m concerned.

If your DS cannot cope with being called stupid without assaulting the person saying it, then as a very minimum he needs not to learn to say it to other people who are likely to call him a name back!!

I am a little concerned about the effect all this is having on his sisters.

Not really though because it’s not against the law to invade someone’s personal space. If your son had shouted back at the other child I’d say fair enough they brought that on themselves. But we do need to teach that violence is never ok imo. Unless it’s necessary because you are being physically assaulted yourself.

For starters DS called them stupid at the GPs home and not at the OP's. Secondly that sort of name-calling is typical between siblings - they need to develop their own responses. Thirdly, it's completely different when an ADULT does it to a child and in situations different to the DS doing it. The GF wasn't trying to teach DS that name-calling between siblings is wrong, he was belittling him - at best it says that name-calling is fine because GF does it, at worst DS ends up with self-esteem issues. In neither case does DS learn appropriate behaviour, and nor do DDs.

This thread shows how little some people understand autism, and worse, how unwilling they are to learn. And I'm not talking about the GPs.

I always teach that violence is wrong. But shouting directly in someone’s face is asking for trouble.

Despite his temper, he is keeping it in and not lashing out in school where he is surrounded by his teenage peers. But he is not managing to keep it in with his grandfather. So the grandfather is where the immediate problem lies.

As for warning signs, OP you may need to pay attention to what he's been telling you. It may not be the literal truth that his grandparents were favouring his sister or telling him off all the time but that's how he sees it and the fact that he was even saying it makes his unhappiness very clear. Discipline and expectations are inconsistent between your house and his grandparents and that's a flashpoint in itself. I would not be angry with the grandparents, they're probably feeling very shaken. But I would be re-thinking these childcare arrangements. Maybe it would be better for DDs to go the grandparents alone so they get a break from their brother.

Hitting is wrong whether or not you have Aspergers. Children all need to learn to deal with the fact that not everyone is going to make allowances. If he is going to function in the adult world he needs to learn to control his temper.

The blond comparison is incorrect because no one is expecting blond people to be able to see. But blind people do have devices, guide dogs, brail, talking books etc etc which help them cope with the difficulties of not seeing. So learning to cope with whatever difficulties one has is part of life.

It is, I am sure, much much harder for some. But there does not really seem to be any way round it.