Asd/adhd discipline

[Nimblepimble]

Hi all, I have an undiagnosed clearly autistic & adhd child (my best friend has confirmed both & is head of sen at a different school) he’s on waiting list for private assessment after years of waiting on nhs. He is 12.

Today is his birthday, he woke up at 4am (classically over excited) and tiredness is a major trigger for meltdowns so I knew it was coming. We got him a new bmx, some pens, a book some sweets and a ps5 game.

he immediately got annoyed about younger siblings asking for a sweet - screamed at them both called them
idiots etc.

he then said he was going out on his bike - I said it was tooo early, too wet & the tires needed pumping. He called me an idiot etc and went out on his bike regardless. Immediately fell over scraped his knuckles, comes back in screaming saying I’ve ruined his birthday and he hates me. He looked his dad square in The eye and said “ I wish you’d just die”

continued to a scream and cry for 35 minutes calling me an idiot and how I don’t care about him.

I don’t know how to handle this as I am not sure what’s autism related and what’s pure bad behaviour.

If you are a parent of asd/adhd child how would you have handled it? What discipline would you have put in place?

@drspouse I was only commenting on what the OP said about her son's behaviour on the day of his birthday.

Overexcited, people saying no to what he desperately wanted to do, no appreciation of why they were saying no, frustration, unmet expectations, accident and meltdown. It's a pretty typical spiral in my experience with children and young people with ASD/ADHD combination.

My advice to the OP is to look at the National Autistic Society website on distressed behaviour. It's not my turn of phrase, it's theirs. And I've found it to be a very helpful lens to view what can happen with my own son.

The SEND Tribunal (ie the Special Needs Court) also accepts the concept of distressed behaviour in autism and adhd and its role in behaviours leading to the high number of school exclusions amongst children with these disabilities.

I've been through my own hell year on all those fronts with DS2.

I am not saying no discipline. I am saying you have to understand the disability and the reasons for the distressed behaviour (a) to be able to cope with its high demands (b) to find techniques that more effective than a Victorian scold / punishment system.

We tried all of the old school stuff. It didn't work. It often made things worse.

I agree that my DS behaviour is sometimes due to distress (not always).
I disagree that the way to tell if it is, is to see if he's upset by what he did to others when it's over.

Thank you so much PostItInABook for taking the time to respond to my post. It really means a lot to me to start to gather that kind of understanding of what might be going on in my DD’s mind. I really appreciated that you have shared your take on it. Thanks.

Response to ASimpleLampoon
How is that last comment helpful? If someone's on here asking for help they are probably at their wits end. Just so unnecessary.