To not want to look after my daughter any more

[Goaheadflameme]

My daughter is 8. She is recently diagnosed with autism. No problems at school but a nightmare at home.

Predictably, being out of the school routine has made her challenging behaviour more challenging. She regularly tells me she hates me, wishes I was dead, that things would be better without me. Everytime
I say something she mocks me. She won’t do anything she is told and consequences are meaningless as she just doesn’t care. Today she has also thrown food round the living room and when I tried to stop this she has violently attacked me multiple times. Previously she has broken my finger and scratched me to the extent that I was hospitalised due to a serious infection in my arm.

I just honestly can’t do it any more. This has been going on for more than two years now. It’s completely ruining me, my relationship with my husband and our family life (we have other children). The violence triggers me so badly due to childhood abuse and I don’t feel safe in my own home.

Do social services take children away in these circumstances?

You think a parent should attack their own small child ,really??

@x2boys I don't think the poster is suggesting that. But I remember my friend whose child was removed asking at a meeting if she could be taught the team teaching restraint they use in broad spectrum schools. It was a hard no. As a) she wouldn't be part of a team b) no witnesses to say that she'd carried out the restraint properly.
So quite often she would have to run away onto the street outside her house for safety and just call the police.

Are you actually arguing that it's ok for parents to physically retaliate against their young, neurodivergent children when they can't regulate and act out physically? That's what you're saying?

At 8 years old, you bodily pick them up, burrito in a blanket if needs be and put them in the car. no ifs, ands or buts. autism is no excuse for shitty behaviou and if the OP cannot cope then it becomes the issue of the LA.

either that or it'll be the OP that ends up in the hospital, and what then?

I think that retaliation and harsher consequenes are well called for, no one likes getting punched and beaten. and i fail to see why everyone is so againt the op having any recourse and having to put up with vile behaviours from her child. If it was an adult, then everyone would be telling her to leave, or to get rid.

But because its a child, the OP has to put up with it - adjust to the child? what utter bullshit

Well i don't think the law would agree with you thankfully if you assault a child you would likely be prosecuted .
And there is a huge difference between a child and an adult
As a parent you have a responsibility towards your children which you don't have to other adults
If you can't see the difference between a disabled 8 year old child and an adult then i don't know what to say.

DS was appalled at the lack of support given to me and his younger sibling once he knee a little bit about it.

You've never done this have you 😂. You do realise one or both of you would be seriously injured before you made it into the car.

FWIW they aren't even allowed to teach parents safe restraint techniques because we are apparently meant to read their cues and stop meltdowns before they happen. I'm sure if you never leave their side, use the toilet, work, have a sibling, chores or errands it might work but otherwise there's still a hell of a lot of meltdowns.

Harsher consequences are ineffective with many ND children, a fact alluded to by the op. They don't work because this is a behaviour modification method used to correct bad behaviour, as opposed to dealing with a stressor that causes a physiological fight or flight response in a child. Too often, parents of ND children are told that their child's behaviour is a product of their bad parenting, such as not applying typical behaviour management systems such as rewards and consequences. In many cases, all these avenues have been exhausted by the parents - indeed the application of harsher consequences exacerbates the problem further.

Further up thread you suggest carrying an 8yo child 'burrito style' to A&E if they won't go willingly. I tried to do this to my 6yo dd to get her to school. It resulted in a car seat broken in half when the seatbelt restraint I'd employed failed spectacularly, followed by the car door flung open as the car started moving, her making a run for it and hiding from me. When I finally retrieved her, she dug her fingernails into my eye socket so hard that she drew blood and left scratches.

I can talk at length about the things that did help her, the things that did eventually work for us. It absolutely was not applying harder consequences and retaliation. My insistence on trying to manage her extreme behaviour in the way recommended by the 'parenting experts' was at least partially to blame.

As soon as I started listening to people who were actually skilled and qualified in understanding children like my daughter, and who recommended strategies that would help regulate her and de-escalate volatile situations, our situation improved immeasurably.

@ClosetBasketCase

Have you tried wrapping a flailing 8 year old in a blanket, getting them in a car and driving safely?
I couldn't even pick my son up when he was 8, never mind carrying him, even when calm.

I think your point is important - what is the effect on siblings, especially if they or others in the house are being physically harmed. But I also wonder what would be your solution? Removing the violent child also has a massive impact - on that child and on the family as a whole.

@Whatafustercluck

Spot on

Ik there’s plenty of advice on this thread but I’d start with getting rl support such as this or other.

You clearly know fuck all about neurodivergent conditions

Yes this is a good post.

I've read some awful advice in my time, but this makes the top 3. It would be hugely irresponsible to attempt to transport an 8 year old "burrito style" in a car.

Clearly you have utter contempt for a dysregulated 8 year old, but surely even you can see how dangerous that would be? Not just to the parent and child, but other road users.

So legally and morally the parents just need to accept being attacked by their child?

What do you suggest exactly punch ,nip ,bite them back?This is whst my son does to me to me but he's severely autistic with severe learning disabilities, he doesn't understand how his actions impact me ,but I'm and adult and I'm not disabled so if I did them same to him I would be arrested and charged with assault
My sons 15 now so I can usually recognise the triggers and use distraction techniques etc but it doesn't always work.

I really don't understand why some posters feel the need to comment on things of which they clearly have less than zero knowledge or experience.
OP, this advice, and other posts by the same poster, are beyond ignorant and wrong. Please completely disregard it.

"Autism is no excuse for shitty behaviour"

Autistic children don't have "shitty behaviour" but their condition can sometimes make their behaviour challenging for various reasons, often beyond the child's and anyone else's control. Learning to manage this is a long road for the child, parents, other caregivers and educators, but it is something that can be learned with good advice, patience and trial and error. And hopefully some outside expert help.
Beating the child up and forcing them restrained into cars is never part of this process; and as for "retaliation and harsher consequences" for an autistic child... I have no words.

It makes me feel quite sick tbh thst some posters think it's OK to assault disabled children ,.

Autistic children(and adults) can have shitty behaviour too. Yes most of the time with children(and often with adults) challenging behaviour will be related to their autism but they do also have these things called personalities and they are as capable or misbehaving or being unpleasant or difficult at times as any child. We aren’t some homogenous mass devoid of personalities or all agency.

It’s clear though that you only value the ND child. Screw anyone else in the household. You clearly don’t think that they matter at all. I’ve seen that attitude on MN many times though so sadly you’re not alone in that. 8 years old and autistic or not, the violence is no less painful, devastating or traumatising for the people being subjected to it. Their body and mind still reacts to it in the same way as if it were an adult.

I hope that residential care won’t be necessary for the OP’s child as there are possible solutions that haven’t yet been tried but I do think it’s grotesque that parents are expected to have the shit beaten out of them by their child with so little support. They matter too. A friend of mine went through this with her son. The abuse that she took from her similarly aged child and that her young daughter took was unimaginable and no less traumatic because it was a 9 year old dishing it out. Her daughter was terrified to go home and developed severe problems as a result. She was finally able to get him into residential care after a long battle but not before she’d been hospitalised several times and then had a literal and severe breakdown. She should never have been allowed to get to that point. Putting her son into residential care was the best thing for all of them. It helped her son and her DD absolutely blossomed without him, after a period of adjustment where she realised that she was safe again but it took a long time for the impact on her and her DD to settle. And while her DD was young enough to recover, my friend still has associated issues. That was over a decade ago and I imagine that it’s even harder now to get residential care. And yes councils are bankrupt but residential care is absolutely necessary for some parents and children and it’s disgusting that they are left to be abused and severely traumatised in their own homes by their own children.

Oh OP. You don't want her taken away. I get it. I have four now grown kids. Two ND. My dauion the specidid this stuff. I remember one day she was pissed off on the way home from school about her day and once in the house launched a carton of juice across the room to which I explained her name and to stop. She then ran upstairs and smashed a full length mirror. She was about 10. I get it. She early 20s now with two youngsters. She's my best friend the most wonderful mother. Please try and seek some support to manage this

And if your son decided to attack someone else out of the house, they should just sit and accept it?

Don't be fucking ridiculous outside of the house he never gets a chance to be anywhere near anyone else why are you trying to be so offensive??

This advice is spot on.
Do you get help from any parenting with special needs sites.
I'm on a FB page by Mcall Gordon who writes about kids with extra needs and it's really helpful.

Don't try to follow the age old, your a kid you do what I say pathways BC it just won't work with ND kids. Don't blame each others parenting, that doesn't help either.

If it's difficult to get your head round it, think of it as a brain injury, and just as you'd adapt things for a physically disabled child, a ND child needs adaptations.