Is it ever ok for a child to hit a child back?

[dobbledo]

If a child is constantly being hit by a younger sibling 2 years younger and smaller than them with SEN is it ever ok for them to hit them back?

Thanks for clarifying. Ignore my previous post.

We taught our children to always hit back.
No-one has the right to attack others without consequences.

So what happened to your daughter when she assaulted her younger brother?
how was it managed when she was bigger and stronger and being violent to him?

Exactly, but when the “oh but you’re bigger you can’t defend yourself” is used, how does that make the child who’s being assaulted feel?

No it is not a common misconception that autistic people lack affective empathy (they often have high level of cognitive empathy though). This is an extremely well researched phenomenon and is largely down to differences in mirror neurons and less theory of mind.

Could you post the research on that please as I’m always looking to be better informed. Thank you.

You’re saying there’s only 2 ways.

Shouting/ physical assault and fear.

Or

nothing.

There isn’t.

So she behaves this way because she knows there’s no consequences. that’s the problem. A child who cannot control their behaviour behaves the same way despite consequences.

You need to rip your the rules you’ve written yourself on how to respond to this and re write them.

Let her know that violence and refusal just ain’t an option. Not through fear but through natural consequence.

Your DD feels out of control and you need to help her feel safe and secure and in control so demands do t cause this reaction.

What would you suggest the consequences are? (They will not be natural consequences by the way)

Natural consequences are way too long term for most young children (preschool) or younger primary children, and ditto older children with e.g. ADHD.

So if you are relying on "you'll feel uncomfortable and in the morning you'll feel sweaty, and I'll have to wash your clothes more often so I won't have time to play with you" that's way to far ahead to work.
A linked but immediate consequence is the way to go "when you have your pyjamas on you can listen to your audio book" or "I'll come and read you a story and put on your starry nighlight for you".

I don't think younger children need a "why" for every instruction. Early secondary school children are unlikely to knuckle down and get on with their homework if the natural consequence is "you won't do well in your GCSEs" or "you will need to be able to write well to get a good job". This means nothing to most Y7/8 though "you can go out to play", "you can have some tablet time before bed", "I'll put on that programme we both like" or "I'll get that ice cream out of the freezer" are all immediate and also are the same kind of reward we give ourselves, as adults, for accomplishing a hard but possible task. Also, "you won't get detention for not doing your homework" is much more immediate but possibly means less to a Y7.

By the time they get to year 9/10 the GCSEs might seem more imminent but again for some they will not and they will potentially learn through natural consequences and buckle down for resits...

For some, the pleasure of doing the work/getting the pyjamas on will be reward enough, and for others once they've done the routine several times they will learn to anticipate the reward (having the bedtime story, feeling accomplished because they did the Maths, actually enjoying the reading for English rather than just feeling good because it's done and they don't have to do it any more).

Actually I understood it is the other way round (ie as @anonymoususer9876 states). That Autistic people experience high levels of affective empathy (they feel too much and struggle to process that due) but it is with cognitive empathy - because it is hard for them to read facial expressions and attribute theory of mind - they flounder?

The introduction of the following research from Feb 2024 says:

‘Individuals on the autism spectrum tend to be mischaracterised as lacking empathy (Fletcher-Watson & Bird, 2020). While people on the spectrum may show difficulty in inferring the emotions of others (cognitive empathy), they show a similar ability to share others' emotions (affective empathy) compared to non-autistic people (Song et al., 2019). Smith (2009) proposed the empathy imbalance hypothesis of autism to capture these different ability patterns. Additionally, autistic individuals may share another's negative emotions more than their positive emotions (Quinde-Zlibut et al., 2021).’

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886923004166

The theory of empathy deficit was posited by Baron-Cohen back in the early 2000s, when he was still promoting a male-centric understanding of autism that he has since apologised for and tried to counter in mor recent research. The National Autistic Siciety is very keen to dispels this narrative, actually and posts about recent research in this area

https://www.autism.org.uk/learn/knowledge-hub/professional-practice/autism-and-empathy

I understand that there are also differences between male and female autistics. Research suggests that the female autistic phenotype and will try to attach some research from Uni of Bath on this for you @anonymoususer9876 that suggests that, perhaps due to different socialising and biological differences, female autistics seem to have a greater drive to understand emotions (own and others) and their parental scores by parents are, consequently higher.

https://esmed.org/MRA/mra/article/view/7164

I never touched her and never would but in that split second where she panicked as she didn’t know what I was going to do she obeyed me

So she does fear consequences just not the kind where you loose possessions? I think given how extreme the circumstances are and if you won’t give her a hit then their dad is right the oldest needs to hit her back! If your daughter doesn’t learn she’ll probably do it to the wrong person at school or something and end up getting herself really hurt

DD was punished. She loves “stuff” so losing things worked for her. As she got older we taught her ways to process and express her feelings and frustrations in a healthier way. It wasn’t easy. It still isn’t easy. But once she hit puberty her outburst involved more floods of tears as opposed to rage.

We have also learned over the years tips and tricks to get her to do things we want her to do. Going to battle never worked. Removing attention nearly always works. She craves attention, positive or negative.

Definitely the research on this topic is endless. Google differences in affective empathy in autism and tonnes of research in this area comes up.

A natural consequence is something not happening.

If you totally change the approach to non direct demands to “when we’ve done X we can do y” then y doesn’t happen until X is done.

Sometimes it’ll take hours for X to have been achieved but then you get Y.

That approach obviously won’t work on a child with severe learning difficulties who cannot understand consequences of their actions but the OP has stated her DD doesn’t understand cause and effect. They just don’t change their behaviour when Y is “do X or Y happens”.

It may or may not work for the OP but we can only advise on what she types and so far it’s been that she cannot control her DD because her DD knows she doesn’t have to fear a consequence.

Carrot is always better than stick IMO.

I have spent time doing this, but can’t find what you said 🤷🏽‍♀️
The AI overview using those search terms gives me:
“Affective empathy—the ability to feel and resonate with another person's emotions—in autism is often intact or even heightened, contrasting with common stereotypes of a universal empathy deficit. Research shows that differences in autistic empathy typically involve high emotional intensity, a concept known as hyper-empathy, alongside difficulties with cognitive perspective-taking. 1, 2]”

I agree with @anonymoususer9876 and @AnonyMumAuDHD - everything I've found says that it's hard to work out what other people are thinking ("but WHY did my uncle say he was going to see us later when he knew he wasn't?") but much easier, if you have ASD, to work out what people are feeling (my DS who isn't diagnosed but seems to have this part of the profile pretty much exactly, will give his friends at school his much loved comfort object, fetch her favourite teddy for DD, and for adults his default if you are feeling upset or unwell is a glass of water). He was doing this appropriately in Reception, too, so it's not like it's late learned.

I do find though that even some professionals get confused/see it as a blanket difficulty. e.g. the speech therapist DS saw who despite getting him in many other ways, suggested he had a lack of empathy because he didn't warm to her very quickly. He was just uncomfortable; if he'd known her well he would have been perfectly able to empathise with her. But his ideas of other people thinking differently to him are very much rote learned ("Different people like different things").

A natural consequence is something that happens or doesn’t happen naturally not just something that doesn’t happen. An adult deciding the consequence isn’t natural. It’s just a consequence.
A natural consequence would be not putting PJs on mean you either are uncomfortable in your clothes all night or maybe you get cold because you’re naked.
A consequence that an adult has decided would be if you don’t put your PJs on then you don’t get a story.
A natural consequence of being mean to other children will likely be that you have no friends. An adult decided consequence would be that if you are mean to other children you get taken home.
Natural consequences are things that happen without any adult intervention or decisions in order to occur.

Yes. It's self defence. SEN or not, violence is unacceptable.

It really doesn't matter if the child walks straight back into the room. You are the adult. You keep taking the child back out again. No words spoken. Just keep doing it. If it were me, the child would get bored long before I did.....

I'm finding this quite uncomfortable tbh, partly because your parenting honestly seems to be exacerbating the situation and isn't fair on either child.

I'm also in a split mind about your eldest hitting back, and the viewpoints around violence. You rightly say that it's not acceptable for a parent to hit a child any more. You also say that you were similar as a child, but that the hitting stopped instantly once you were hit (by parents). You say that you think if your youngest was hit once they would stop.

So on a certain level, you are allowing your eldest child to be frequently subjected to violence and beatings for months/years on end, because you are not willing for the younger child to be hit once. Why is it ok for your eldest child to be hit multiple times?

It makes me uncomfortable that knowing that in reality the only way (from what you've said) to stop your youngest hitting, is for them to be hit, that this unpleasant job is delegated to your poor abused eldest child.

But does something being effective negate it being wrong? This is just hideous. It shouldn't have come to this.

Tell her the next time she is physical to her brother you are going to do it back to her twice as hard.
And then do it!
How do you like it? How did it feel? Shall I do it again? Are you going to do it again?
I'm aware that physical discipline is frowned upon but it works. You know it works.

I’m not allowed to hit her back though because she is a child and I am an adult so I would lose my children and go to jail but her sister is legally allowed to hit her back.
I am 5 foot 1 and 7 stone and her sister is half a stone heavier than me.

She doesn’t have a brother, they are girls.

Yes. I teach my 3 year old son to:

1. avoid physical conflict
2. if it happens, shout no / stop and disengage by moving away and telling an adult (normally the nursery room lead)
3. if 2 isn’t an option, push / hit back in order to stop the other child hurting him

That said, it’s hard for him to understand it as bless him, he often says “no, that’s bad choices (to push back etc” as he’s too young to properly understand how context means the same actions can be tight / wrong.

i do however think it helped him during a recent period of another kid repeatedly biting him.

in reality, it’s just the kiddy version of what adults do… it’d be folly to pretend there’s never going to be a situation when an individual would need to physically defend themselves (however much we’d love a world in which that was the case).

out of curiosity, why wouldn’t it be ok for a kid to hit back in defence?

I'm not saying it's ok for you to hit her btw - it's not something I agree with at all (though in most parts of the UK it wouldn't actually be illegal for you to do so under 'reasonable chastisement')

But it's the way that you are prioritising your youngest yet again. It's not ok for her to be hit once, but it's fine for your eldest to be hit repeatedly (and she gets paid for being punched!!)

7.5 stone at 10 is also a concern tbh. Unless she's also of the scale for height, that's far too heavy.

There seems to be a lot going on in your family, which is quite worrying tbh.