Autism and aggression. At a loss!

[Whoopsadaisy900]

My daughter is coming up to 4 and has autism, she went though a little spout of biting in the summer just before she started nursery and as a result had a rocky time settling in, it all settled down and she hasn't done it for months. Well the other day during a meltdown she head butted her dad and bit him on the forearm. Then I got a bite the next day and this week it's getting worse, she ran up to her 18month old baby sister the other day and headbutted her in the back of the head.

I don't know what to do, I'm currently trying to tackle it by taking her away from the situation and trying to talk to her about why it's not acceptable, but I don't think she understands. I'm home alone everyday with the two youngest, I do have an older school age child too, but sadly a lot of the aggression seems to be directed at the baby.

Obviously I'm never leaving them together unsupervised and doing my best to ensure little one dosnt get hurt but I'm just at a loss of what to do, I feel really emotional about it, my baby is hurting my baby and I don't know how to stop it 😩

The main forms are the head butting, (she also headbutts walls and furniture) pulling her over, trying to sort of slide tackle her, she pulled her over earlier and I was giving little one a cuddle and o said that's not nice you've hurt baby sister and rubbed her back and my 3 year old looked sad and rubbed babies back too but 10 minutes later she's trying to do it again.

I don't have any advice on how to stop her behaving in this way but I do know that ways they are usually advised to deal with unwanted behaviour are usually aimed at parents of NT DC and very unlikely to work with a LO with ASD.

Have you found the SN Children section yet? You may get some more useful posts if you ask for help in there

Try viewing the aggression as coming from a very heightened state of anxiety, and see where that leads you? At a time of meltdown, there's no way a child can n take on any information so any talking it over etc will need to be once it has all passed and they're calm again and perhaps help it very simple because they won't be able to access better if they feel worse (which sounds like bullshit but it's really important ime because that behaviour already means that they feel bad and can't express it, so calm reassurance and support will be more effective than tellings off which will make them feel even worse inside)

From the baby sister scenario, it sounds as though the child feels left out and is having difficulty processing it. Constant vigilance is exhausting but necessary. Very few hard firm rules, with compassion for most other things (baby crying would cause huge stress for example) was how we dealt with a similar ASD / younger sibling scenario.

It's so hard to be caught in the middle of your children. I found this thread looking for advice myself, as I'm in a similar situation. I have 5yr old twin DDs and one is autistic and going through an aggressive phase - hitting, pinching, biting all of us, and then gets upset because her twin doesn't want to play with her!

Our nursery recommended this book which we've read many times now - think there is also a Hands are not for Hitting https://www.amazon.co.uk/Teeth-are-Biting-Best-Behavior/dp/1575421283/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2AZHA55LRFJ0E&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.K6Wao9HHHXn3f3M5zTQr334IKTQePZhPssCPal4UKm3iZE5h5mnC74vbzWSN61lGXYJXLrJ6INGocQk6lLzpNkKeR9k6qFlNGRtmCMxT2-bPOec5-guTRkv9QXJkpN-_vFTV4A1WVySqmIeQsi-nj5e-P8pjiZRgYoSv6iYhR9hKv9Y6ZnuVPKucVBbIJWTflW-jCB8-jVBJFc1z8tkS2XVfpLd3lzeoNTxqFsxzi3277jNjBIGdhxoL6oBECyZQAxuqCDOOhpUyFeasoPc9N73XonNW9cRHhupZtBraNG8.5wQk79q4ga6m_UZrHY8IIoudAHisnWYZfOgOYyAp2aM&dib_tag=se&keywords=teeth+not+for+biting&qid=1712823658&sprefix=teeth+not+f%2Caps%2C370&sr=8-1

Another thing our speech therapist recommended was not telling her off, but instead overacting how sad you are. So a big show of either real or pretend crying, and "ow, oh no, ouch that hurts, poor Mummy/ poor DSis!" but not blaming her - this does seem more likely to get some remorse from her.

But it's tough and I'm still struggling too so do come back and post if you find any coping strategies!