Any tips on how to stop ds (asd) being aggressive to dd please?

[BialystockandBloom]

Long post, sorry.

Pre-dx but pretty sure ds (3.3) has asd. One of the most challenging behaviours atm is his aggression towards dd (9mo).

Much of it is obviously simple jealousy and feeling threatened, but it has escalated intensely since she started crawling (she is incredibly determined to get to him and whatever he is playing with). He cannot stand this (his sharing skills are not great at the best of times though improving with his peers), and he will kick out at her, throw things at her (today was a piece of celery), sometimes even go to pinch her (which he sometimes asks me if he can do beforehand ).

He does want to play with her though, and there are some nice moments of chasing each other, and he does hug her but even that is sometimes rather, um, ott.

All the usual things you would hope would work on a nt child (positive reinforcement, repeated "gently", "no hitting", time out, removal etc) just do not work. It feels I am repeating myself over and over and over again, day in day out with no change. I am spending all my time just hovering over them as I cannot feel I can leave them for a second in case she really does get hurt.

Any tips please?

Btw we're going to be starting ABA soon so I guess something based on that approach would be good for consistency.

In my view you are doing all the right things and there is no magic answer. We had this problem -- still have it to some extent (ds1 ASD is nearly 7 and ds2 NT is 4).

After tearing my hair out for years over this, I have accepted that this is a very, very difficult thing for ds1 to learn about. It's difficult for any child to learn new behaviours and exceptionally difficult for kids with ASD, All those supernanny type programmes which show change occurring instantly are so, so misleading.

I have had to repeat the positive reinforcement 100s of times, the 'no hitting message' 100s of times for it to begin to work. Gradually it has, and we do have whole days without an act of violence.

The level of aggression always goes up when ds1 is under stress and we have lots of bad days. All I can do is be utterly consistent, show ds2 it is never ok for him to be hit, and to try and understand whatever triggers seem to be operating.

But I do think you are doing all the right things. As he gets older you will be able to talk about what 'gentle hands' means, and that will help. But for the moment just keeping on with what you are doing is the key.

Thanks for your reply niminy. Hope that you're right, it might improve as he gets older.

But it just adds yet another level of stress to our lives - and I'm so worried poor dd really might get hurt in a split second if I'm not right there to prevent it . I was thinking about a playpen just to protect her, but I think she'd be pretty unhappy to be penned in, and I bet he'd just go and knock it down [rueful grin]

I'll persevere though. Thanks.

Playpen?

I had one with both ds2 and ds3 and it was a godsend. I bought the biggest one I could find -an old fashioned wooden one - and it meant that I could leave them alone with ds1 to boil a kettle and not have to worry. I also had a hideous rocky thing babies stand in in the kitchen which did the same sort of job.

Occasionally ds1 climbed in with them - but it sounds as if your ds doesn't particularly want to be near his sister so it might work.

I like your name.

Ds2 was very strong on pitch of voice - I found using a distinctive pitch (not singing exactly, but always using the same type of melody to my voice) made things sink in much better.

It's a bit like oriental languages where an alternation to pitch can actually change meaning.

all depends whether that's how his brain works of course.....

I think a playpen might be a good thing too (we have an about-to-be-crawling 9 month old, and I can see some issues arising with 6 year old ASD DS once this happens). Never mind putting the baby in it, could you let DS use it as a hideout where baby cannot get to him? That way she's not penned in, and he has somewhere baby free to retreat to

Thanks all, maybe I will revisit the idea of a playpen. I can see it will definitely help with him when he wants free rein to play uninterrupted. Not sure how much she'll like it but worth a try. dietcoke I like your thinking, maybe he'll appreciate it more than she will!

The funny thing is that he does want her to play with him - always saying "come on xx, let's go" or "want xx to say hello", wanting her to chase him but when she gets near him, the fun becomes just that little bit too hyper, bordering on aggressive.

Lingle I wish I knew how his brain works! He definitely understands the "no", "gently" etc but just doesn't act on it - he will (eventually and with much prompting) say sorry, but it just doesn't stop him doing it again 10 minutes later.

"The funny thing is that he does want her to play with him - always saying "come on xx, let's go" or "want xx to say hello", wanting her to chase him but when she gets near him, the fun becomes just that little bit too hyper, bordering on aggressive."

DS1 did this too I think of that as very characteristic of his brand of ASD ('active but odd'). He doesn't have an 'instinctive' knowledge of how to play, how close to get, how gently or roughly to hug or kiss. And he finds it very hard to see why his rough play hurts other people it doesn't hurt him, after all. (But you should hear him yell if someone accidently hurts him, oh my goodness.)

The playpen idea might depend on whether he can bear to be alone or not. DS1 absolutely hates being on his own and goes into a complete meltdown if I try to make him be on his own. On the other hand, I do find it quite a good strategy just to leave the room with ds2, often saying something like 'ds2 and I can't be in the same room as you when you are doing x'.

The only vaguely ABA type thing I can think of is something we used to use in the early days at an ABA school... if a child hit/bit another the biter/hitter would be ignored and the bitten/hit child would be picked up/cuddled etc. so that all the attention was given to the child who'd been hurt. If the biter/hitter tried to get in on the positive attention he would be removed without eye contact or anything being said so that the message of no attention was very clear.

It seemed to work with the children we used it with. It was also backed-up by a 60 second 'DRO' (direct reinforcement of other behaviours) which essentially commented, every 60 seconds(!) upon the desired behaviours that children were engaging in e.g. "X is sitting still on his chair, well done X...Wow! Y! You're being so gentle with your hands...well done!...Z, you're turning the pages of that book so carefully - excellent". It was a bit wearing but the children (all pre-schoolers with an ASD diagnosis) cottoned onto what they needed to do in order to be mentioned.

A playpen may work but how about a paperpod - they come in rocket/house and other shapes so could be a special place for him?