asd and violence, support please

[MissTired]

my ds is 4, he will be 5 in november, hes always been violent since he was about 21 months old progressively getting worse as he is getting stronger with age, he hits me every day numerous times, we have camhs who are trying to help us with this but so far not any change. well yesterday he wa playing with a pretend sword and started hitting me with it so i took it off him, he then went and got a very big kitchen knife from the kitchen and came at me with it, the look in his eyes was not playful as it had been with the sword, i managed to get it off him before he hurt me, but then my dp asked him what he was doing with the knife - his language is not great but coming on pretty well but his undertanding is behind what he can say a bit, but he turned and said, i want to make mummy bleed and cut her up into lots of pieces.

im heartbroken by it all, ringing camhs this morning for advice but dunno what else to do, other than obviously trying to hide knives!

thanks for everyones replies, sorry probably didnt make it clear that weve tried a few things already that have not worked, i mean tried for some time not just today etc if that makes sense. we tried 123 magic, but he just saw it as a huge achievement if he got to 3!! weve tried a time out type approach ie when he is violent putting him in his room, but as we cant lock him in there he just comes out and it turns into a game for him, if we could lock him in there then he would self harm by headbanging, biting etc and trash his room. we have tried taking something away he likes when he is violent but due to his adhd type tendancies (he has a verbal "probably adhd but as hes not 5 yet we cant diagnose it"!!) he is not attached to anything enough for it to matter to him he just plays with something else, weve numerous times got to the point of taking more and more away but he just doesnt care/understand. we have tried a bottle full of rice thing, ie he does something good he gets rice for his bottle and when its full he gets a magazine/toy etc but he just didnt understand properly and it wasnt really working.

camhs are coming on thursday so hopefully will have more ideas for us to try. we dont have a very big house and its rented so there are limits to what we can do though we do now have secure locks for the cupboards in the kitchen, we have a lock on the bathroom door that works both sides so he cant keep flooding in there! we have a lock to a bit of kichen where fridge is so he cant keep throwing food etc but theres a limit to what else we can do really.

thanks starlightmckenzie but we really cant afford anything like that.

we do have a social worker but shes not very nice or very helpful to be honest and has it in her head she needs to speak to ds and get his views on his family life she says she wants to ask him if hes happy at home and what would make him happier - good luck with that if you give him a bag of sweets he cant tell you he is happy so dunno how she expects him to tell her how he feels at home!!! I think shes determined to ensure hes not in a baby p type situation or something as everytime she sees us she asks where any bruise he has came from - hes 4 and a half he has dyspraxia and asd and has a few bruises on his legs which im sure most kids do who run about constantly tripping over themselves!!

thanks for the suggestion by someone of seeing gp/practice nurse soemtimes and taking photos, im seeing nurse this week anyway so will mention it, at least if they know then gradually everyone will realise how constant its getting and offer any help they can!!

The accepted key to dealing with Challenging Behaviour is working on communication. I'm sure you all know this and it doesn't help you in the short term when things are going WRONG. I hate the idea that school staff would restrain my DS rather than work out the function of the behaviour, work on communication and ;provide consequences at other times for doing the RIGHT thing, i.e. withholding reinforcers for doing the "wrong" thing, not punishment iyswim.

As Davros has previously suggested I'd look at The Challenging Behaviour Foundation. My sis was knocked out by her 3 year old head butting her, and a multitude of violent behaviour, but now its mainly (SIB), his a non-verbal ASD (his now 21 and doing well). She says she never found better support for his challenging behaviour than this charity.

thanks so much everyone, camhs have been yesterday and given me some pointers of things they think i should try with him to discourage the violence from starting and are going to talk to me again about it in september when they come,have joined cbf and looks good, just got to try harder to be a good mummy i guess so he doesnt get frustratd and attack me, this week has been a little better but only marginally, but hey id rather marginally better than marginally worse so im not complaining!!!

thanks everyone!

Think about something like this here
If you look on their main US webpage there is a video link
You would of course have a battle to get it funded.
It would be really expensive
You'd probably have to try and fail at special school first
But worth knowing about if other attempts fail
Look at Dept of Education Publications - they did a recent one on early intervention being preventative and cost saving than later intervention - it dealt with social problems as much as disability but the principle is the same. It would be worth quoting if want something funded

Very pleased things are fractionally better... sometimes a little bit of hope is what you need. I'm sure things will get better. The whole of this post is intended to help them get better fast so you don't get hurt, you keep a good relationship with ds and you don't end up blaming yourself and your mothering for your dc's behaviour.

CAMHS coming back in September really isn't good enough with daily severe violence. Please bug them yourself and also get your GP and HV bugging them (be a polite persistent pain in the a*e. Make it more hassle to keep saying no than to do what you need)

A very well planned, detailed and supported intensive challenging behaviour programme is likely to make a big difference. An experienced child psychologist should be able to do one; specialist learning disability psychologists are even better but hard to get hold of. The principles are similar to the ABA process mentioned above so it really is worth following up the other poster's leads.

Helpful suggestions from CAMHS are ok but insufficient as they're expecting you to arrange a diy programme without clinical training or experience. It's very hard to design and monitor it yourself as well as the stress of actually implementing it. Not forgetting the usual 24h duties a mother has.