My friends Aspergers Son punching my children all the time

[BigusBumus]

Hello, my fairly close friend has a son with "Borderline High Acheiving Aspergers". He has recently been statemented at school and is extremely bright and an attractive boy, but when he doesn't get his own way, he is incredibly violent. He is 9. His younger brother is 7 and they came to stay recently at our house for the night with their mother. During this time, he punched my DS1, who is 8, three times in the face/eye giving him a black eye and also gauged his nails into his cheek. This was because my DS wouldn't tell the boy his password for his PC and because my DS tried to ask him get off some play equipment so that the queue of other children could have a go etc etc.

At no time did the mother tell the boy off, even though my DS has been quite badly hurt. She tried to talk to him and he just smashed up my other DS2 (4)s bedroom, whilst we listened from downstairs.

I know this child has Aspergers, but what should I do? I found the constant screaming / shouting from him just about bearable, but why should I tolerate my DCs getting punched by him? The mother is keen to fix up another date to come and stay (she said it was like a little holiday for her), but my DH does not want them here again, and neither does my son. (nor me for that matter).

I don't want to offend my friend, which is why I am posting this in the area where other mothers of ASD children will read this and hopefully give me some advise. The thing is that the boys' mother doesn't seem to do anything to control / modify / help the boy, she just ignores his behaviour and seems to brush it under the carpet... I feel very sorry for them both tbh. :(

My ds has as and he'd be made to stay in his room and have things removed/be told of fseverely if he was violent, if I thought it likely to happen again I simply wouldn't go. My ds does scream/tantrum too, but with a close friend I'd hope I'd get some lee way with that, in no way would I expect children to put up with being hit. I feel very sorry for her, but youyr ds doesn't need a black eye again.
If you want to be an outstanding friend then i suggest you send dh and kids to have a nice overnighter with a relative and then invite your friend and her kids to your house. Or arrange an outing-far easier to keep your ds out of her ds's way when you're out of the house.

Please don't lose touch with her over this-maintain the friendship in some way.

She should be disciplining him. A favourite mantra of mine when DS was diagnosed was "Aspergers is a signpost,not an excuse". If she doesn't set boundaries for him and attempt to make him understand the consequences of his actions he stands a good chance of getting into serious trouble when he is older.
It does take a lot of effort to make some children with Aspergers understand what is acceptable behaviour. You go over the same ground again and again and again, but it must be done for the child's sake. My DS is 16 now and I really do speak from experience.
I am afraid that you might run the risk of upsetting her, but she needs to take responsibility for her DS' actions, and you should not feel that you have to put your child at risk.
Psychologists often recommend a book called "123 Magic" to parents of children with Aspergers and ADHD. It gives a clear structured discipline method which many people find helpful.

123 magic is v.good but is only a start ( - it doesn't help if outburst are caused by sensory issues for example) I've found it very helpful for the renforcement of certain behaviors. You do feel like a broken record with kids like this but violence towards others like this will guarantee him a life in prison if she doesn't do summat now. Ask her if she's tried 123 magic - she wasn't using the technques from what you witnessed and they really are easy to understand and very good.

I have to ask - why was he ALLOWED to trash a room? Didn't she or her husband safely restrain him to prevent that happening? Has she offered to pay for any damage? Has SHE acknowledged your kid was hurt and apologised (asking cos I'd be mortified if my son did this to a friends kid and certainly wouldn't dare ask to be invited again!).

If she hasn't taken ownership of the fact that you and your children have good cause to be upset - then you need to tell her straight that her child's behavior had too serious an impact on your own family and a repeat invite won't be issued.

It might be harder for our kids to socialise, and they may have to be OVER taught stuff that other's take for granted, but if he's at the borderline/HF end of the spectrum and only 9 it's still possible to teach him in good time that this is unacceptable. If she has taken ownership - ask her what you can do as a friend to help her.

I'm really grateful to a few friends of mine that have helped reinforce different things in my son at my request. A bit of praise for a good behavior you are workng on at the time from someone other than Mum can be all the encouragement it takes to make a new good behavioral practice become permanently embedded in some children. Close friends & family also help me with the "no" stuff. It takes the consistency of a desired behavior into new situations and contexts far more effectively than one parent can manage alone.

I understand that you don't want to offend your friend, but in your situation I think I would probably tell her how upsetting the whole thing was for you and your children and for that reason you'd rather they didn't come to stay again. I don't think its unreasonable not to want someone to visit your home if they injure your dcs and smash your house up without consequences.

I have a 9 year old ds who has AS myself and we would never let him behave like that at someone else's house - in fact we wouldn't allow it at home either. We come down hard on any sign of violence to people or property. Just as with any child, I feel its our job to teach him the social rules that will enable him to live as full a life as possible. If we allow him to hit people and smash things up without consequence, he will never learn that these things are totally unacceptable. It is harder with him than it is with our other children, as he is more likely to misread situations and get angry when rules aren't followed or things don't go the way he had them set out in his own mind, but this doesn't mean the consequences for bad behaviour are any different. Asperger's is not an excuse for bad behaviour, if anything it is a reason for parents to try harder to teach and help their child understand what is and is not acceptable.

Parenting a child with AS is exhausting and I do understand that your friend was probably in need of a break - but that should not be at the expense of your family. It is relentless, children with AS need more parenting than most children, precisely because they do need help with managing their behaviour, understanding social situations and making good choices. Not only do they find it hard to read social situations correctly, their inflexibility and black and white thinking means that they also have problems with generalising social rules from situation to situation. We, as their parents, have to help set clear boundaries, make sure they are consistently reinforced and then every step of the way, praise and reward whent they get it right and enforce consequences teach the correct behaviour when they get it wrong.

Many parents of children with AS do become socially isolated, because we don't want our children's behaviour to impact negatively on other people's lives. Its is a tricky path to tread, because they need lots of social experience in order to learn the rules and how to make good choices, but at the same time we can't use other people's families as social experiments for our child.

It is true that a child in full on AS meltdown may not be easily stopped and sometimes you have no choice but to stand back and wait until they've finished and pick up from there - but that's where the extra parenting comes in. If you are at someone else's house, you have to be on top of things all the time try and stop meltdowns before they start. You also have to do everything possible to make sure your child is fully prepared for what the visit will entail and how things will work, so that they feel reassured and aren't tense or unsettled by the change in environment etc. I always find visiting other people's houses exhausting, precisely because I am on edge the whole time trying to deflect and redirect ds1 and keep everyone happy.

I think you need an open and honest chat with your friend, explain that you still want to be her friend and offer her support, but that doesn't include allowing her son to injure your children and smash up your home.

You tell her outright that your children are frightened of him and have asked you not to let him come again.

YOUR children come first. There is no reason whatsoever that she should be letting his behavior carry on. She should either stop him, por if she can't, she should take him home. She did neither.

And I speak as mum to an eight year old child with ASD and ADHD.

Leonie, I think the problem is that the OPs friend didn't apologise and also didn't do much in the way of damage limitation or prevention, in fact she sounds oblivious to the fact that her child giving the OP's ds a black eye and then destroying her other child's bedroom might be construed as a problem - to the extent that she wants to visit again soon.

As you said, you feel awful and apologise if an incident occurs and I'm sure you are always there to do everything possible to (as far as possible) prevent or mitigate any problems. It sounds like the OP's friend is oblivious to the impact her son's behaviour had on this family and either doesn't know how to handle him or feels that because he has AS there is nothing she can do about it.

Violence is never acceptable. If a parent is left unable to control it, and that child is injuring other people and destroying their stuff, then there is a real and urgent need for outside intervention, whether that be medication or behaviour therapy or social services providing whatever is needed.
So many families struggle on, getting absolutely exhausted, losing friends or being too nervous to have any, and meantime the services that are responsible for helping get to sit on their arses and watch. The mum needs to get militant about needing help, fast. Not easy, and I have brought up a child on the autism spectrum whose behaviour was violent at times and where we had to use restraint/rugby-tackling/whatever else worked. I've also worked extensively with children who are violent and who have had to learn not to be.

I'm on the spectrum myself and I know that violence is absolutely wrong. It's a rule. We can follow rules if we are given the chance to understand them and kept out of situations where we cannot think at all because of routine/social/sensory pressures. Take no excuse from a child who says otherwise - we can be trained not to hit others with the right specialists working with us.

Oh Leonie, I do understand. You are right, its exhausting and soul destroying, and we all reach a point sometimes where we can't keep on keeping on. You could be right, the OP's friend could well be at that point. I just didn't feel that was what came across in her post - I could be wrong though, especially as we are only getting the story from the OP's point of view.

I think all she can do is have an open and honest talk with her friend, so she can get a clearer understanding of what is going on for her, but at the same time get across how she can't allow her own children to be hurt, so while she will be there for support, unfortunately, she won't be extending any more invites to stay over.

Your children shouldn't have to put up with that.

It is incredibly difficult when your child behaves in such a way and you are genuinely unable to prevent it. But that is not the point. It is incredibly tiring, embarrassing, humiliating, frustrating to have to endlessly explain and apologise. That doesn't matter. You apologise because a child should not be hit for any reason - even sn.

If my son hit my dd or breaks something of hers then there is a consequence for him and an apology -even if only from me. She does not get to bear the burden of ds2s asd. That is not on.

Your friend may have been weary and burdened during the visit but if, with the benefit of reflection and the prospect of another visit, she neither raises her sons behaviour nor addresses how he can be better managed then no. I would not let her visit again.

I can't say no to ds2. I cannot 'punish' him in a conventional way. But I have found consequences and at the very least if his behaviour is bad, I remove him and me from that situation.

You have to talk to her, because how you handle this will depend on what is really going on in there. It may be lots of things. She may just have got to breaking point, as Leonie says. It may be that she thinks he gets some sort of kick out of being told off and she is desperately trying not to feed that. It may be that she has tried all sorts of techniques and none of them worked and she's trying to decide what to try next. It maybe that he kicks off badly if told off at the time (making it worse) but she makes sure he gets punished in some other way at home. But. Whatever the reason for the way she handled it, your kids and your property were not safe so something has to change if they are to visit again. Maybe she just can't see the wood for the trees: ie she's so caught up with worrying about his behaviour and how it's triggered and how to deal with it, that she's not seeing the other side at all.

I think having somebody sensible and sympathetic to talk this through with could actually be helpful for her, if you handle it right. It's easy to get into a "siege mentality" with SN and particularly if you think all the other parents are criticising you and your kid: it's tempting to become defensive and discount what you are being told because they "don't understand". But as someone said she needs to find a way of managing this before he gets much older (and bigger, and stronger...) - for his sake.

I think your a lovely friend for even thinking of popping over to SN and asking! :)

I have a undrstanding with my friends.. Talk to me, if ds2 (asd) does something to upset the situation feel free to deal with it or pass it on to me if I have not seen. ( maybe a bit different for me as i have very close friends and we and our children all grew up together, so they are more like family).
You could say that it was lovely to see her, however what can you do to help as xyz happened.

Or see her on neutral ground, an outing maybe... Or structure in regular steam let off breaks.

The other thing you can do is if they co e over again, have a poster up stating the rules

( you can pretend this is for everyone all the time).

So no hitting etc

remember to "speak kindly" etc

and point out the 'rules to him when needed.