How do you handle bad behaviour?

[appropriatelyemployed]

DS1 (9 with AS) got really angry with DS2 this morning. DS2 was painting a 'shaker maker' set that had belonged to DS1. DS1 had let him do it but then became interested in painting too.

They had an argument over who was going to use the original brush that came with the set and DS1 marched off shouting 'piss off'

Not acceptable obviously. So, I asked him to come down from his room where he had stomped off to. He refused. We conducted a conversation for a bit and then DS1 called me a bitch! He has never done that before. He is only 9 and I don't know where he got that from.

So I told him again that this was unacceptable and he needed to apologise but that I would give him time to think about it.

No response so a little while later I told him if he came down and apologised, we could move on, and he could earn himself some holiday points (they are saving up for holiday money)

No response. I left him again for a bit but then said he needed to say sorry and if he didn't there would be consequences like half an hour off his bed time. I do not punish like this as a rule as it tends to be ineffective but I was getting desperate.

He then he came down and said he would only apologise if I apologised to him for upsetting him I hurt his feelings by saying he might have to go to be earlier.

Of course, I refused, and so he is still in his room. I have told him there is always a way back if he comes and apologises.

He is usually a very sweet tempered chap and doesn't 'behave badly' generally but he does have these temper flashes and he doesn't know how to get himself back from doing something wrong and digs himself into a massive hole.

He also has a very weird logic about saying sorry. If he feels sad beacuse he has been told off he thinks I should apologise.

Next step please!!!

Did you tell him that he had really hurt your feelings by calling you a very nasty and unkind name? That you are the grownup, and there are consequences to this, and that he is feeling upset for being punished rather than feeling upset that he hurt your feelings.
Or you could just leave him there.
I am going through this in spades at the moment. 12 yr old twins DS1 AS and DD just being a hormonal wilful madam.....
Roll on next week and school!!

Thanks Sally. Yes, he came down just now and I asked him whether he was willing to say sorry. I said again that calling anyone a bitch was a horrible thing to do and that it really upset me as his mum to hear that.

He won't say sorry he says because he is not sorry.

We have talked about consequences and I have been very clear about this but he seems not to care.

I can make him say sorry if I deprive him of something (e.g. computer time) but he still wouldn't be sorry - he just wouldn't feel sorry. And he would do the same thing again because he doesn't see that he had done anything wrong.

I'm not sure what this achieves and so I feel at a loss really.

LOL!

He sounds adorable actually.

DS is MUCH younger so our techniques are much more immediate and although 'supposed' to be based on high motivation etc. can be as simple as 'If you apologise I'll let you sit in the chair I have just removed you/give you back your sock I just took off you etc. The 'control' of having things how he thinks they should be 'i.e. two socks on instead of one' seems to work most of the time.

Anyway, at some point you perhaps you can try to apologise for making him sad and ask him what you should do next time that gets the right outcome without making him sad. Try to point out that he has some responsibility for his own sadness and the way he makes others react iyswim. Hardly easy for a child with AS but an important learning point all the same.

Is it too much to want him to say sorry and mean it? Am I setting the bar too high?

If it is just about the act of saying sorry - I can bribe him with extra time on the computer for that or threaten him with consequences but it seems so pointless.

I want him to stop doing stuff like that in the first place!!!

I seriously don't know. I can say I am sorry that you are sad that I asked you to say sorry for calling me a bitch but I don't mean that either!!!!!!

But you raise a very good point about talking with him about how we could handle this differently if he does this again.

I just feel 'judged' by some invisible person who would be getting all this right somehow.

When our ABA lady came round yesterday DS2 whacked DS1 in the face over nothing. You end up thinking - why are my kids always doing this? Why can't I stop it?

'Is it too much to want him to say sorry and mean it?'

No. I don't think so. But I think it might be a too big a jump in one go.

Meaning you are sorry is complicated. How often do you mean it when YOU say it in the way you want him too?

We say sorry for many reasons. To maintain a relationship with someone we care about even if we still think we are right iyswim. Or because we feel guilty and need to relieve our guilt. Or because we can't be bothered with an ongoing fight, or because we have been asked to by someone etc.

Often it is said, although genuinely, with some belief that we ourselves weren't completely in the wrong, although that doesn't mean we don't mean it.

Saying sorry when you don't mean it simply as a way of repairing a situation for your own comfort/gain is legitimate and probably one if the first levels of learning about it.

You could always be totally childish yourself, just to prove a point. Telling him that you wont talk to him until he apologises. But that's forcing his hand, and could just as easily backfire.

Its probably best that you should just draw a line under it and move on. It's all about picking your battles. Bloody kids! Who'd have them!

Don't laugh at me because this sounds really daft, but I try to treat my kids the same way I would train a dog. Reward the good, ignore the bad. There is little point going over old ground unless you have dealt with it there and then iyswim. If that hasn't worked, then move on. Don't let it fester and spoil your day!

Someone once told me that praise is free. I try to remind myself of that as my childhood was fairly miserable, and I try hard not to be like how my parents were with me. I heard far too much "Just wait until your father gets home!". Not great tbh.

I think your invisible friend whilst useful is a bit harsh though.

Your get out clause is that it is good for your child to experience unreasonableness from you as well as inconsistency and sometimes just plain rudeness/expression of your own uncontrolled emotions. You are preparing them for the real world after all.

Ds is only 7. He sounds very much like your ds, he doesn't understand his role in his own behaviour, he truly believes that everything stems from being thwarted from his intentions and that is responsible for everything that comes next so he too would think that I was actually the one responsible for hurting his feelings or with my ds he would have thought that his brother was responsible for not allowing him to use the brush on HIS set.

Things that have helped a bit are clear written rules eg We talk with respect to each other. So that when something like you describe happens we simply reiterate You broke the rule, calling me a bitch was disrespectful, telling your brother to piss off was disrespectful. You can fix it by apologising or you can have a consequence for breaking the rule eg: We use a stroke system where he gets a mark on the fridge with a white board marker...each mark represents 10minutes tv/computer time lost (his strongest motivator).

We also make his choices very clear to him so when he offered the set to his brother it would have been made explicit that this meant that if he then got intrigued he may find it difficult and what would we do ie: if we can predict a possible problem we talk about solutions before it happens if that makes sense.

For my ds I don't think he has a true concept of what feeling sorry for his actions is like. At the moment I give him the option to do the socially acceptable response and apologise and include body language and intonation as practised prerequisites so it sounds genuine. This doesn't actually mean he is sorry but it is a step in the right direction. If his actions need something more than an apology then we walk him through what his actions have made the other person feel and how he can make that right. (So when he cut his mattress up in order to find out what it was made of, he not only needed to say sorry (and no he wasn't sorry, he needed to know what he was sleeping on and he decided that waking me up to ask me was not going to be appreciated so he found out by himself...in his eyes he did me a favour!!!) but he also had to figure out how he was going to fix the mattress...he ended up paying his seamstress grandmother 5 dollars an our to sew a massive patch onto it) A lot of this is going through the motions for him as he still doesn't really see WHY he has to do it but he is slowly learning that he needs to do it anyway whether he understands the why or not.

I'm not sure this makes sense or helps but I hope it does.

I'd say that telling him off was supposed to make him sad, that in fact was the point of it.

What he said was very upsetting to you, much more upsetting than being told he'd have to go to bed early, because of the language used.

I'd ask him why he thinks he should get an apology for being upset when what you were doing wasn't as upsetting as what he did to you and he isn't sorry for upsetting you that much.

He said something unnaceptable and upset you, the consequences are that you then said something that upset him. So if he thinks he deserves an apology, you deserve a bigger one - by his own logic.

I'm quite bad for giving mine random punishments and then having to make them logical, lol - but then I'm quite willing to sit and lecture them about how it's my job to bring them up to behave in a way that's acceptable so I'll apply consequences so that they won't do it again even if it's just so they don't get punished...which apparently is 'not fair'

We have a 'sorry mum'!

I took him up a cereal bar and he said it. He said he was embarrassed and doesn't like to get things wrong.

I sent DS2 up and left them and DS1 said sorry to him too.

Bless DS2 had written notes himself to pass to me - mulitcouloured -saying 'this not is form DS i am veree soreey mum' !

I think he should turn it into a business enterprise.

Thanks for your ideas and help. He can be so intractable that all the usual 'parenting' tactics don't work.

I often think I am too soft as I don't do 'punishments' really as they seem so ineffective but every so often I think there has to be some bottom line of acceptability

Oh bless them both. You sound like a fab parent with far more patience than me.

Lol @ the note

to be fair my DS is a lot older, so I use the x-box as a punishment a lot more than I used to, purely on a - it's a privelige that I can withdraw

I do so much more explaining with him though, than I need to with DD. I'd never have to tell DD that the consequences of her upsetting me is that while I'm upset I've done something to upset her.

She'd swear at me, I'd tell her to go to bed until she was willing to apologise and mean it - done, lol

It is all about carrying out your threats/punishments etc! Ahh well the joys of parenthood. Great film btw!

Sally, that's very true. I don't say things I will not carry out with immediate effect. Which means sometimes I just don't say anything

But if I've said it, it happens.

Which is also known in the trade as "Picking your battles!"

Wow, you did well to get an apology Dd3 has only ever apologised a couple of times and then the sorry was screamed full blast so that she could get back to doing what she wanted to do.

I am struggling with aggression and stroppiness at the moment. She can be soo lovely or soo horrid.

as long as i know we are working within his understanding then i treat both of my boys exactly the same.
This is so important for ds1 (the nt one) as he often feels like ds2 is treated less harshly just becuase he is disabled... truth is he's just better behaved :)
But i try to be as fair as possible.
ds2 hates being told off or critisized so his immediate response is always tears & collapse in a heap so i have to wait for him to calm himself before we can talk.

We have rigid rules one of which is "use good words" which covers swearing, name calling, insults and general disrespect.
If ds or dd swore I'd say "We use good words in this house you can choose (these words alert them to the fact that they need to listen because I am giving them a chance to put things right) you can stop using those words and stay in this room or you can use those words in your room.
If they made either of those choices I'd say "good choosing" (and reward if it was necessary at that time) If they didn't stop swearing or go to their room I'd say "I am not listening to those words I am going into the other room, when you have finished you can come and find me"
I would go into the next room and shut the door. Mine have to knock on closed doors and get permission to enter so when they knocked I would ask if they had finished before allowing them in and would say "good finishing" but they wouldn't get a reward.
Ds is a lot bigger than I am so I have to rely on him making the right choices because in all honesty I can't impose my will on him anyway and if I tried he would hurt me I'm pretty certain of that.

Well, what do you do when you've tried all the usual stuff: appeal to their better nature, appeal to the tribunal, complain to the LGO, write to your MP, put the SENCO on the naughty step...? Must try and catch that programme Supernanny in LA battle, she's bound to have some tips.

Great article on how you can help children deal with emotions: goo.gl/vE78x