Just been to a really interesting seminar run by spectrum- an ASD charity that runs residential homes for adults and has a small ASD school (similar to treehouse I think).
One of the talks was on challening behaviour- and was really interesting. He talked about the importance of reinforcing positive behaviour and not punishing bad behaviour. Also talked about the purpose of behaviour and how it is communication.
Anyway one really interesting thing he said was that if you have an ASD kid - it is really important to "do your stuff first, kids stuff second" (even if your stuff lasts literally 5 seconds). He went on to talk about how with an NT child you let them lead and you give give give because you know that in the future you are likely to get something back. He used a funny example of saying "lets go into the garden to play cricket". then your leg catches fire. The NT kid would worry about your leg, the ASD child would be saying "but you said we could play cricket". So from the beginning do your stuff first. It kind of made sense when he said it.
He gave lots of real life examples of challenging behaviour that they had had to deal with and get round. And it struck me that if you can find a professional who really really understands autism then you can get so much help from them. They understand the reasons behind the behavaiour and have the expertise to draw up programmes to deal with this. So if you get stuck on something tricky then its really worth trying to search someone out. Our autism outreach team are very good as well (they were there tonight) so for school age children they may be worth trying if someone was struggling.