What consequence??

[marymary1000]

ds is 9 not dx, but has many traits of aspergers.

Since going back to school last week has had a few meltdowns that I put down to the change and tiredness.

This morning when it came to turning off the laptop before school ( which a treat that he had earned, maybe more fool me) he screamed at me that I was an 'axxxhole' and was ruining his life, now I'd given him a 5 minute warning and a 2 minute warning, and he has never ever used language like this at me before.

He said dh always called him that when i wasn't there which I know is rubbish, dh in spain working at the mo so I called ds bluff and called dh told him what he had said and handed over the phone. ds came off phone exceptionally apologetic and admitted that he had lied.

Now we were 10 minutes before school, we spoke about consequences and agreed to sort it out after school. Again not great although I imagine he will have forgotten about it until he sees me later.

I have now been spitting feathers since 9 and need some constructive advice on the consequence. I feel like lobbing the laptop out the window, banning all tv and friend visits for a month and no match of the day comic for a month for the extra lies he told and sticking him in his room for the night.

Realistically I plan to talk to him about how hurtful stuff like that is and although it makes him better to shout at me it makes me feel rubbish even after he leaves for school,

We go back to no computer or tv before school
Do we go round his mates tonight as planned or not?
Extra consequence for lying??

Someone help me let this go!!!

No tv/laptop, and start up a token economy so he can earn time on the laptop for doing certain things.

Keep the visit, it'll give him some social skills practice and you some much needed peace

Does he respond to social stories, if you wrote/found one about name calling and or swearing?

On my Triple P course they talk about meaningful consquences. So the consequence has to relate to the "crime". So definitely agree with Purple re the laptop. Maybe laptop before school is just too much for him to deal with re the switching off thing. Maybe it needs to be just for after school??

I agree with both Purple and Ben10 that it helps if the consequence is relevant to the crime, but would add that we come across problems if ds isn't already aware of the consequence before he does the crime, iyswim.

We have a list of consequences for different things, but the main one that works for ds is 10 minutes off his computer time - carried over to the next day if he has already had computer time that day. (Ds is able to remember and understand why he has the consequence a day later.) It can be difficult when they come up with a lovely new behaviour to challenge you with, but ds will accept the 10 minute computer loss thing as a standard punishment for pretty much anything these days, as it's become part of the normal scheme of things for him. There is an escalation to complete loss of computer time for more serious behaviours and if he continues, he will lose computer time for a week - which is awful for all of us actually, as he's very hard to be around if he doesn't get his daily computer fix.

Ds1 got into trouble the other day. Dh was really cross and without thinking, told him he wouldn't be having any rhubarb crumble for pudding after dinner as a consequence. (The rhubarb crumble was a big deal for ds, as he chose the rhubarb at the shop and specifically asked for the pudding that day.) Ds1 went straight into meltdown, because he couldn't cope with a consequence he wasn't prepared for and also his 'plan' for what was going to happen at dinner time had been changed. If dh had said he'd lost 10 minutes computer time ds would have accepted it, as a known consequence. The only way to sort it out was for dh to go back and explain that he had made a mistake and the punishment was 10 minutes loss of computer time.

I completely understand how angry you must be about his behaviour, but if he's anything like my ds1, in his mind he has apologised and that's that. So, perhaps use this evening as you planned to discuss what happened, explan how it made you feel and come up with a standard set of consequences for him so that he knows what will happen in future.

Your plan to talk to him about how it made you feel, even after he'd gone to school is a really good one and as Purple said, is perfect for creating a social story around.

Moose, your 10 mins off thing is exactly why I suggested the token idea - keep it structured and with clear rules. Congratulations on getting it so flexible!

Cheers lovely people, I have just had some lunch and a cuppa and having read this put the whole thing into perspective,,,he clearly is not ready for the laptop before school and linking the punishment to the crime is a great idea for keeping it simple and realistic.

I shall now go and take the lock off his bedroom door and retrieve the laptop from outside the window!!

ps this is why even though ds is not dx that i post on this site rather than the parenting one, where I have found the comments in the past to be far from constructive and often downright rude!!

Glad you are feeling better about it all now.
I would also be relating the punishment to the crime - ie no laptop for a while.
Mind you I would also be trying to do something to stop the lying too.

Hijack. ( Anyone with any ideas as I sure could use them - and not a social story! DS knows lying is wrong - what he doesn't get is that I can see straight through the lies and that he won't be found out. TBH the lying is more infuriating than the thing he was trying to hide anyway. So far I have taken to doubling the chosen punishment for the lie. )

Hi marymary, i just wanted to say, i am glad you are feeling a bit less stressed this afternoon.

Please dont think that not have a dx for your son means that you cant post on here regularly.

Lots of us start coming on here before dx. We are always glad to see new people and are a fairly friendly bunch (most of the time). Lol.

Be kind to yourself and good luck.

Alison, is he lying or is he completely convinced that his version of events is the only way it could possibly have happened?

Example...

Jonny has AS, He's playing a computer game with NT Timmy. Jonny says "You're rubbish at this". Timmy gets upset and tells Mum. When asked "What did you do to upset Timmy?" Jonny replies "Nothing"

In mum and Timmy's eyes, Jonny was rude. In Jonny's eyes he stated a fact. So, yes Jonny is lying but he can't see that because he has AS.

Obviously I don't know your situation but the above represents many similar misunderstandings I've seen - and you can see how punishing for lying will have no effect if I've managed to make myself clear

PurplePidjin No, for instance Me:" You were just using the computer weren't you?"
DS:"no" I flick screen back on as he clicked it off as I walked in the room and there is a game mid way through on the screen.

Mind you, I probably need to be more aware to look at the more grey areas where from his point of view what he says is true. Thankfully he is very articulate and so if he thinks I am unfair he will usually argue with me and tell me why .

Maybe to him "using the computer" and "playing x game" aren't linked. Do you have set computer times/use it as a reward?

He obviously knows he's not meant to be doing it or he wouldn't turn the screen off when you walk in

As I said he is very articulate and makes a point of twisting our words to take us literally if he doesn't like what he is hearing - well at least some of the time - the rest it is fairly obvious from his facial expression if he really doesn't understand.

So back to my original question - how do I stop it?

Purple, I think it's ds that needs the credit for it being as flexible as it is these days - it certainly wasn't that flexible at first, but I think, in part, it's because we've being doing the same thing consistently, for so long, that he sees it as 'standard' iyswim. We used tokens originally, when the dcs (we do it for ds2 (nt) as well) were getting used to it, but we found that tokens and charts don't seem to motivate ds1, so changed to a list of house rules and consequences that were drawn up between the whole family, with the boys deciding what some of the consequences should be. The list is on the fridge door, so any arguing and we just direct them to go and read it again.

Alison, how old is your ds? Mine went through a dreadful stage of lying when he was around 7, but did come out the other side of it. His EP said all/most children go through the lying stage, but he was just going through it later than most, due to his delayed development.

What worked for us was using consistent punishment - which at the time needed to be loss of computer time for a day for every lie and also lots of explainations about how it made us feel that he'd lied to us. I guess it depends on the individual child, but the one thing my ds hates more than anything is for us to be disappointed with, or hurt by him. We explained that when he lied it hurt our feelings and made us feel disappointed that he didn't respect us enough to tell the truth. To get our point across we had to relate how we felt to a time when we knew he had been disappointed with someone or someone had hurt his feelings. He didn't see/understand the impact of his lying was more than us just being cross, we needed to explain that we were cross because we felt hurt that he felt it was ok to lie to us and that being hurt or disappointed feels the same to us as it does to him. It wasn't that he didn't care how we felt, just that he never considered his lying would have any impact on our emotions at all. He hates anyone to be upset, especially if he's caused it, so once he finally grasped how lying made us feel things started to improve. (I probably haven't explained that very well [exhausted Moose emoticon])

Mind you, that has it's own pitfalls, as ds ended up distraught when he was caught out in a lie last Christmas, because he didn't want us to be disappointed with him. (It was a similar to your ds's actually, he was caught playing a game on dh's laptop when he should have been doing homework.) He was inconsolable and ended up trying to self-harm for the first time ever. It was huge shock, because he hadn't really told any lies since we dealt with it when he was 7 (he's 10 now) and it was a much more extreme reaction than he used to have when caught out in a lie.

I think your idea of doubling the consequence for a wrong behaviour if he then lies about it as well is a good one, as long as he knows that this is what the consequence will be.

Marymary, good to here you are feeling a bit better about it now. As Ineed said, you don't need to have a dx to post here. There are lots of us (myself included) who posted for a long time before our dcs got a dx and others for whom a dx isn't forthcoming, but we are all still here to help and support each other just the same.

That's the billion dollar question. What behaviour do you want to target - the backchat? Using the computer without permission?

Then work out what the motivator is (computer time, trading Cards, magazines, money?)

Work out what he has to do as a SMART target (from what you say, you could probably do 2-3 things concurrently), decide what the reward is to be for achieving it, reward on the spot.

Happy to help further if you're happy giving more info (and totally understand if you don't want that much on t'interwebz)

ok, ds came out of school really happy, had pulled his teacher (who is amazing) to one side which was very grown up and told her kind off what had happened althrough said he said something rude rather than the actual word a*hole, she actually spoke to him about how mummy would be feeling and maybe it would be a good idea for no laptop before school so all good.

Generally he doesnt lie, in fact hes very honest.

However, has now completely lost it about trying to make a puppet, wanted a purple hat, but we didnt have one, offered an alternative and told him it would be an original but no had to be a purple one, ds suggested that we cut off the hood off my hoodie and used that, I said no, alternatives only or we couldn't do it, at which point he properly lost it, screaming in my face that he hates me, refusing to go to his room to calm down, did then take himself off to his room where he started to scream and stamp for about half an hour.

Now he is completely mortified with himself, cannot believe that he did it again, keeps calling himself stupid and an idiot. All I want to do is hang on to him and squeeze him and tell him its ok, but hes really gone up a level in the last couple of days and im not sure whats next. So i have told him that it is not acceptable and when dh gets back from his work trip tomorrow we are all going to have to sit down and work out a plan. He is cool with this and currently kicking a ball up against next doors wall!!

We had decided not to go for full dx, he is bright funny has lots of friends, but definitely becomes more challenging and short tempered when he goes back to school and struggles with things like leaving others houses when hes having fun, he also has a beige diet, although again this has improrved in the last year or so.

We chose to work on tactics to help him deal and overcome his difficulties rather than to try and avert the difficulties in the first place.

The way I see it is that dx will not produce a magic wand and life will not always work out how he wants it, I want to help him to be able to cope and learn to make the right choices rather than shield him from situations.

Controversial no doubt, but any shared experiences would be greatly received.

Has something changed over the past few days that could have made him more unsettled? Is he used to his dad being away? We sometimes find it's the smallest/strangest things that turn out to be what has caused a change in ds's behaviour. Hopefully it will all come out at your family talk tomorrow and that will help you formulate a plan to deal with it.

I think you are right to do whatever feels right for your ds and your family with regard to dx. Not every child needs a dx, support and - as you said - teaching strategies etc is the most important thing and you don't necessarily need a dx for that.

In our case, we went for dx because ds had a breakdown when he started junior school, he just couldn't cope with the greater demands, both educationally and socially and we couldn't get the school to support him properly without a dx. To be honest, if he had continued the way he was in the infants I wonder if we would ever have gone for a dx.

He is used to his dad going away, although it could be that.

We went away at Easter for a few days with a friend and her 3 dc and he struggled a bit with that, it all started off very exciting then the tireder he got the less settled he became, it was like 5 sleep overs in a row so he was shattered at the end.

Then back to school which is always a bit tricky.

Now we are in the famous week 2, have cancelled all after school clubs this week and planned early beds.

Still in two minds re dx, no doubt this will pass this week and things will get back to normal, i will then forget about it until the next time which will be probably next school hols!!

Hey ho, large glass of vino calling!!

Senior school/puberty will be the decider I expect, Mary. Depends how he copes in y7 :)

Reading this I understand how it can be really difficult to get to the bottom of what is causing the upsets. The thing is that it is often something else worrying them that has them all tensed up so that any disappointment can set them off.

I hope you find out what it was about - probably in a couple of days when he has had time to chew it over if my DS is anything to go by. Although I have found the tactic of saying OK tell me about your day (or last few days -is there something that upset you? )- and them prompt him to go through what he did those days can trigger him telling me what it is that is causing the short fuse.

I feel like a bit of a detective sometimes.

Moosemama DS is 11

so this morning was a success. No tv, no computer and all was calm and well!!

Its been very interesting reading all your comments and seeing different approaches that you use for parenting.

I plan to speak with ds and try to get to the bottom of the meltdowns, i suspect its as simple as going back to school. Hes and only child and whilst we spend a lot of time with other family and close friends he does get used to his own space which obviously at school he doesnt get.

I agree with mrsmagnolia in that consequences often make things escalate, but I suppose by implementing something it makes me feel more in control about the situation, so is it about me or ds??

Lots of comments on board about how things may escalate when ds reaches senior school. Can anyone give me an insight into what type of things and if a dx helped or didnt make any difference.

Thanks again for all input

Glad things went well this morning.

As you said, its interesting to read different people's approaches as all our dcs are individuals with different needs and will respond to different things, its trial and error really I suppose.

For my ds, consequences are understood and accepted and there is a clear distinction between him being cross and rude and having a meltdown (which obviously we don't have consequences for, as they are beyond his control) but that's him, other children will obviously be different.

Rudeness is something that's difficult to police. Often ds's rudeness is purely down to his AS and not something he should be punished for, but if he started swearing at us, I would feel I needed to educate him as to why that was unacceptable and if he continued, would then impose sanctions. Not if he swore during meltdown of course, but if he started using swearing more generally eg whenever people did somethign he didn't like.

As far as meltdowns go, we have tried to work on his emotional literacy and improving his recognition of how he is feeling just before he 'blows', so that he can at least try to implement avoidance strategies to prevent the meltdown or at least delay it until he's taken himself away from the situation. It's a slow process, but I do think he is improving in small increments, although it really depends on the situation as to how well he can handle things.

Ds is due to start secondary in September 2013 and is already extremely anxious about it. We have just managed to get a statement for him, which means we can choose and name the school we would like him to attend, without having to go through all the usual admissions stuff. (We are already starting this process, visiting schools etc, now in year 5.) It also means that he will get much more support with changing to a new school. He will have additional visits to the school, both on his own and with a group of other children who are also being supported by the ASD Inclusion Team and the will be introduced to his new form teacher and other key members of staff well before he attends, so that they are people he is familiar with.

For ds, he simply won't cope with the amount of transition and change from lesson to lesson etc at secondary school. A different teacher for each lesson, rather than the same one all day every day like the juniors, moving from classroom to classroom between lessons, managing and organising books and equipment is something else he won't cope with without support and the sheer numbers of pupils, crowded corridors, sensory overload etc are all likely to be a problem for him as well.

Within our LEA children on SA+ get additional transition support as well, although less than statemented children, so you don't need a dx for your dc to be supported through the process. Similarly, you don't need a dx for a statement, so if you feel your ds will need more support than a secondary school is likely to be able to provide from their SEN budget, then you could apply for a statement for him.

I agree MrsMagnolia, one of the biggest benefits of a dx here has been for ds. He now understands why he is different, why he finds some things more difficult than his peers etc. We have an open dialogue about his AS, sometimes he'll ask 'do I do that because of my AS' and has even tried 'It's not my fault because I have AS' (that one got short shrift in the context it was being used ). He was relieved when we explained it to him.

We do the same with tracing back what's gone before meltdowns and discussing what he (and we) could do differently next time. As you say, it's a constant process, but one that definitely helps him to feel heard and understood, as well as to understand himself a little better. He feels bad enough after a meltdown, without being made to feel worse by us.

I also agree with the 'naughty behaviour' thing. Sometimes/often it is a reaction, one that he couldn't help and therefore needs support around, rather than punishing. Other times we tend to talk in terms of bad choices, rather than naughtiness or bad behaviour and discuss what would have been a better choice - how he (or sometimes we) could have done things differently. However, if he has made a bad choice and deliberately chosen to do something which he knows is not allowed, he also understands that there will be a consequence. We try to approach it as a learning process for all of us.