How to get child with asd to accept accidents happen when playing with other children?

[exmrs]

Will keep this brief, son aged 6 not given official diagnosis as of yet for asd but has real problems with getting on with other children.

We live on first floor maisonette with communal gardens, son has always loved playing outside but since we have moved to communal gardens its causing major problems with him getting on with other kids.

If son is playing and a genuine accident occurs he screams at the other child that it was on purpose and goes into meltdown, I have to carry him kicking and screaming away to calm down as he will not let things go , He doesn't seem to get accidents happen and if a child is involved in an accident with him from then on he will hold a grudge and constantly go on and on about it and make comments that the child is naughty and scream at me that I should tell the childs mum that the child is bad.

From then on the relationship with the other child is ruined as son argues with other child but he cant stay away from them.
This has now gotten to the point that he has argued with every kid and no one wants to play with him. It has caused real trouble with the neighbours and I don't know how I can stop son doing this

DS2 (6) still does this, but DS1 (8) does seem to be slowly growing out of it. I don't know if he's just reaching a stage in his development where he has started to accept it or whether it's our constant banging on about the other person's point of view and how accidents are not anyone's fault that means it's finally sinking in.

He is still pretty argumentative but mostly with us (lucky us!) rather than his peer group. He'll still go head to head with some boys though, especially if they bang into him (accidentally) and forget to apologise, so we've still got a little way yet sigh

thanks for the reply warmandfuzzy, do both your sons have asd? im wondering if this is a common things for children with asd.
People always say oh my child is like that regarding accidents but when they have seen firsthand how my son goes on and on its way past what any other child will do.

I wish I had the answer - 15yo DD STILL doesn't grasp this. In fact, it even extends to someone not hearing her when she says something - they are 'purposely' ignoring her...

(Can you tell how my evening went tonight?!)

My DS has always done this. It?s quite common for kids with ASCs, Poltergoose?s explanation is very good! At that age I couldn?t allow my DS to play with other kids unless there was close adult supervision because things could blow up so quickly. Although DS was sociable and outgoing I had to arrange extra support for him at the out-of-school club so he could join in successfully and safely. And unstructured play ( games that don't have fixed clear rules) was especially difficult.

My DS has become better with age (he?s 14 now) and with a lot of social skills support (they have discussed accidental versus deliberate) but when things go wrong he?s still very likely to get extremely angry and blame someone else.

polter I love the way you describe using sea creaturesto help your ds understand levels of severity. I would love to try something similar with Dd3 especially with regard to pain.

OP Dd3 has great difficulty understand the difference between accidents and deliberate things. She can become very upset at what she sees as unjust situations too. She is 10 and has only just begun to play outside the front of our house occasionally with one other girl of 10 who lives opositie us.

I think for a while you might need to provide subtle supervision for your Ds, its surprising how often cars need washing

Good luck

I do supervise by sitting on the balcony and watching but find it makes it worse as he knows im watching,
and if an accident occurs he shouts up to me to go and tell the childs parents their child is bad and they are going to hell! and then ignores me completely whilst im trying to reason with him

Awww am I allowed to find that cute? (I have an excuse - my DS would just have thumped the other child) Your removal strategy is probably as good as it gets - I've never had any luck with reasoning afterwards.

In the long run a ?social story? might be the way to go, something you can write for your son, and talk through with him and show him before he goes out to play. There are books on how to write social stories, and you might make your own variation on this for example.

whoo hoo! I've done this one.

What you have to do is teach him what an "accident" is by focussing on the "accidents" he causes around the house.
So: he treads on your toe
You: "ouch - you trod on my toe! it hurt! did you want you tread on my toe?"
Him: no
You: "oh, so it was an accident".

You need to use loads of examples until he adopts this word into his vocabulary and uses it functionally before you can really hope for him to grasp that other children cause accidents too. And when you do get to that stage, it needs to be understanding that child B accidentally hurt child C ie something not involving him.

If he also has sensory imbalances you may also have to introduce langauge like "for you, that hurts" and "for me, that hurts"/"for me, that doesn't hurt". Again, he really needs to be able to talk about himself before he can be reasoned with about others.

My son will still accuse others of doing something "on purpose" and it's particularly mortifying when other parents pretend, for the sake of show, to believe him and tell their own child off, even though they are obviously thinking what a fuss pot he is. It's even worse when teachers use his complaint as a teaching aid and say "DS2 is right, you need to be gentle". When he makes these accusations nowadays I'll reply saying something like "your arm hurts - does it still hurt now? - yes? - does it still hurt now? no? good, so it's over".

sorry, should add that you need some apologetic phrases to use with the other parents....

Ugh. If I had a pound for every time in one NIGHT that I had to tell DD that it's not her place to tell off DS1, or DS2, or DS3, then I would be bloody rich!!

Hee hee, I like the chickens . Yes OP, my two are both on the spectrum - sorry, have only just got back!

I thought the chickens were something to do with this new fangled goose thing!

@ the chickens and the new fangled goose thing!!

We had a lot of trouble with Dd3 being encouraged to police the playground at her old school. Thank goodness the children are encouraged to be children where she is now!!

Ds1 understands 'not on purpose' when he was the one to inflict an injury on another but really struggles to apply it to others.

If he and ds2 bump heads he'll assume because he didn't do it intentionally then by default ds2 did. Which is bad enough but unfortunately ds2 thinks in exactly the same way so it leads to all out warfare within seconds.

We do a lot of talking about accidents, and also how doing certain things (such as waving big sticks around, jumping off the table onto the couch which is already occupied, running whilst not looking ahead) can cause accidents.