Struggling with lack of empathy

[strawberryshoes]

Tonight DD1 bit DD2 because she thought DD2 was trying to take a sticker away from her (DD1 4, DD2 7 months). She wasn't she was just waving her arms excitedly because DD1 was happy.

I told her it was wrong to bite (would you want someone to bite you? No mummy. Then you should not do it to other people.) and took the sticker activity away.

She BELLOWED and SCREAMED with anger for about 20 minutes while i ignored her and settled/fed DD2 who was both upset at having been bitten, and upset at the noise of her sister.

We then had a debrief where i tried to help her understand that I took the stickers away because she had bitten her sister. Biting is wrong because it hurts others.

The thing is, she just doesn't really care. She has no empathy at all. She knows it hurts, but it doesn't hurt her, so really, whats the problem. She has a tendency to tantrum when I tell her off or give her a consequence following behaviour which is not acceptable - in the form of screaming at the top of her lungs. As if she is the one who has been wronged. I am struggling with this today. It makes me angry that she hurts someone, and then thinks its all about HER pain and HER loss. Getting her to see that she deserved that loss is seemingly impossible. Or thats how it feels at the moment anyway.

Can you teach someone to care about the feelings of others? It is not that she cannot put herself in someone else's shoes - she knows how they are feeling, or can tell you how she thinks they are feeling after she has hurt them, she just couldn't give a shit, because its not her that is hurt.

I am not sure anymore if this is SN related, or if she is just plain mean. How can I say that about my own daughter? Maybe i am just tired, its been a long term so far.

In my experience with my DS - yes but it takes a lot of time. It improves with maturity too. Think of a gradual improvement over the years rather than a sudden “getting it”.

What helped my DS was short repeated explanations about what’s acceptable behaviour and what isn’t, and what hurts and what doesn’t (and later on, what is a hurtful thing to say and what isn’t!), but without getting into a huge argument about it. We sometimes used "social stories" to explain. We did do a mild consistent punishment each time he physically hurt someone, so over time he was less likely to take the attitude “I took my frustration out on someone else and now I feel better myself so what’s your problem?”. My DS did not really accept that a punishment was "deserved", or at least he wouldn't ever say so, he would argue furiously instead or even have a tantrum but once he'd calmed down he would grudgingly accept it. Also getting him to say sorry to anyone he'd hurt was important. At first he couldn’t bear to say sorry at all, his school gave him a card with “sorry” written on it to hold up and show any child he’d hurt!

And over time it all helped.

My DS is an only child so we didn’t have to worry about it so much at home, but you might need to take extra care to protect your younger DD.

Thanks Kleinzeit.

DD is very happy to say sorry - she sees it as a get out of jail free card! Does something she knows is wrong, looks guilty, says sorry and expects it all to be forgotten, thing is, I know she does not mean it and feels no remorse at all. I can think of NT kids who are similar actually, and I think it is the tantrum and screaming which annoyed me more, the bit where she was demanding any punishment was unjustified, more than the impulse control failure itself.

I will keep on with the simple explanations of what is allowed and what is not, and make the punishments immediate and as relevant as possible when she hurts someone (thankfully, this has not happened at home before, and never at school. Usually she just snatches things away from her sister, which I can cope with!)

Well, when learning impulse control, I thought it was better to have an incentive? Like, I know I should not hurt others, and if I do, then something happens.

Happy to take guidance though, how would you teach in a kinder way?

I had to keep Dd2 safe from Dd1 who had no concept at 7 that she could and did hurt Dd2. I could never, ever leave Dd2 in the same room if I wasnt in there.

She was always able to say sorry but didnt learn what it meant until she was an adult.
Dd3 is completely unable to say sorry, I think because on the rare occasion that she lashes out, she means it or feels justified so would never be able to apologise.

I have never been able to punish Dd3 for agression because she goes absolutely ballistic because she only lashes out when she feels she has ho alternative eg, when Dd2 has wound her up to the point of exploding.

We are all different though and you do wht is right for you.

Polter, undiagnosed if ASD, school (and prior, preschool) say delayed social skills and sensory processing / working memory issues, developmental Paed says she "has traits" but nothing worthy of a diagnosis.

When ds was this age I didn't give any explanations it would have just been a very stern. "You DO NOT bite" we generally focused on this is what we do and this is what we don't do at that age rather than the why.

Punishing ds when he was four would have been as pointless as putting your 7 month old on the naughty step for hair pulling. It is hard though and ds has had his fair share of 'NT' bollockings when I've lost all patience.

yes to lost patience

I praise her all the time for being nice to her sister, (she generally is, loves her, hugs her brings her toys, chats to her etc) and this is the first time she has ever bitten her (or anyone for that matter) or been in any way aggressive to her so i might have been a bit angrier than I would normally be because i was shocked, but it was the tantrum that set me off, it just hit me really hard how utterly egocentric she was about it. She knew she hurt her sister, knew it was wrong, but was more upset we stopped playing stickers than she was bothered to see if DD2 was alright. What i want to be able to teach her is concern for her sister after she caused her pain, but it was so obviously not as important as her own wants.

I am on the fence about punishment - I can see where Polter’s coming from but I do feel that my own DS reached a stage where he needed to feel a negative effect on himself. With my DS there were often degrees of “can’t help it” and I felt it was very important that he wasn’t left feeling better after he’d been aggressive. It’s an individual decision, about where you judge your child is in terms of self control and empathy. I mostly avoided punishing DS but physical aggression was the one thing we used punishment for, though now I think about it that was a year or two later, at four we were still just using time out. Four is still very young and a child with SN is likely to be behind their age.

It’s a very good thing that your DD can say “sorry” even if she isn’t really remorseful yet. It means that she has some sense of how she ought to feel, or at least how she ought to behave. Of course she isn’t there yet but I believe saying “sorry” is a foundation for remorse in the same way that saying “thank you” for things we don’t really want is a foundation for gratitude. In the end, both are about respecting the other person's feelings. She will get there

Yes, I've heard Margo Sharp say that if you get the child to say sorry, it just gives them the message, they can do what they like; and saying sorry makes everything ok again!

Margo Sharp told us about this study:

They took two groups of children. One group had Aspergers. The other group all had emotional and behavioural problems. They showed them a film, about a little boy who came home from school. He asked him mum if he could have some biscuits. She said he could have one, as his tea would be ready soon. In fact, he ate the whole packet.

They asked both groups of children why he did wrong. The EBD group, who all had considerable behaviour problems said he was naughty, because he ate the whole packet and did not leave any for anybody else. Despite their behavioural problems, they still had empathy!

The Aspergers children all said he was naughty, because he did not do what his mother said - ie they took the rule very seriously, but showed no empathy!

Empathy isn’t a single thing, it has a lot of different aspects and any or all of them can be blunted or missing. There is recognising someone’s feelings and intentions, there is caring about someone else’s feelings (or the effect of our own behaviour on them in general), and there is knowing how to respond appropriately to their feelings (or knowing how our own actions affect other people). People with ASCs are often poor at the first and last, and they vary enormously in the middle. The OP’s DD seems to have misread her baby sister's intentions.

I agree with Margo Sharp that an apology is not enough by itself, but apology is still one of the foundation steps and while it's OK to clarify its limitations she would be mistaken to pooh-pooh it altogether. What I want is for my DS to develop all the different bits of empathy, more or less, and have them all working together. And at times he has to use conscious reasoning rather than instinct, which is slower, more fragile and harder work, but that doesn’t make it useless.

As for the study, I imagine Margo Sharp was simplifying to make a point. Some people with ASCs over-empathise at times. So it’s not that there’s always lack of empathy, it’s more that the boundaries are in different places from usual.

Did you explain to dd1 that dd2 was not trying to take her stickers? Because if you didn't then as far as dd1 is concerned you told her off for protecting her stickers. Her action was wrong ( but we can blame that on delayed social skills) and and of course can not be ignored. Also tell her what she should have done instead of biting her sister. I do think its a good idea to have some ground rule of time out for hurting others but only for the benefit of other siblings or getting ready for school, not to improve behaviour. To improve behaviour you have develop social, communication and interaction skills. In my opinion and personal experience, people on the spectrum are naturally capable of empathy and sometimes have to much. The diagnosis of autism is one of difficulty in social communication and interaction difficulties not lack of empathy.
I do feel for you, I battle everyday with managing my children's sibling quarrel and it is extremely stressful and frustrating.