Strategies for dealing with inappropriate sexual comments.

[DishwasherDogs]

Ds (9) poss ASD.
At home he will often make really inappropriate comments about sex, we pull him up every single time, but it is not sinking in and he carries on making comments.
He is not abused (isn't with anyone else alone so I'm 100% sure of this), he does not have access to unsupervised screens, so we know he hasn't seen porn.
His teacher has told me that this has now happened at school occasionally, and rightly they are slightly concerned - he is younger than they would expect to see this behaviour.
We do know that he has probably heard things from his older brother and he had a sleepover with a cousin and was allowed to watch Family Guy and Ted.

How do we tackle this? I had a word with him in the car and he ended up having a meltdown, the teacher is (apparently) a lying bastard (she's not) and is now on his hit list

Is this normal ASD behaviour? We have never had anything like this with his older siblings. If they've ever said anything inappropriate we've told them and that's been the end of the matter.

Help! :(

My older two knew "stuff" at that age, but had the sense to not repeat any of it.
Ds2 comes out with it when he's feeling uncomfortable about something, so in the supermarket and other places.
Today we missed the bus for swimming (sets off at an ungodly hour), so I took him to the pool and we met the bus, he was uncomfortable about joining the group at that stage.
There's a sign at swimming pointing to communal changing area or to single sex area, it was a. Comment about this.
He says others do it too, but I imagine the others know to do this when the teacher' snot looking.

Teacher's not. Unfortunate autocorrect there.

She's told me to talk to him and explain that there are younger children around who shouldn't hear this sort of thing (we have a four yr old, so this argument is, if anything, overdone, and still hasn't had an effect.)

We've talked about what other people will think when they overhear him.
We've punished, removed screen time, tried to reward for not doing it, no joy.

Some of the things he comes out with are more than normal 9 yr old stuff I think. I won't repeat it here, but if my mother heard it she'd faint.

I don't know if it's an attention thing, but don't feel I can ignore this.

He'll say run of the mill stuff about sex, normal/curious stuff which i imagine is normal for boys to talk about together, which we ignore if ds3 isn't about.
But he comes out with references to gay sex (maybe this is normal and I'm naive), comments about dh and I having sex (which we ignore), and can shout out stuff like cock sucker and other things.

We worry that if he ever comes out with stuff like this at school they are going to assume that he has been exposed to something he shouldn't have, and apart from a couple of things at his cousins, he definitely hasn't. So far it sounds like the school stuff is relatively mild.

I can't mention asd at school because they think I'm talking rubbish, even though it could help them understand that he's probably uncomfortable/stressed when he says these things.

Yes I think it's definitely an anxiety thing. I don't know enough about tics or Tourette's to know if this is what it is, but at the supermarket he won't shout out the really bad things, but he'll see cocktail sausages and shout out cock, or talk about sperm whales and emphasise the sperm.
It's only when he's nervous or anxious, never when he's relaxed.

I mentioned that to school, but tbh I think they zone out when I talk about anything that could be asd related.

Thank you, a diary is a good idea.

He will watch you've been framed type videos, but with no sound. Sometimes he'll watch minecraft videos.
He's not into angry birds at all.
He will watch things when he's downstairs so fairly supervised, but I'll make sure I supervise more closely.

At school he is friends with a boy in yr 6. Ds1 is 14, so it's more than possible that some things have come from him, so I will talk to him too.

I remember being 9, and can vividly remember some of the disgusting things we talked about, but we had a filter that meant that we were sweet little children in front of our parents. Ds2 is missing that filter!

The cock and sperm things - I've asked him to stop, but at the point he's saying them he's in that giddy silly place where no-one can get through to him, it generally only happens in public. The other more conversational stuff is at home when he's angry or overexcited, never when he's calm and relaxed.
If he sees a nun when we're out, he'll flap and shout "oh my god a nun, nunnunnunnunnunnunnunnunnun" Which then tips him over the edge and he's completely unstoppable. Cock and sperm are at a similar level of excitement.

Sanctions - at the point when he's saying these things it's very difficult to get through to him, he'll start shouting and swearing and says he doesn't care.

If I try to talk after when he's calm, he denies it all and says we/his teachers are liars.

When it happens, he will be removed from the situation, but punishments (loss of screen time, no bag of crisps if shopping, losing something for a set time) don't have any effect apart from escalating the situation.
We do the 5 point scale combined with going to spend some time in his room, which works but takes time until we see results. I wonder if I could try the 5 point scale with this.

Have just had a lightbulb moment about where this stuff has come from.
One of his friends plays on grand theft auto. Ds played it once, then told me, so I spoke to his friend's mum (who lets their 8 yr old play GTA?).
He also had a friend at his old school who knew all sorts of things from his much older brother about drugs, drug equipment and had a vast knowledge of sexual language.

Sorry, was making tea and wrote that slowly.

He tends to watch things with the sound off because he knows I'm listening and will turn it off if it's not suitable. He doesn't use headphones.
I will also do spot "what are you watching"'s which will quickly catch him out if he's trying it on.

I'm seeing the GP next week anyway to ask for a second opinion of ds's assessment, so I'll talk to her about this too.

We don't think badly of him, I think we have quite a good measure of his triggers, and this is a reaction to something, but I am very worried because everyone who meets him sees him as a NT child with weak parents, and this is a long way from the truth! We have had things to deal with with ds1 and dd, yet have managed to get them to 14 and 12 without swearing, lashing out or saying anything inappropriate, despite some quite hefty issues.

9 and 10 year old boys can be shocking in the way that they speak when they think that an adult they care about overhearing isn't in earshot. Your DS undoubtedly has heard a lot of it from other kids (especially the ones you mentioned!) and, not only does he not have the filter to avoid repeating it in front of you, as is common with a tic, that niggling feeling that he mustn't say it is counter-productive and makes him more likely to say it.

I helped a lad with asd type sn, and older kids put him up to doing things they wouldn't dare do themselves, like jumping off something high, or using really rude language that he didn't understand. He thought they were his friends, but they were using him as a plaything, kind of experimenting with how far they could make him go.

But your dc doing this when under stress, suggests that wherever he picked it up from has left a mark in his head somehow.

I don't have an answer on this, except for the obvious social stories, and anything that he finds helps him be calm at school - the stress balls, or blu tak or carrying something heavy etc etc.

Good Luck

Oh, and definitely have seen lots of asd kids making inapprpriate sexual comments, and indeed inappropriate sexualised behaviour. One had some therapy from a centre - from my poor memory it was called the Chilcott Project - which helped that dc see how others saw him and stopped the behaviour quite rapidly. I think he had been recommended there by the paed.

I can try and track it down if you are interested.

Thank you ouryve and senvet.

I think he knows that he mustn't say it, then as ouryve says, it comes out anyway.

I googled and found several articles about inappropriate behaviour and comments, and it seems it is common.

I'll go and talk to his teacher today and ask exactly what he said, and if in future they could make a note of what was said and what was going on.

I'm reluctant to talk to ds as it triggered a massive meltdown, but I know I'm going to have to approach it somehow with him.

You probably need to approach it in a generalised third person way. That's the only way we can approach difficult behavioural issues with DS1 without him becoming defensive and insisting that we never let him breathe.

Oh and I recall a documentary by Stephen Fry about language and how swear words are put in an area of the brain where they just do come out involuntarily under stress.

They took Brian Blessed, who swears constantly, and Fry to recreate a study done on a much larger sample of hapless volunteers. They had to stick their hands in painfully cold water and Fry swore violently and Blessed didn't because his swear words were used so often they were living in a different bit of the brain.

My dear fil had a stroke and 'bugger bugger bugger' came back before yes or no. And shamefully I took a youth group to stay at a church type place for a venture project where swearing was deeply frowned on, and in the heat of the moment in a racing type game I swore terribly.

I don't want to trivialise what dc is doing, but just to reassure you that it is well established that the human brain has a place for stowing naughty words to suppress them, but that they really cannot be suppressed under stress.

So all fingers and toes crossed for reducing the stress, as that is more important than anything that might make passers by blush. Just say it is a form or Tourettes, which in one sense it is, and they can like it or lump it.

Good Luck