AS and Violoence/anger

[Lorns]

Hi can anyone help. My DS with AS is getting more violent. When in a rage he tries to kick me. Upon restraining him he then bites me whereever he can. What can I do? He knows this is unacceptable!

There's always a hidden reason. You need to take a step back and analyse the situations when he's getting this violent. What's triggering his anger? In my ds's case it's rarely one single incident but an accumulation of smaller (often quite trivial) ones over a period of time, although with many AS children they do react this way to bigger events (ds does himself at times).

Look at sensory issues especially - I did a course recently on sensitivities and the OT reckoned about 90% of behavioural issues with AS children could be attributed to sensory factors. Maybe sounds, smells etc could be irritating him without your reaising it. DS has been getting really riled lately at school because some of the girls are singing cheerleading songs - just the pitch and tone are driving him nuts but nobody else can see this.

Ultimately, I'd say that trying to correct the way your son deals with his anger is maybe leaving things too late. I'd suggest trying to find out the cause of his anger and work on making his environment calmer so that he has less reason to be angry. Once you've done that you can then try to work with him on appropriate ways of dealing with the anger itself, helping him to relax when he's starting to lose control (deep breathing, sensory toys etc). I've done some work with ds on this recently and he's come on a treat, can really recognise his anger and it's made such a difference. If you want some more info on the strategies we've been using let me know and I'll email them to you.

Good luck!

Thanks for your advice. We do whereever possible try and not let a situation occur. It often seems that it's things out of our control which lead to "meltdowns".

E.g. He had a 4 and a 9 year old (9 year old same age as him) over. He had let the 4 yr old use one of his gadgets. Great I thought!. The next thing I knew he'd accused the 4yr old of breaking the gadget. It didn't seem to work that well but my DS was incolsolable. It was then that he started to lash out. By the way he mended it later! He also made his friend (9 year old) cry as he wasn't playing a game how he wanted him to play and got very angry at him.

I would be very grateful if you would be so kind as to mail me your suggestions!
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Will try to email you later today - half term so I'm a bit hectic already!

That's fine. WE had our half term last week so I know how you feel. Hope you have a good one!