Do your children with hfa/aspergers say really mean things to you/aggressive things and are they defiant?

[Blossom4538]

Without wishing to sound pathetic, sometimes some of the things DD says to us really gets to me. She can be pretty aggressive towards us. Things I would never have dreamt of saying to my parents. It is sometimes as though she wants to wind us up/upset us or get a reaction.
I said what she said to me this morning had made me feel sad and she said "good"
:-(

Ds1 and 2 have both made me cry with their verbal nastiness. Lots of swearing and telling me how awful I am. It's so hard keeping a poker face. Usually when they perceive I'm not being fair or stop them doing what they want to do. Mostly I cry in the bathroom and have a sob to dh on the phone at night. I do tell them how i feel about it and they have made me sad but 90% of the time they don't care.

All the time

She always wants to kill me, or her siblings. I would hear it on a daily basis. Every now and then now, she flips. When really anxious, she will say I'm her only friend, I'm all that she loves etc etc. That's about once a fortnight.

Not a very even balance...

We get "I'll kill you" too. Yesterday, she said she was going to stab me in the eye with a needle and sometimes jabs her fork towards our faces at dinner time. She's almost 6. It's hard isn't it?

Are your children on the spectrum?

Yes my DS does but I don't take it to heart.

I get him to regularly write out 3 good things about the person he is saying mean things about. Coming up with ideas about what to write seems to make him realise the person has good points too and he starts to feel more positive about them.

Once, when he was happy and calm, I told him I was really, really sad he was saying those things about me and he seemed to realise he'd gone too far and told me he didn't really mean it - he was just saying it.

Yes, my 8yo dd has ASD. She's v aggressive and volatile. V demand avoidant, asked ng her to write good things about people just wouldn't happen. She seems to be angry most of the time. And of course I feel tense then. Today I flipped out at two of my NT dc and, while they were irritating, I feel so on edge ATM that it just made me react worst

Sounds like my DD!! So up and down and very demand avoidant.

I love it when she's happy and a little silly, but that can very quickly escalate into being totally over the top and then it's difficult to calm her back down again, which can then develop into physical aggression and tantrums. I love her quirky, funny sense of humour and like to have a laugh and a giggle with her but I need to be careful about it.

She is so demand avoidant! What kind of things does your DD avoid or how does she behave?

Yes, I often feel on edge. H and I feel like we're treading on eggshells at times and feel quite tense. I don't want her to pick up on that though as she very easily does, she's quite sensitive.

Ah, she is very aggressive. Very anxious. She's always fighting. However, she is a masker and at school she adopts the personality of the person she plays with. So, she can be very popular and Sought after! But she can't really follow through on the play dates and sleepovers. They do happen, but they are fraught with difficulty.

She probably has OCD, but they can't say for sure yet. She is a hoarder, so her room is filthy. There is really not much I can do about it an it gets quite sad.

As she gets older, I see a few glimpses of a nice girl. But it's like she holds it in and as soon as she sees me, she lets it all out. At your dds age she just constantly raged. Fought and raged, didn't speak much at home, just screamed. She's gotten a bit better. But I think more withdrawn and sad at school. Slowly the mask is falling I think.

Cahms, on the other hand, think that because she masks so well, she will be ok. I just see a little girl constantly imploding....

😢 Oh gosh, I hear quite a few negative stories with camhs.

Your Daughter sounds very much like my DD. She too has hoarding tendencies and I wonder about OCD.

We have no diagnosis yet, other than Selective Mutism, due to extreme anxiety. Also, mention of poss sensory issues (we certainly think she has), poss motor and processing delays. She is currently under assessment for ASD after seeing HV, Community Paed (3 times) Early Years SEN, Ed Psych, Consultant Paed, and most recently, SALT.

Well, I guess cahms did diagnose her, and they are fully on board with recognising girls with autism. Prior to that, we saw a clinical child psych at a short term intervention service in the borough, who said it def wasn't ASD. Community Pead said it was sibling rivalry . Getting OT and SLT has been v difficult, but we have that now - it's just v limited.

Def. sensory issues, but that doesn't get a separate diagnosis in our borough. She is very average in terms of literacy skills, but superior in numerical skills. Apparently it is not so bad to indicate a learning difficulty but it's just shy of boarder line. Processing speed etc seems average. So academically she's fine, and that seems to be the crux of the problem. Ok academically, fine at school (actually, not really, but they see it as 'shyness' - she's not a shy girl - I do think there is a lot of gender bias here), so we can all just deal with it at home.

'Symptoms' started at bang on 3, but looking back I can see it from around 3 or so months with massive fear of any strange faces she saw (and numerous other signs). What about your dd?

Ds1 (8) adhd
Ds2 (5) asd - recent diagnosis
Ds2 standard response is he is going to kill me, chop my head off and stab me - he doesn't usually phase me as much as it's his standard response to any demand made of him

We've had tonight, that she is going to put two guns in my eyes (where she's heard that I don't know - poss school, perhaps in her nurture group) and kill me. She hates me and doesn't care. Next min, sat with me being nice and asking if I can read her a story tonight....!

She is our only child do nothing much to compare to, but don't remember hearing my Nieces ever speaking like that and we never did to our parents.

She also threw her spoon across the table, hard at me tonight and told me to shut up.

Imip, I think we saw a change in her around 17 months, just after she started walking. She was a fairly late walker but a good, early talker. She became quite aggressive and anxious. She suddenly became very fussy with food and found busy, social situations hard. Would shy away from people in the street and kick them away if in pushchair. Certain faces/photos would scare her and she had been v v sensitive to our facial expressions and tone of voice. She struggled hugely when we tried pre-school and had a meltdown over it. It affected her so much that we left it another year to try again, as agreed with the pre-school. She became super anxious and would cover her ears. At 3, she attended pre-school with a lot of carefully managed "settling in". They knew of my concerns. HV and Paed had recently said she's just quirky and given hearing test which was fine. Pre-school then referred her to early years special education needs - due to lack of speech, interaction, anxiety and some "unusual behaviours".

She has had lots of unusual, sensory behaviours and struggled throughout pre-school. Reception was tough, until the final term with a different teacher and things started to improve!

Outside of school, she is selectively mute (fine with us), anxious at times and struggles with emotions/affection sometimes.
She only started walking upstairs, alternating her feet, within the past year and still leads with her left going down. Finds it tricky trying to walk down alternating, it's as if her limbs and brain can't compute and they turn to Jelly or robot like!

V sensitive to smells, textures of clothes etc.

Struggles socially.

Oh how very interesting! My dd has the same issue with stairs! It's the first reason I started seeking help. I was thinking along the lines of dyspraxia, but I think it may be more phobic??? Coming down our stairs, she holds the bannister with both hands, and I have only recently seen her go step by step (she is 9 in July). When she was 1, I expressed concern about her ability with stairs. She was seen by a pead (at the place where 6 years later she was diagnosed with ASD, and they didn't see a concern. Again at 5 I expressed concern, but the school nurse said she did it perfectly. She can run up our stairs though, when racing a sibling. That's been about the past year. Descending stairs is more tricky.

Before about 6, she was also scared of escalators, going over the threshold of tubes/buses. When a toddler, she would side step when coming to a curb. These really struck out to me as my younger two got older, and dd was not meeting their physical rate of development. It was just so obvious to me.

Obvious sensory needs, never wearing a coat or tights. Would never let me brush her teeth. Always wiping her hands on herself and getting filthy (still does this, my 5 yo also does it).

I have three other dds. One other possibly ASD but much 'easier'. At most, my not kids might say, "I hate my life". They wouldn't threaten to kill me or themselves. It would be a one off when times are tough (they are tough in our home with dd). Dd also self-harms. On Sunday night in a rage, she just kept punching herself in her throat. But in the past, tried to swallow things that would have hUrt her, cut herself with knives and paper clips etc.

No really having a problem settling in at school etc. She is popular, but struggles with her friendships as she just doesn't understand social rules, but she copies the personality of her friends, so I guess that can make her quite popular.

So sorry to hear about your DD self harming. It's hard and heartbreaking isn't it.

We've had an awful day with her today, her anxiety is through the roof. Been a battle to get her into school. Would love to keep her off tomorrow and cuddle her all day!!