Nasty comments and agression

[Cartooner]

My DS age 9 has ADHD and HF ASD. Medication works well. However, his morning and often evening behaviour is once again started to plummet with the end of term etc.

He is VERY high functioning to the point that even his teachers seem to think we are mad as he is well behaved and polite in school. He is described complex by the services we use. The school and most people don't see the meltdowns, demanding and controlling in-house behaviour, which is good but it's not good for my and my husbands mental health. We have tried a lot of things to manage this.

Where I am now is I am struggling with the nastiness of his behaviour as he gets older. We are dreading it when it kicks off. When he is in a mood in the morning, demanding and trying to make everyone's life hell, he starts to hit DH... today he took my cup of coffee and poured it on the floor and laughed at me as I got annoyed. He started to break up his toast and throw it at everyone around him. He said get off the chair and wipe the coffee up yourself or are you too lazy? Then he slammed a glass door with the force hoping to break the glass. I was so angry I started shouting at him how dare he. He starts saying 'this is all YOUR fault. This condition came from inside you so enjoy it, this is what YOU DID TO ME".

It's so horrible in these moments I feel like I"m in one of those awful films. In a normal state of mind he is such a nice kid, mostly, if exhausting and demanding. When the medication kicks in he says sorry etc. But this behaviour is atrocious and cruel and I feel like I can't bear it.

I am saying this now at the point where we have done consequences down and we are getting stricter with this now due to the way he is behaving. We have started OT again. But I just can't bear the nasty side of him, where did it come from? Am I supposed to accept this as part of the condition? He has such a good life, he gets more exercise and time than most children. My other children would never, ever speak to me this way.

Sorry to go on about it but I feel this is such a lonely place. I can't talk to anyone about it as I don't know anyone who deals with this? I am late for work quite often due to his behaviour and think if my colleagues knew what I was dealing with before work they wouldn't believe it. They think I'm living in the happy clappy land of motherhood.

I'm so sorry you're going through this. We have a very similar situation at home much of the time, though it does have its peaks and troughs. I don't have any great advice unfortunately. For us, the really vile behaviour is always tied into some kind of stress of anxiety, though it isn't always easy to determine where the stresses are coming from or what they are.

I don't know what services you can access, but you just have to keep asking for more and more help until you get what you need.

Firstly, I would strongly recommend you stop thinking of him as 'high functioning' as I don't think it's helpful, and actually he's not really 'functioning' well at all as he's clearly masking/camouflaging his autism all day and then becoming overwhelmed by the stress of it all when he's at home and safe.

Secondly, he is clearly not as well supported at school as he needs to be, so some thought needs to go into what's stressing him. This will take time to work out and reading accounts by autistic adults like Clare Sainsbury's Martian in the Playground book might help shed light.

Thirdly, I would recommend exploring what are often called PDA strategies (look at PDA Society website) and buy Ross Greene's The Explosive Child book and Bo Elven's books. Together these will give you a different approach which is more likely to help your son. Removing as many unnecessary demands as you can might reduce his stress load.

Fourthly, his aggressive and violent reactions are almost certainly a sign of high stress/anxiety/panic/fear. If he cried and wept when he was overwhelmed you'd probably give him a hug and indulge him, and he needs the same now even if it feels counter-intuitive. Honestly, you have to stay utterly calm and let the explosions ride out. Don't fuss or try and help while he's in fight mode.

Fifth, it's really tempting when things are awful to stop doing fun stuff, but you must, join him in his interests, take him out to places he likes, don't remove things that calm him and make him happy as punishments. You want him to learn that there are things that help him and they shouldn't be taken away.

I competely agree with what HardAsSnails said. It is the equivalent of crying in anguish, and though it goes againts traditional British parenting styles, when they are being rude/aggressive/vile, they need love, compassion and understanding. And chill out time.

Another Ross Greene book that has been very useful is Raising Human Beings. You need to look at aligning how your son wants to lead his life with what the world demands as much as possible. And if it is not essential then don't do it.

From the comment "this is all YOUR fault. This condition came from inside you so enjoy it, this is what YOU DID TO ME" it sounds like your DS may have quite a negative attitude to his autism. That is something that you can both work on together, by looking at his strengths as well as the differences from his NT peers. It's important to feel positive about who you are, and that includes being accepting of your ASD and how that limits what you do.

Thank you your replies are really helpful and I appreciate the time it took to reply.

Yes, I do try to figure out what is underneath it. I feel like I'm trapped inside a really complicated computer game if I'm honest, with a complete re-programme every couple of months! We do so much around him and he gets very few punishments. I think he could do with more consequences really, I can tend to choose an easy life with him because removing things he likes can result in a torturous evening of begging. Yet other times he happily takes a conseqence. It feels like I am dealing with two people sometimes.

School is good, he has friends and likes it but I will talk more to the school anyway. I could see when he was changed position in football last week it directly led to a big meltdown. But since that he has had a lovely weekend, to the point that yesterday driving to a forest he said we told him we'd go to a football grounds - something I didn't want to be honest - but we took a vote in the car and drove back to where he wanted to go. I stood at the edge of a pitch for over an hour with a toddler while his wish was fulfilled to play goals. Then last night he had a nice calm evening. But he gets up today.... starts using my laptop, I say no laptop now it's time for school. Our toddler was vomiting with a bug. He kicks off. Everyone late, upset.

He gets so much fun stuff. Night time music, calm down massage. Breakfast handed to him. I try so hard. I will look into those links and explosive child book, I've read it twice.

High functioning does seem odd in these moments. But I suppose that accounts for the fact no one would believe me he is on the spectrum, I had to convince his resource teacher and even at that he said 'but all kids have their moments, he really is a great happy kid'. I left feeling like he thought I was unhinged.

Springer I didn't know he had a third book, thank you. The first 2 were fab.

Yes, totally agree about the need to find positives. If you know any autistic teens/adults perhaps they might help him feel less angry about being autistic. It's not a bed of roses (I am also diagnosed) but it's not the end of the world and it's quite possible to have a very good autistic life.

Even if it feels like school is fine and he is happy, it's still a massive social demand being in school all day. Just being with people is often hard when you're autistic, it takes a lot of effort.

Thinks also about the language you use and how it might come across. 'No' is often a red rag to bull, with the laptop incident maybe think about how you could have giving him options instead of direction. If he's late for school there will be natural consequences...

Thank you also for the last comment which posted as I was replying.

He knows he has ADHD but I haven't said autism to him. I know that sounds really odd but he is 'complex' according to every Dr we've met and the ASD services want to assess him further to get a better picture of it. Right now I don't personally know where the ADHD ends and the ASD begins and I don't think he's mature enough yet to understand any of this so we started with ADHD and he watches videos of Michael Phelps etc and has a mixed view on it all now. One day its his superpower another day it's this mornings comments.

Where I live there are two year waiting lists for ASD services so he only goes to the ADHD clinic right now.

Thank you HardAsSnails, great ideas. I am quite a scattered person in my own day to day living so I think I might need a better plan and approach. I can just get into we-are-late! mode and it's hard to calm down and approach it better. I must get the ross greene book.

I can probably help you with the "we are late" mode issue. Stress rises when you feel like you are going to be late, and your son will pick up on this even if not on a conscious level, and will act out making you more late, more stress... the cycle builds.

So, have a timetable for the morning. And it has to be analy-retentively planned. We have a time to wake up, get up, be dressed, have eaten breakfast by, brushed teeth, put shoes on and be out the door. Each time point is agreed in advance with DS, he knows why (i.e. so we have enough time to fit in all the things we have to do). Before that, he could not understand why I woke him at 7:30 for school, which starts at 9. Now he can see all the things that need to happen, and why we need 1.5 hours to do it all.

And then, you need to take a step back. You and DS know that you need to be dressed by x time. He knows that if he isn't he will have to rush or be late for school. So let him be late. Let him take personal responsibility for getting himself sorted (with appropriate help).

I use different alarms on a phone to signify the different times we have to hit certain milestones. Then it's not me giving constant, nagging reminders - just that when e.g. the duck quacks, you should be putting your shoes on.

Also, plan ahead and sort out what you need the night before (homework, book bags, PE kit etc. - we have different bags for our different after-school activities, and everything is sorted into them well in advance, often immediately after coming home one week, we re-pack for next week).

Like HardAsSnails, I also have a diagnosis of ASD, which might explain my love of routine and planning ahead somewhat :)

Thanks springerlink! Really helpful. Oddly he can be the absolute best of my 4 children some mornings, in fact he'd be dressing his younger brothers and standing at the front door calling on us all to hurry up! So it's the sporadic non-cooperation that often catches me off guard. Like one day last week he was at the end of the drive with his bag impatient about going. The next day he was hiding int he garden saying he wasn't going, throwing things at me. And I am full sure that wasn't to do with an issue in school, he just entered this mood where he becomes difficult. But I know there must be something to it. He's so hard to understand.

The timetable can help regulate the early/late cycle. If you normally just say things like “hurry up” or “we’ll be late” it can be hard for your DS to know why. It’s easier to process that at 8:15 you need to brush your teeth. Brushing your teeth at 8:30 means we are 15 minutes late.

He may be hurrying some mornings to comply with the instruction to “hurry up” that you’ve said on previous occasions, but not able to process why sometimes you have to hurry but other times you don’t.

I'm not routine-ish and list-loving at all! But we have some routines which ds agreed. Our morning routine is that ds gets up, has breakfast and does teeth and gets dressed much then whatever time is remaining (we aim for at least half an hour) is for him to use as he pleases, when he was younger he'd watch SpongeBob and then it was Minecraft and now he's nearly 15 and goes on YouTube (and sometimes even does a bit of homework which I never imagined he'd do!).

I suppose the interesting thing is that we all do it differently, but it's all underpinned by careful language and reduction of demands/anxiety.

Yes the careful language/reduction in demands aspect is key. And a reliable routine. I hear that most of all the replies because it hits home that I need to be more consistent with my approach to him.

@HardAsSnails - I don't think I'm a a natural list-lover, but I love them now becuase they are great at reducing my anxiety and difficulty with managing life with 3 children and a job and everything else :)

I am coming to the conclusion that my impositoin of order all around me is just a way of managing executive function difficulties and maintaing consistency. If I only have to remember one routine for everything I do, then I can manage a lot more than if I have to think it through each time and problem solve on the go.

At least in our house, more order and fewer demands make life with my DS less explosive and aggressive.

You know what I will take this advice and try harder. But I've this feeling like... do you ever feel with this that it is a constant feeling of failing? I am exhausted all the time trying to think my way out of the dramas with him. That if I could just figure out what to do properly. Then it is going well. Some balance with him, bit of order in life, maybe going ok in work, few nice dinners on the table in one week. Then... boom.. back to drama, door slamming, him awake until 11pm, order lost, house a bombisite.

I just counted 15 books on the sheft in my bedroom about parenting, ADHD etc. eeek!!

and that's not including my kindle!!!

I look back on age 4-11 with horror, but it was worth it and it's all so much easier now. Different ways of communicating become your normal. It's easy to drop all the stuff that works when things seem ok, but it's so important to not do that!

Thanks HardAsSnails, that's comforting to read

Does the kicking off in the morning/evening always happen on school days?

Usually but not always. The place where he kicks of least is when we stay anywhere in the country side, it's like therapy for him, open fields and silence.