Sibling issues with ADHD and potential ASD

[PragmaticWench]

We're really struggling as a family with everyday life where DS (8 years) has ADHD and DD (10 years) has suspected ASD (mid assessment).

About twenty percent of the time they're best friends, get on SO well and our home life is fun. The rest of the time they're fighting and making home life miserable.

DS leaps around the house and often whacks DD inadvertently, or purposefully, as he has little impulse control. DD is fundamentally kind to DS but he hurts her physically so she's fed up and doesn't then want to play with him. He also loves winding her up (she reacts spectacularly), and with the ASD she doesn't cope well with him 'not being fair'.

Home can be tough trying to manage a child with ADHD to get dressed/ready/not to provoke his sister and also we're trying to balance DD's needs for stability, calm, less noise and less of DS jumping on her and ruining games.

I'm wondering about parenting classes for me and DH because whatever we're doing...it isn't working well. DH is really struggling with how chaotic and unhappy our household is and I don't know where to look for support.

Can't help but can totally empathise. Hoping someone will come along with some good advice. My DS has ADHD and his relationship with DD is utterly toxic. I'm ashamed how unhappy and dysfunctional we are as a family. DS thrives on her big emotional reactions

I don’t have the answer my oldest 2 are 9 and 6. 9yo DS recently diagnosed with ASD and 6yo DD has ADHD. Oldest has loop ear plugs to reduce noise as we don’t have a huge house and 6yo is loud. 3 yo who we think is NT can actually be a helpful added dynamic sometimes. Often try to look at different brains and work on understanding how different people need different things. Lots of support and modelling emotional regulation. Lots of managing fallouts. Hoping it’s sinking in.

Sounds a lot like our house. DS2 (10)has learning difficulties. A lot of the time gets on well with his brothers but can wind up little one (5) no SN but quite sensitive who often ends in tears, and it is relentless and hard to manage. I wish I had the answers but don't. We do a lot of separation. Taking one off into a different room when needed, trying to engage DS2 into something that distracts him from winding up his brother, sensing when the right time to leave somewhere if we're out ( don't always manage to) Family days out often end up with us splitting, one of us taking DS2 off a different way away from his brothers.

This sounds a bit like my children, we separate them quite a lot. When things were bad, we created safe spaces for DS 1 where he could go to get away from DS2 and DS2 was not allowed there. DS2 didn't always respect these but it did help. We also have them diagonally opposite at the dinner table. One holiday I sat in back of the car to separate them! We try to teach DS1 to recognise when DS2 is getting wound up and to get help from an adult rather than deal with it himself. It's taken a long time but things are much better at the moment.