DS1 and 'being naughty'

[sphil]

As some of you know, DS1 (7) has AS traits though no dx. Just recently he has been behaving differently - deliberate disobedience and some minor destructiveness. When we talk about it, he says 'my brain makes me do it'. He apologises profusely (I'll never ever do it again in my whole life') and then, the next day, does the same thing, or something similar. If I get cross with him, even mildly, he gets very upset and has started saying things like "I'm the naughtiest boy in the whole world" and saying he 'feels like nothing, like air' when I get cross with him. He seems to find it difficult to keep things in proportion - a piece of mild naughtiness (which is all it EVER is) is like the biggest crime and a minor telling off is the most wounding thing ever.

Is this an AS thing? And what is the best way to deal with it?

Sounds virtually identical to J (dx autism and ADHD) who is also 7. With J, the doing it again even though remorseful thing is largely due to impulsiveness and sometimes due to inability to generalise (so if I say he can't play with the tills at Sainsburys, he doesn't necessarily realise that the true is same for the tills in Tesco!) I have a scale for J - 5 is really bad and there will be a big consequence, right down to 1 which means Mummy is just sad that you did that and wants you to say sorry. It helps him to keep it in proportion. With getting J to follow instructions, counting down to a pre-warned consequence usually works if he is deliberately ignoring me.

I like the scale idea - that might work, though I can imagine him getting obsessed with it and asking me continually whether what he's doing is a 1, a 3 or a 5!

Yes, did happen for a while - I ended up holding up fingers - very tempting to be rude when it's a 1 or a 2!

But it works because it's visual. And helps him keep it in proportion.

Givemesleep, did you get that from The Incredible 5 Point scale? I just bought that on recommendation this week and it's given me the seed of a few ideas to help DS1 with his impulsiveness and temper at home and at school.

Sphil does sound very much like dd with AS. Especially the dramatic naughtiest boy in the world comment. I have to say that from 6-7 dd's AS became more obvious,not saying that your ds has it but for us that's when it stood out more.

I have been on a course recently with a leading expert and apparently dealing with problems with empathy really helps.So for example saying when you do xxxx it makes me feel like xxxx. Then trying to resolve the problem together. So I have found with my own dd saying I know you find it really hard to get ready in the mornings what can we do together to make it easier for you and suprisingly she has responded really well.

It sounds a lot like ds2 (5yrs and AS). Everything is "my brain telled it to me" and "I'm a zero."

I haven't found any solutions yet so this thread is very useful.

Ouryve, no, but I obught that this week and J said just the same thing!

The best book I've read recently was 'The Explosive Child' and the approach in that is very much like Blossomhill's - trying co-operative problem-solving rather than being authoritarian - not sure it'll work but I'm trying!

When in a calm and rational state (!) I do the empathy 'when you do X it makes me feel Y' and it always works - he understands that very quickly. The working it out together approach is something I do a lot - and again it's successful, though he doesn't always transfer what he's learnt from day to day. It's when I nag at him or shout that problems start - and yes, I know I shouldn't . DH has been away a lot recently, and my temper is always more frayed when that happens... It probably doesn't help that I seem to have endless patience with DS2, whose problems are far, far more severe. I guess I make allowances for him, but not for DS1 .

The thing that worries me most is that he's developing low self esteem - this is something that's never been a problem before, in fact he's always been very confident in himself, if not always with other children. I know this can be a problem with children on the spectrum - and having suffered from anxiety myself in the past, I'd like to try to bolster his 'mental state' as much as possible if I can.

Being a mother is bloody difficult sometimes.

Keeping things in proportion is absolutely bloomin' impossible for us without some outside help or strategies.

I wrote a bit on another thread here about the 'filing cabinet' people have in their brains that stores info on people, and how most people's is neatly organised. You can find info on tons of people,and compare them and work out who's cross and who's happy and who's sad etc from that. For people with ASD trying to find info about other people, all we get is a big jumble of papers stuffed in the drawer in a complete mess.

It's the same mess for new events and Things That Go Wrong. Instead of our brains filing it somewhere sensible, it just drops it into the mess with everything else, so we have NO clue whether what just happened is important or not, or whether Person X is going to be cross, crosser, or furious about it. We can't find the papers that say what happened last time...they're in there somewhere, but where?? The papers we need to read up on about 'Person X' are buried with the others.

When someone then says "I'm really cross", it's like opening the filing cabinet and finding a big scary monster sitting in there, because we can't find any of the other people's info quickly - or info on what we did wrong - just someone staring at us and shouting (eek!) . Then we listen to what you say about it and think "Oh yes, it was silly, you're right. I won't do that again!".

Trouble is, our brains STILL won't file the new stuff somewhere sensible, so we make the same silly mistake or do something else silly the next time, and the time after...until we've done it enough that we can find an example of it in the mess. (Try looking for just one sheet of paper in a huge pile...bet you can't find it. Now try looking for one of 100 identical sheets in the same pile - bet it's quicker!). 100 mistakes are easier to find than one.

So we can learn, but what helps is some way to remind us what happened last time etc. I use visual clues to help me, and I ask people around me for help and ideas because I'm old enough to know to do that. And we overreact because we've no clue whether it's a big or small thing as we can't quickly find the clues that tell us.

Frustrating when we do the same silly thing over and over...but that's why. It's not often deliberate naughtiness.

Thanks Amber - that's very helpful. Reminding DS1 of what happened last time a a very good idea - he has the memory of an elephant