DS wishes he had a normal sister!

[monica2]

I am still very new here but would really appreciate some advice about this as I seem to be going round and round in circles.
I have an amazing DD 9 with AS and fab DS 6 (NT), we have progressed a long way with dd but am struggling to deal with her constantly hurting Ds.- pulling his hair, standing on the back of his shoes, shouting down his ear (he hates loud noised), pinching, punching, grabbing etc and that is just after school today!
DS is very emotional and bursts out crying over little things. The main reasons are in dd's eyes everything has to be exactly equal/fair even down to minutes of t.v. watched by each! Think today has been bad because Ds has been on a school trip and that's not fair according to dd!! She says "things get stuck in her head" that ds has had or does and won't go until she has done something to him to make it fair again?
We have reward charts, visual timetables, ABA behavioural techniques but nothing seems to work.
Ds is too young for our local sibling group and I have tried to get him to go to after school clubs to give him a break but then worry even if he would DD would be worse.
DD can be a real sweetie and I am aware that these issues are due to inability to empathise/frustrations from school etc but I need be able to leave the room for a second without returning to DS being hurt again.
I have searched for previous threads so sorry in advance if this has been covered!

Hello Monica

Sorry don't have any tips but wanted to say hello and welcome

Am sure someone will be able to help you soon

If they are not around tonight bump again in the morning

My 2 boys are a lot younger so I have no direct experience I'm afraid. Is there any chance that some kind of social story might help with the fairness issue? I don't know what your dd's level of understanding is but would you be able to set up some kind of tokens system where, for example, going to an afterschool club is worth 2 tokens and watching TV for an hour is worth 2 tokens? That way ds could get to his after-school club while dd does something else worth 2 tokens and doesn't feel that she needs to have exactly the same activity to make it equal. I'm probably not making myself very clear at all here! Sorry.

Thanks coppertop we have loads of social stories, I would have to do one about each individual incident as dd finds it difficult to generalise, but it is definitely worth a try! Thinks I need to up my reward tokens too!

Hi Monica, I suppose a certain level of this is normal sibling behaviour but then you have the added complication of AS. This worries me a lot with DD although there is quite a gap between them which in many ways makes it easier. I'm sorry I don't have any advice but I'll be interested to see what comes up on this thread. DD is copying DS which is great, copying, wowee. But not when he is hitting himself or stimming! A very big and complicated issue. I think having only a child with SN is one very difficult situation but then having just the 2, one SN and one NT is another issue but different. We should all have 6 kids without knowing we have any risks of ASD and then it would all work out..... or not!

Big problem in this house....so bad that DS1 has asked to go to boarding school.

I just try my best to give the guys as much time as possible with me being around when they are playing....but the erruption still happens.

It was the last summer holiday when things started to go wrong for us...up until then the guys had been really quite good buddies....but now DS1 is soooo peed of with his little brother all the time....think his patience has run out and he doesnt want to be the resident unch bag anymore!

The older the guys get the bigger the age difference is becoming....DS1 wants a 9 year old brother to go cycling off to the park with instead he has a 9 year old brother who would rather sit on the patio and count pebbles....and DS1 isnt allowed to join in because he will get the lines of pebbles mixed up and J would kick the sh*te out of him for even attempting to join in!!!

So I cant offer any valuable pearls of wisdom....just huge ammounts of sympathy and an even huger welcome to the SN board.

Ah, Monica, what a nightmare . Sorry I can't add anything constructive as I know you've tried everything going. Poor ds. Would some 'breaks' for ds help? We would LOVE to take her out again soon?
It's very hard, I think, for the siblings. Ds has started to demand I 'feed' him because dd gets all the attention all the time!

Thanks for all the advice , I agree Davros a lot of it probably is the norm sibling thing, think I need to remind myself of this from time to time just worried Ds will grow up being resentful.

Jayzmummy, dd has a fantastic pebble collection too!! They are all named, have different textures and reflect the light differently, apparently!!

Thanks JakB ds really loved his first football coaching so have signed him up for full course, hopefully this may be the start of him having his own thing etc. xxx