Ideas / help needed with encouraging good behaviour in very stressed 4yo

[LargeLatte]

Hi - thanks for taking the time to read this. My ds1(4)has been assessed for ASD twice in the last year - by HV and paed - but so far no diagnosis - but I'm posting here anyway because I think the issues I'm having now might be more easily understood by the SN mums.

DS1 is going through a really stressful time (again). I can see the stress and anger written all over his face, on his creased up forehead.

He's now stuck in a rut of contiunously bullying his 2 yo brother - literally from the minute he wakes up. This has happened a few times before, and we always get over it, but as he gets older I need to start dealing with it in a different way.

So after much deliberation I think I need to break down the day into chunks, tell him what is expected at each chunk, then reward each chunk. For example, normally when we get home from school there is 5-10mins where I am dishing up dinner, sorting out drinks etc, and he always hurts his brother so now I think we will come home and I will give him the option of playing alone in his roomm or sitting at the kitchen table colouring. If he does this nicely there is some sort of reward.

Need to act fast as ds2 is now getting aggressive esp. to adults coz he's soooooo fed up of getting pushed around.

Sorry - very very long post. Anyway, point of it was - what sort of reward systems work well, especially for children with ASD. I was thinking of tokens towards something like 30 mins on my computer - like when the pot is full of bricks we can go on CBeebies website for half hour. Stickers hold no interest to him. Don't want to use money/sweets/toys really. Verbal praise and physical affection are a no-no - he hates both, will play up the minute you praise him to prove you wrong and really any sort of attention has to be on his own terms 'you can hug me mummy', maybe once a week if I'm lucky The old 'praise the positive, ignore the negative' is not that affective with ds1. He's very happy for me to ignore the negative because he's happy in his absorbed in the activity of poking/flicking/chasing/staring at ds2.

Help, advice, greatly appreciated. But quick. Dh is back with sprogs in an hour and he wants answers

When you break up the days into chunks make sure there is a time in the day where he gets to choose what activity he would like to do, at the start of each day sit down with him and make a schedual together so he feels he is getting some say in what he is going to be doing.

Stickers worked well for dd1 but they don't work for dd2. Is there a game he likes to play with you (board game, cars etc.)? Dd1 likes to play guess who with mummy as a treat so i can often use this as a reward.Maybe do a 'now and next' schedual so you do one thing mummy wants to do and then one thing ds wants to do (so now we tidy up and then we play cars).

I would also make it as visual as possible. Being able to see a photo or picture of what he will earn can reduce anxiety and, obviously, visual objects or whatever as the tokens. I agree that you need to involve him and let him have some say but you must avoid letting him take control and feel he is totally in charge. Do you use any sort of visual timer for short term targets and countdowns? Those might help too.