Channel 5 now - "My Violent Child"

[MyBrilliantDisguise]

Anyone watching this?

Golden dd is eight years younger than ds and has no memory of how challenging he was and yet when I was pregnant we were looking for care for her from being newborn in case I couldn't keep her safe. Ds though adored her from the off and has never hurt her, shouted at her or even been cross with her and in time he was just the same with the rest of us.
When they were recruiting staff to support him in school at four they described him as having extreme challenging behaviour but at 14 he got the headteacher's award for having behaviour and attitude to learning second tonone.

I don’t dare watch this, this is my life and my future. One day he will kill me. There is no support, just blame. He is 6 now, he terrifies me.

I think the ideas and techniques suggested in this episode may be useful for others to try.

That's so great, fleshmarketclose. And do you think it was the intervention that made it happen?

That was a great turnaround on TV, too. I'm so glad they're a happy family now.

My older ones all bore the brunt of ds's behaviour, they all have scars some needed stitches,a couple of us have had chipped bones. But they love him and always understood that it was because of the autism and so never bore him no malice. They tease him now and then about some of the stuff he's done and he has the good grace to look embarrassed whilst dd defends him and tells them they are making it up

Troodon, is there any help available?

Troodon it can change, ds is nothing like the boy I feared would kill me. I imagine it's harder to get support now (ds is 23) but it is there. Look for the challenging behaviour foundation I'm sure I got good advice from there back in the day.

No not a private psychologist just the one from the child development clinic who worked with children with autism. She was really good and tbh just having someone who could see things when I was too busy surviving helped enormously.
Ds was a thrower, he had a ferocious aim,it was well known and so anyone who came to see him knew to duck as they came through the door. He was three when he threw a bedside table down the stairs at the speech therapist.
The psychologist said it was too big a thing to expect to stop him throwing so she got me to pin targets on the walls buy balls and beanbags and reward him for throwing at the targets instead of my head and that's what I did. Initially he smashed lots of stuff throwing it at the wall but I rewarded him regardless and eventually he would throw the balls and the beanbags and I rewarded him more.In time the throwing stopped.
With every behaviour we rewarded him for taking up a more acceptable one and ignored the bad. When he peed on beds, we ignored it and put buckets on beds. When he peed in the buckets he'd get a reward and in time he peed in the loo. It was a strange way of doing it and took a lot to get my head round but I saw the results and we went with it.

It's really tough but I think I'd just got to the point where I would have tried anything tbh I felt desperate. I had a child that terrorised the whole family that could cope just fine on 20 minutes sleep in 24 hours and was completely feral. Nothing I had tried worked, he didn't understand rules or incentives, he didn't care enough about anything for it's removal to have any effect nor did he want anything desperately enough either. Initially I fed him wotsits as rewards, one wotsit for every positive,he probably ate bags and bags of wotsits for weeks on end, then he had biscuits lots and lots of biscuits and I figured I deal with any teeth issues later. In time it was stickers and then yu gi oh cards and then coins and later still a thumbs up. If you would have told me that in time he'd behave for nothing more than a thumbs up gesture I would have laughed and cried but it's true at one point the only reward he needed was a thumbs up.

Did anyone watch tonight's?