Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi , My name is jez and i have a 9 year old son with high functioning autism. He is very bright and he is wonderful but recently he has been taken out of the classroom every day due to his disruptive behaviour. Today he was excluded for violently attacking 2 children and a teacher.
The school have always been very helpful and supportive and we have accessed support from the childrens centre, local camhs, doctors, psychiatrists and nurses over the last 4 years, it has recently been decided that therapies are not beneficial to him as he refuses to engage.
His father and I have tried every strategy we can think of and everything that has been suggested to us from the services. But now, we are stuck. My heart is breaking because i dont want this for him, if we cant keep him on the right track im afraid that he will suffer and his future will be bleak.
Does anyone have any suggestions that can help us manage the violent behaviour? We have nowhere else to turn xxxx
The aggression is a symptom of him not being able to make sense of his world. We tend to need logic and reasons to do things and often the adults around us demand chaotic actions and tell us things that make no sense or cannot really be true - we are just supposed to just deal with and accept all this randomness and it causes us stress and anxiety that we can't deal with.
Have you looked at his world and how the surrounding randomness impinges on him? How crazy/chaotic are school rules? How noisy or random is home life? Does he have anything where he can take refuge from it all and does he get to indulge in hobbies or something that he can control or enjoy to dissipate the anger within?
I have spent years looking into his world but im aware i will never truly understand.
He enjoys school because of its structure and rigidity, home life is good however a little stressful at times because im studying full time and so his routines can sometimes be interrupted but we avoid this as much as we possibly can.
He doesnt seem to understand why people are not accepting of him lashing out, and im sure he feels frustrated. He loves to play computer games and he is fascinated with historical architecture, but he is very switched on and has learned that if he kicks off at school he will be allowed to play computer games or read books away from class.
Thankyou for replying
Then another thing to consider is everything he has to do where the outcome is not 100% predictable will cause him stress - any unknowns need excessive brain-processing worrying about the outcome. This normally manifests itself in a desire to over-control our surroundings - limiting options guarantees outcomes.
It sounds like he's learned to control his surroundings by violence - it's the quickest way to avoid the stress of unknowns and gets him directly to something controllable that he likes. That would indicate that he finds school stressful and interacting with the others is too complicated at times - and when he's had enough, he doesn't have the maturity or ability to remove himself calmly from the situation, the structure only allows him to stay in the stress until he blows up.
There are a couple of things to find out - what is the trigger that causes him to want to escape the situation and what is his threshold before he blows. Then it's a balance of trying to increase his threshold to allow him to stay in lessons compared to his well-being of taking the stress. That might need extra home management of de-stressing him so he has the reserves to manage the next day.
There's always the problem of him deciding that violence is the preferred way to quickly get anything he wants.
Out of interest, what days does he blow up - the beginning of the week or the end or is it specific lessons or subjects that he struggles with?
Thankyou for that recommendation, i will certainly be buying that, we have read 'the reason i jump' together to help him try to understand himself a little bit more and for me to put things into perspective. We have been recommended a book called 'my hidden chimp' however this seems to be aimed at a younger target audience.
I will look into a school with a calmer environment, there are a couple of academies which he is very eager to attend but they wont take him until he is 14 or 15.
My son has also attempted to take his own life and displayed some eratic and impulsive behaviours, he has tried to ligature and throw himself out of a window. We have managed to conquer these by having a diary which we share together to write messages to each other in if he finds it hard to verbalize his feelings.
His safe space is the toilet however this isnt an option at school as he has some concerns around contamination.
He is not able to describe the meaning of friendship so this doesnt mean much to him, he prefers to be alone.
Im glad you found a profession which suits you well! Im hoping that for my lad too, if he can apply himself he will go very far if he wants to!