Cohabiting Children

My Wife and I are currently at our witts end, and any help would be hugely appreciated.

We have 3 children 1 = Teenager 2 = 9 year old girl 3 = almost 6 year old ASD boy.

We have a 3 bedroom house, and evenings are driving us mad! The 2 youngest children either play together rediculously enthusiastically, or are at war. They drive each other mad, and it is making life very hard for us. Our son has a diagnosis of ASD. He mimics things, which includes emotions, meaning if his sister gets angry, he gets angry etc. We have existed so far with various forms of written rules, visual aids etc. but all of these seem to be failing now he is getting older. Does anyone have any ideas / stories / strategies, or know of any good sources of this informaion?

We try our best to keep the peace, distracting them, making rules and routines to reinforce good behaviour but none seem to be working at the moment. We have tried swapping the room sharing, but this is the best scenario, and our teenage daughter really needs her own space as he is growing up, and has a lot of college work etc. to keep up with. We would consider any suggestions! And any stories would be good too. We cannot use the lounge or kitchen as multi use room / bedroom as it is not practical, and we cannot extend or move from our house at the current time.

Thank you all for your time!

  • Thanks for the reply!

    Its hard, and we have good days and bad days. I have been ordering book sfrom the library to read through and try and glean some useful information or ideas. Hopefully it will either calm down, or we can come up with some ways to help!

  • Hi. 

    Sounds similar to our home. I have 4 children boy 22, girl 8 (asd), girl nearly 7 and a 13 month old boy! 

    We also had problems with behaviour especially at night as my daughter with asd never sleeps (about 3 hours a night ) my eldest son at the time decided that he didn't want to put up with the screaming at night so moved in with my mum at 17 luckily she lives 100 metres down the road. So it wasn't as bad now I just have the younger 3 at home we still have problems with the girls as the younger one is very boisterous and wants to play all the time but doesn't play "right" according to the older one so we get the enevitable meltdown. This is more a problem in school holidays for us. The older daughter still struggles with sleep and my partner has been sleeping on the sofa for quite a while (drives a lorry so can't get woken up at night) 

    I know this sounds bad but we make it work and that's all that matters, I'm sorry I didn't have more useful ideas for you 

    Good luck