Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi
So i have a 10 year old boy who was diagnosed with autism about 6 months ago and his behaviour is just getting worse and worse and i just dont know how to control it or punish him. Every punishment i give him doesn't affect him in any way at all and it certainly doesnt stop the behaviour. I have took his PS4 and laptop away and it has literally done nothing, on top of that i started a new relationshio (after being single for nearly 10 years) and it has completely threw him through a loop, i lterally feel like walking away at the minute as i just cant help him.
What can i do??????
People with autism are not good with change, chaos, unpredictable situations etc. When kids are young, their life is totally controlled by their parents.
As they get older, their world gets bigger and all the new things they meet have to be assimilated into their programming. As their world grows faster & faster, there are more unpredictable elements within it - like friends, other children, school, school work, homework - and hormones.
Around your son's age, you've got exams, up-coming change of school and he may be starting to notice the chemical changes causing his emotions to go nuts. He may be entering an internal world of chaos.
Added to the external world of dealing with the other kid's changing emotions and responses - and not being able to process this all fast enough to keep up with the others, he might realising he's different.
Added to that your new relationship, he may be getting very lost.
Home is/was his safe-haven of predictability where his old, obsolete behaviours still functioned - but now it's getting complicated as he can't guarantee your attention.
His next safe-haven will be his toys and rituals that allow him to decompress and forget the stress - and you are randomly taking them away from him if he doesn't meet an arbtrary level for a behaviour that he can't manage because he may be burned out from trying to keep up with the other kids at school.
He may be heading for a problem.
I would suggest trying to give him some kind of simple, predicable pattern that he feels safe & secure with so he can guarantee he can find a safe-haven that doesn't change so he can decompress.
How chaotic and random are you? Do you do things differently every time? Do meals happen in a predictable way? Do you give him the tools he needs to meet your behaviour standards?
Just read my answer through and it can be read as being rather blunt - that's not the intention (this is a typical autie problem too - missing out the polite 'fluffy' bits).
Are you able to spend any time with him doing non-stressful things? Picnics, trips to museums with things he likes? Stuff that re-calibrates his confidence in the world?