Published on 12, July, 2020
I just wondered if anyone has any experience of this? My son is much more challenging to my husband than myself. He pulled his hair and spat at him yesterday. I know he absolutely would not do that to me. He doesn't do these things all the time, just when he's frustrated. It's quite upsetting and I'm not sure of the reasons. They do have a lovely bond and spend time playing together and share interests. Any ideas?
Children learn from others, therefore, the first thing I'd wanting to know is how did he learn this behaviour and is it a situation to be concerned about e.g is there anyone in his life who reacts in this way to him.
The second thing is your son has unhealthy coping mechanisms for anger and frustration. Your son needs to know these feelings are normal but releasing them in a way that hurts others isn't ok and that he needs to find a more effective way to cope. This could be by excercise e.g going for a run, hitting a punch bag etc
He is 8. It is usually a direct response to him disciplining him. Son struggles to accept discipline as it makes him feel like everything he does is wrong even tho we explain it's not. He lacks confidence. I know he sees quite a lot of poor behaviour at school and has always been one for copying and echolalia
That sounds like he's disagreeing with your rules - you might be measuring him incorrectly so he considers he's being good and doing the best he can when he's seeing variable laws applied to him. The inconsistency will be incredibly stressful for him - he's being punished for things that he can't help or things that everyone else gets away with - it won't make any sense to him so there will be no reasoning with him if he's being 'disciplined' unfairly. Us auties really don't cope well with obvious unfairness - it just adds to the anger and stress - which is likely to make him look as though he's misbehaving - a vicious circle that will fry his brain.
We thrive on logic and fairness - it's an overblown sense of social justice - if things don't make sense, we can't process it and so it bothers us - a lot!