Hi all. I have a 3 year old girl who we believe is on the spectrum. We are still waiting for assessment for her. She has many autistic type symptoms and difficulties but the one we are struggling with the most is that she is too rough.
She has a baby sister, and previously she was attacking her violently some 20+ times a day. She would pull and tug on her hair, push her over with force, pin her down, climb all over her body and punch her in the face. She did not listen to instruction to stop, or to be more gentle and had to be physically removed from her sister, which usually causes further behavioural problems incl meltdowns.
We since got a puppy, as she has a special interest in animals, especially dogs, but the problems we were having with her roughness just transferred from being too rough with her sister to being too rough with the dog. Now he is getting handfuls of his fur torn out, getting punched in the face, climbed all over, ears and tail tugged on etc. Obviously this is not ideal, as we do not want to have either her sister or the dog suffering.
We have tried social stories and also a traffic light system using visual aids to show her when her play is just right, getting a bit too rough, or is over the top but these things have only helped so much. Does anyone have any other suggestions that we could try to help her understand?
Thanks in advance.
