How to remain calm when autistic son is displaying challenging behaviour

Thank you, I will have a look at these pages. 

Thank you for your reply. It is very helpful to hear from the other side of things. I have always said that it would help if I knew what it was like for him in different situations.

It is easy to walk away from all of the situations at the moment. If I am honest, I need to remember that all of this does not exist myself a bad parent. His autism changes the way that he reacts to situations and I need to remember this on these occasions. 

I will let you know what we try and how things go. 

Thank you. You have been more helpful than you think. 

I do need to try to look at the bigger picture on these occasions before my actions make things worse. Also, I do then spend a lot of time afterwards feeling guilty and telling myself that he doesn’t deserve to be shouted at or let himself get worked up as he cannot help it.

He has a much better relationship with his mom especially in those situations which is helpful but can make me feel worse about everything. 

Hi Ian82,

I'm sorry to hear that your son is displaying some challenging behaviour. 

We have a page on our website that centres around physical challenging behaviour. Including the possible causes, as well as strategies and interventions you can adopt to improve his behaviour:

http://www.autism.org.uk/about/behaviour/challenging-behaviour.aspx

You may find it useful to have a look at our behaviour guidelines and general behaviour page:

http://www.autism.org.uk/about/behaviour/guidelines.aspx

http://www.autism.org.uk/about/behaviour.aspx

You may also like to contact Young Minds https://youngminds.org.uk/

who are the UK's leading charity regarding children and young people's mental health and wellbeing.  They have a helpline offering confidential support to anyone concerned about the emotional problems or behaviour of a child or young person.  Their Helpline number is 0808 802 5544.  

If you were looking for further more information, or if you have any more queries, you may like to contact our Autism Helpline team. You can call them on 0808 800 4104 (Monday to Thursday 10am to 4pm, Friday 9am to 3pm).Please note that the Helpline is experiencing a high volume of calls and it may take a couple of attempts before you get through to speak to an advisor.

I hope this is useful!

ChloeMod.

This is a tricky one to answer as different types of autism may lend to different approaches perhaps.

I shall do a bit of sharing of my being a 'nightmare child' when I was around 7. I would be loud and I would get violent with my brothers. I would throw these, I would sometimes break things.

It seems, looking back as an adult, that the problems that precipitated these may have come down to me as a child lacking the control I felt I needed in a situation.

Often I felt misunderstood. I reacted badly and then I was made to feel shame for my reactions which dealt a double blow. Possibly my outbursts could have been reduced if my parents had softly and compassionately asked me what I felt was wrong.

By screaming, a child with autism can claw back some control to some degree.

If your son were to be screaming to regain control, then shouting over the top could (would likely) reduce his control further. It makes sense that escalation would follow.

I could way off mark but here's a fairly blind guess:

If your son screams or has an outburst, give your son space and try to remain calm. Hopefully your son won't break anything important or hurt anyone.

Avoid any confrontation or shaming ("stop that", "you're being silly").

Watch to see when your son is looking to make contact with you - this could be via body language or eye contact or simply if they go quiet.

Then, if you can, calmly ask your son something compassionate like "how are you feeling?" or perhaps "is there anything you need?".

If your son's outbursts are not like mine were at his age, then possibly this may not help.

I give this rough blueprint more as 'something to try if you lack another way to turn'.

I'd be interested to hear if anything you try does help a little. It could be good to gauge what works quite well and what doesn't work so well.

Lastly, you have my sympathies. Dealing with outbursts are not easy. I commend you on your bid to find an improvement for your son and the family as a whole.


PS to answer the 'how to remain calm', I'd put it forward that it helps to understand that each outburst in autism always has a strong logic behind it for the child. It might seem random or irrational but there is pretty much always at the heart some rationale going on. I think just having faith in that can help with the staying sane and calm when something seemingly a bit crazy is going on.

Hi Ian82, how are you?

First of all, I can totally relate as I'm sure many parents can, regardless as to whether their child is on the spectrum or not.

You have a challenging moment, you shout at your child and then you spend the rest of the day feeling guilty and beating yourself up over the way you handled the situation.

First and foremost, I think what we as parents to children on the spectrum need to accept is that IT IS CHALLENGING!

Being autistic is challenging.

Being a parent to an autistic child is challenging.

Nothing is instinctive. Nothing comes naturally: For the autistic child or their parents.

Everything has to be taught.

The kind of parent we thought we were going to be, the ideas we had about how our children would be, have all been completely demolished by autism, and we have to effectively scrap everything that we thought we knew about being a parent, and learn how to be a parent to child with autism, from scratch.

It is hard.

Really, really hard.

And nobody has 'the answer'.  There is no 'one size fits all' for autism, because each child and their challenges are unique.

The only advice that I can possibly give you (which is probably not helpful at all, to be honest), is to take a breath.

If it is safe for you to do so and your son is not at risk of hurting himself, then walk away for just a few minutes.

Shut yourself in the bathroom.

Hide in the cupboard with your emergency chocolate stash.

Go into the back garden and scream if you have to.

Just take yourself out of the equation for 2 minutes and breathe.

Gather your thoughts, calm down, then go back and tackle the situation again.

I'm sorry if this hasn't been helpful, but I just want you to know that you are not alone in this.

I truly believe that we are all just trying to do the best we can with the little information and tools that we have been given, and that includes me, and it includes you.

Sorry if I've not been very helpful, but I know how defeated we can all feel at times and I just wanted you to know that you are not alone in this.

Best Wishes