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Distruction from anxiety

purplestar

Hi

Can anyone give me some advice on dealing with a teenager who breaks things from frustration.  This is happening more and more and I am worrying where it will end.  Today he has ripped the keys from the keyboard off the laptop because of slow wi-fi connection.  It is becoming an everyday occurance for house hold items to be smashed and thrown.  It is difficult to 'discipline' as this causes further stress for him.

 

son is 14 and diagnoised last week with aspergers, - this is my first post

thanks

  • Hi

    This is so distressing.  We have been going through similar and I totally agree with longman.  Our son has been showing levels of anger we have not seen before that are destructive and meltdowns frequent due to a specific incident that sent him off the scale.

    We are making some progress now he is finally able to talk about it a little - a fortnight on but lives the emotion and frustration all over again albeit without the destructive anger.  We have just kept reassuring him we love him, we are there for him and so on and giving him lots of quiet time to open up when he is ready and also trying to provide distractions. 

    Our laptop is in the PC shop for repair.... he thumped it and when he had calmed a little we pretended to start it up and realise it was broken.  We had removed a fuse!  He is having a few weeks away from it ...while it is repaired (as far as he knows).  He uses the games on the internet to shield himself from the stress but it is still there and like your son, when there is a blip in wifi or he has to come off it sparks more frustration and anger outburst.

    Really tough and draining, but for our son, it is always other issues that have built up to an unmanageable level for him that results in an outburst later.  This latest spell has been the hardest yet but I completely understand his reaction to the incident which was very wrong.

    Good luck, stay strong

  • My own theory, as I cannot find any literature to endorse it, is to think of instantaneous events like this as "last straw", but if there's a better explanation around someone else please chip in.

    It is easy to draw the conclusion that the violent reaction is entirely related to the immediate source of frustration, which is the trigger but not the sole cause.

    You probably have bad days when everything goes wrong and you finally crack over something trivial. With AS this state is reached sooner and more often, because of the accumulated stresses and less capacity to cope.

    So it may  be worth giving him a chance to talk through his day, to see if there are things you could do to take the pressure off. They could be things he otherwise gives you no clue about, like things said by peers at school that play on his mind, or run ins with his teacher, or things he's trying to do that aren't working out.

    If there's a way of solving things that are easily resolved by talking through them that might reduce the pressure through the day and make the outbursts less frequent. 

    Hope that helps. As I say its my theory so cannot guarantee results. Its just what seems best to explain my own experiences.