Sneaky Moment’s of a child with Asperger’s
I was going to make this blog about sensory issues and getting school supplies, but something happened. It’s going to have to wait for next time.
My son is showing me that he can be sneaky, but that’s not the issue either. It did lead to what happened.
Last night, my son told me he felt tired and wanted to go to bed early. That’s not an unreasonable request. If he’s not feeling well, he should get some rest. So I said “okay” and we did all the night time things you do before you go to bed. Then I tucked him in and that was that. Well, that’s what I thought anyway.
An hour or so later, my son called frantically from his bedroom and I went to see what the issue was. As it turns out, he had slipped his Nintendo DS into bed with him and now it was broken. He gets limited time with video games to keep him from sinking into them and never coming out. This isn’t the first time he’s pulled the ‘sneak it into bed’ for extra play trick either. And who didn’t sneak a comic book and flashlight into bed at some point in their childhood?
He broke the DS right at the hinge because he became angry with it. It ran out of power and turned off in the middle of his game. He got angry and in that moment of child frustration he must have wrenched it in his hands to break it.
The consequences for this are clear. He gets to tell his mother what he did (this was a Christmas gift from her) and he will have to use all his allowance to replace it. This will take a long time. The Ipod and DS were already banned from being in his bed from the last sneak episode. Now they are banned from his room altogether for supervision’s sake.
Generally, the rule is this: if he breaks it in anger it doesn’t get replaced. That’s a fine rule for most toys. But now I find myself faced with the expensive ones that have a bit of investment. I also find myself worried for him. I worry about him learning to control the spontaneous rage that we can be afflicted with at a moment of frustration. I went through the same thing at his age. It has taken me into my adult life to learn how to control it. I don’t want that for him.
This impulse behavior is not uncommon in our spectrum children. The only way to deal with it is with direct consequences and to point it out specifically to our kids. We have to teach them about that specific impulse and what it means. That is the only way, by making them specifically aware of it, that they may eventually learn to control or stop it.
Are you having a similar issue with your spectrum child? Feel free to post in comments.
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I find that starving a child usually does the trick.
Shanda Vander Ark
Yeah that is definitely a tough one. We also find that the consequences of our son’s (9 years old) rages then tend to enrage him even more and we end up in a battle over the consequences rather than the initial behavior. It always amazes me how determined and unrelenting he can be when he feels he has not been treated fairly. Exhausting stuff.
Oh yes! All too familiar to me! My first born and now 14 year old, soon to be 15 year old son with PDD has lots of temper moments that we are dealing with. It doesn’t take much to set him off either. He use to be the most easy going child, but when he gets angry or frustrated about something – look out!
We’ve had to warn him with his size (6′ 3″ and still growing) that if he would ever hurt someone in our family or anyone else for that matter, it’s very possible he would have to live in a foster care environment. I do worry about this because he’s much larger then me & can’t always control that temper. He’s NEVER hit anyone…yet, but he almost hit me one day as I didn’t give him the right answer to something he wanted. That’s when we had to have the discussion about his almost actions & if he were to do such a thing, what would happen. I am 5′ 5″ and not very big at all – so he could easily over power me if he chose to…thankfully he hasn’t. He’s a very good kid, but that quick temper is a problem and caused consequences he doesn’t care for. We take away video privileges quite often. Usually the kids only get 30 minutes to an hour per day. That really angers him too…vicious circle!
Hi, I’m new to xanga and Autisable and ran across your post. I’ve worked with lots of kids who would “snap” and do things impulsively or out of anger (and then later regret it). Definitely not fun when it involves an expensive toy!
It makes me wonder if John Lennon was on the “spectrum”. He always got into fights and did things like broke chairs over peoples’ heads even for the slightest reasons. Not to mention he was overly obsessed with Elvis.
I break everything =) And I’m a terrible person naturally. I am possessed by demons. LOL It’s actually a stress reaction to not having control, but in our culture it translates into me being evil. In other cultures, I’m just a brat =P It’s only because the President of Russia dissed me, and i’m obsessed with that because I like him so he has to like me. While I respect his opinion about me, I will say that he caused everyone to have value in hurting me because he has power. Plus, he hurt my heart.
I have schizophrenia which is like autism but we have language abilities. It’s neurodevelopmental.