When dealing with violent and aggressive behavior from your children suffering from Asperger’s Syndrome, and children with autism, you, as a parent need to learn how to handle the situation, and this involves two primary factors.
Parenting Aspergers children, and coming to terms with their violent bursts can be quite a challenge. Let’s talk today about the two basic things you must know of to handle such behavior.
Children’s behavior in Asperger’s Syndrome patients’ change for various reasons, just as the case is with all other children.
Children don’t just act out on a whim. Your aim is to find the evident cause. While there is always a reason, parents often fail to identify or notice it.
Improper behavior normally occurs due to the following reasons, and this includes both mild behaviors and severe behaviors, such as violent behavior.
• It could be because your child is going through physical pain, and this could be as simple as having a stomachache.
• It could be because your child wants something, and this could include fighting with other children in order to play with their toys.
• Your child could also become aggressive if he wants to avoid something that he does not like, and this could include not wanting to do homework.
• Your child could also lash out in order to take care of a sensory requirement and these could occur in surroundings which are very busy, noisy, hot, bright, etc.
Therefore, the first thing you need to do in order to reduce or eliminate this kind of behavior is to identify which of the four categories above fuel your child’s problem behavior.
The next step is to help him learn a replacement behavior to use in which they can communicate their likes and dislikes. This could also involve making use of some of their existing self-stimulating or obsessive behavior such as pacing, rocking, flapping hands, etc.
The purpose of this is that it helps eliminate aggressive behavior. This change can also be brought about by encouraging your child to negotiate and express feelings verbally.
Some Aspergers children and other children with autism are also known to respond well to communicating using pictures, drawing, cards, puppets, etc. You will have to identify what will work with your child and since you’ve spent a considerable amount of time parenting him, this should not be too difficult.
This process can be a bit time consuming at the onset, but keep in mind the behavior. If your child’s behavior is extreme, then there needs to be a change in the existing situation as soon as possible.
Hoping or insisting that he stops his aggressive behavior and partakes in whatever is going on won’t really help. There needs to be a change of scenario to begin with.
You also need to maintain a routine in your child’s life and this will help in reducing aggressive and inappropriate behavior from occurring. You should know that Aspergers children find great comfort in a sense of routine.
Again, the two main factors that will help you deal with the aggressive behaviors your child is showing are:
1) Find out the cause of the behavior among the four given categories above
2) Help your child learn how to communicate the cause of his behavior using less harmful means.
Good tips. I have found it to be extremely helpful to always look into the cause of each meltdown or outburt.
However, as a parent of a child with Aspergers, I just had to point out a couple things:
My child is just that – a child. He is not a “patient” or an “Aspergers Child.” He is a child who has Aspergers.
Secondly, Aspergers is a form of Autism. That is why the term Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is now used to refer to all kids on the Spectrum. There is no such thing as “Aspergers Children with Autism.”