dealing with yelling / anger attacks

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My six-year old son is a gifted boy with a few Asperger traits. He is on the waiting list for multidisciplinary testing.

He has always had a little anger management issue, and overall things are getting better. However, he still gets upset very easily, and usually more upset with me then with everyone else. Weeks can go by without any incident at all, but then other weeks are challenging.
Last week has been extremely tiring, he got upset every hour of the day. When I ask him to do something that he doesn't feel like doing, when we are playing a game and he gets upset because he gets bad cards or something, when the timer app of the iPad goes off and I tell him to turn it off because he keeps on playing- on weeks like this, anything will be a cause for excessive whining, screaming, yelling 'you're stupid', etc, even when I stick to the 'guidelines' (I don't interrupt his play, announce beforehand when we need to leave or do something, I always explain as clear as I can why, etc).

I told him many times that he has the right to be angry, but he can't yell at me or say hurtful stuff. The yelling is important, because I've got some sensory issues as well and I simply can't remain calm when he's (or anyone else, for that matter) yells at me.
I'm a single parent and I can't rely on anyone else in the house to help me. When he gets angry, it's up to me to deal with it.

Just now, he got into what I think might be an actual meltdown but started out as 'just angry', because of me putting the checkers away with him while he wanted to do it himself. Since he didn't tell me, I had no idea that this was 'his plan', but the damage was done, I already had put two checkers back in the box, and that triggered him to start crying really loud and yelling at me.
I can't help but think that things wouldn't have escalated if I had remained more calm. I just get so overwhelmed and overloaded when he gets super-angry. I told him to stop yelling, but he wouldn't. I went to the kitchen to remove myself from the yelling, but had to come back to check if he wasn't throwing stuff. He then slammed the door in my face. I took him to the hallway to remove us both from the 'scene', and then he started hitting me. I had to hold him firmly to stop him from kicking me.

Situations like these totally drain me, and him. I am desperately looking for some kind of 'procedure' to follow or a simple ABC-guide that can help me with this. Something I can use for myself to stay calm and just follow the steps, since I am in no way capable of thinking clearly when things get like this. Can anyone help me with this?

The one way I can think of as an aspie who did throw a tantrum once in a while as a kid is that the violent behavior happens for similar reasons to why any kid would get angry at that age. "I want what I want and I didn't get it." He'll grow out of it.
The best course of action is:
1) wait the tantrum out, control damage as necessary, he will exhaust himself.
2) try to explain to him that violence is not the answer to his problems.
3) try to explain to him that he must communicate his intent before becoming angry at whoever violates it. Or whatever else caused the problem.
4) cheer him up with candy, ice cream, or whatever other sugary sweet stuff he prefers. (note that one of the causes for kids having a short fuse is low blood sugar)
5) the trouble with this sort of violence is that for the most part there is no instant fix, only the temporary solution of letting him calm down. He will eventually grow out of temper tantrums for the most part. This is actually the best time to talk about what went wrong, as it will no doubt be out of mind soon afterward.

Whatever you do, Don't:
1) get angry at him.
2) take away toys, he will probably be persistently angry if you do. Making him bored will only leave him to think about how angry he is at you.
3) avoid punishment at all costs, it engenders resentment, possibly only compounding that which he already feels for the same reason he had the tantrum.
4) for the blood sugar psychology reason, never use food as a withheld reward. This is really a punishment and thus doesn't work for the same reasons.

When we first went to get help for DS, I was very concerned about his angry and violent behavior - but one of the things I most desperately wanted was for ME to stop yelling and getting angry.

You are not superhuman. You are being asked to do something superhuman. A friend of mine whose kid also had AS recently said someone asked what she most wanted - her answer: "I wish I could make a mistake."

For our kids, every. single. thing. is hard. That means it is much harder on us as parents, because we are human and can't wrap them in bubble wrap. It's also that we don't want to wrap them in bubble wrap because we want them to be able to survive in the real world, where schedules change and you can't play video games for days at a time. It's hard because every. little. thing. throws them and they most often take it out on the person they feel safest with - us.

You aren't alone.

I have a couple suggestions, for what they are worth. First of all, once you get a diagnosis, ask the place that's testing him how you apply for respite care in the area where you live. If you can afford it, get some - if not, see if there is an agency that can work with you. My husband (whose job allows him to be home for significant amounts of time) and I are doing this together, and we are both frustrated and exhausted most of the time. If you can get help, you certainly deserve it.

Second, take a look at the Parenting index and the suggested reading list stickied at the top of this thread. There are a couple different issues that might help you: meltdowns, aggression, etc. Read through what other people have tried.

Third - one thing we do is write up a "family contract." Now that DS is old enough (he's 12) we've explained to him that our goal as a family is for him to be an independent adult. I explained to him that all his chores are to teach him to do things he needs to learn when he's on his own. I also explained that we are a team, and we all need to help share the work in the household. We then sit down and write up a bulleted list of expectations of what he is supposed to do when, and what he "earns" for each thing. We spell it out as absolutely clearly as possible, and then post it in his room. When he disagrees with us or argues, we simply refer him to the contract.

We also set everything up as something he "earns." So, to get out of the house in the morning successfully, he has to do his entire morning routine and he then "earns" a YouTube video from a prescreened channel. Homework and putting his stuff away "earns" him video game time. He never gets the reward until he has completed the task.

All that being said, we still have arguing and hurtful words when we tell him to turn off the Xbox. We make sure he knows how those kinds of words make us feel, and we send him to his room. Rinse, repeat. Gradually he is developing more and more control.

When DS was younger, we really struggled with violence and aggression - and, truthfully he did, mostly, "grow out of it" - it was a developmental issue for him. However, before that happened, we also did successfully teach him strategies that worked. Those strategies took a significant length of time to have an effect, though. Our most important tool was sending him to his room - mostly, he needed 5 or 10 minutes to "reset." We practiced going to his room when sent during times when he wasn't angry.

You may want to invest in some soundproof earplugs, just to help yourself for the time being. I recognize that isn't much, but it can at least be a slight buffer against the sensory issues.

I am so sorry you are going through this, and I hope you find the help you need.

Thank you both, for your comments, and thank you @momsparky for giving me a much needed boost of confidence.

I'm already seeking out help even without an official diagnoses. The last year has been all about diagnoses vs no diagnoses, gifted vs As or both and the twilight zones in between. I have contacted several services and therapeutic teams to ask for some guidance, specifically asking for someone with enough expertise in 'twice special' kids. I am seeing several people in the next coming weeks.

I had a pretty good 'tool' for his anger issues, it was something I found on the web (some kind of angry birds anger management thing), but that doesn't work anymore.
I rely on rituals for mornings and evenings as well, and he does get 'reward time' after doing what he needs to do.
He's too young for contracts, but we did discuss house rules, we both had suggestions and picked out the most important ones. For me, it was 'no yelling in the other one's close surroundings', and 'no bad words'. For him, it was something semantic, hard to translate in English. Anyway, we established that but it doesn't really help him on his bad days, his anger, or mostly, frustration is too powerful for him to control.

Earplugs are my best friends .

I am going to go through the stickies, because I can't send him to his room. He will simply yell 'No!' And if I force him, he will start fighting. If I leave the room, he will start throwing stuff or breaking things. I guess I have to find a way to remain icely calm (yup, superhuman) when this happens and find a way to make it clear that his behaviour is out of line while not making things worse.

I guess that, with everything I learned, read and practised over the last years, situations like this would no longer happen. I was probably wrong. He's doing great overall, but the intensity of the last week just disrupted my confidence.

Six is very hard. When DS was six, I just thought I was a bad parent and that was it. We had zero help and zero sympathy from the outside world, and freakouts were common - but he was doing pretty well at school, so nobody believed there was a problem.

DS would break things, too - but I made sure his room was set up in such a way that he couldn't break anything important. Other than that, I can't really help you with this age other than to tell you that they do develop skills - just not in a traditional trajectory.

Hang in there! I hope you find some help here - but do whatever you've got to do to take care of yourself. It is really, really difficult...but it does get better!

My son is 7, and we also have similar issues. We are working on emotional awareness and are making slow but steady progress on this front. Is your son capable of distinguishing between emotions? Is he aware of being sad, angry or scared (or any of the more complex emotions) while he is experiencing these emotions or at least after the meltdown? That for us, was the first step. He can't fix what he does not understand. We have intermittent success with this, which is much better than where we were a year ago.

The point we are really stuck on now, is the next step (or at least the next step for us.) Even when our son is aware he is angry, or sad, and about to meltdown, he gets stuck at the point where he can either try to self-calm or dwell on the negative emotion. I do not know what is going on his mind, but more often than not he goes the route of feeding the beast and dwelling on the negative emotion. Many times, if I try to nudge him down the path of self-calming he will shout, "no," and get even more upset.

I do not know where your son is in this process, but figuring out where you are stuck, might help you think of solutions.

One thing struck me about your post. Your son got angry because you put two pieces of the checker game away when he wanted to do it. Between probably 4.5 and 6 years old, I worked a lot with my daughter to get her to understand that I don't know what is in her brain unless she tells me. She actually once verbalized that I should have known something because she was thinking it! The phrase that helped her is "if your lips are not moving, Mommy does not know what you are thinking." A lot of her anger at that age was the result of her assuming I knew things that I could not possibly know. Work on perspective taking was key for us, as was exploring how two people can be in the same place at the same time and not be thinking the same thing at all.

At 7, she still does this, but now it shows up as "random sentences jumping out of nowhere." She starts probably 25% of her conversations in the middle and gets irritated if you don't know what she is talking about. But I think the underlying issue is the same. I think it is tough for some of our kids to get.

I still believed that other people had been born with a near magical sense that I was born without that let them know what I was feeling. And this was until I was 15-16 years old. I used to get punished all the time for "bad attitude" when I was mad even if I never said a thing, threw a thing, or slammed a door. I finally realized that it was my expressions and body language giving me away, and then had to observe and teach myself what it was that was giving me away. With my son, I have made a point of telling him from the time he was small that the looks he wears and the way he carries his body are capable of broadcasting his feelings. He doesn't always pay attention to these things, and doesn't really read them in other people, but at least he knows how I can tell he's mad when he hasn't said a word. He does still have trouble with the thinking I should know everything he is thinking thing, and often jumps into a conversation without verbalizing the context. He's 13 now.

We've had those tantrums from him. I was so happy, because I thought they were over with. He hadn't had one in over a year, and then last week seemingly over nothing--aggressive fit. (I do have a pretty good idea of how we got there, just that the tipping point was such a tiny little thing). Whereupon I realized that with him suddenly growing 3 inches since Christmas and showing no signs of slowing down that he's now taller than me, which is not a pleasant thing to be seeing when facing a raging kid intent on hurting his annoying brother. Thankfully, he wasn't quite to the point of having completely lost his ability to stop himself which is where he always used to be when he was younger and had these, and he listened when I told him to go to his room to cool down. You're definitely not alone.

Thank you all!
ASDMommy, you are right, he does have a hard time distinguishing emotions, especially 'angry' and 'sad'. In fact, I have a hard time distinguishing them in his behaviour as well. He will usually cry and yell at the same time, both looking very angry but also sad in a very frustrated,way.
It's weird, but I remember these fits and recognize that mixture of feelings from my own childhood. It would feel like some kind of 'internal thunderstorm', that really is the only way I can describe it. With me, it usually happened when I felt someone was mocking me or I wasn't taken seriously. Which is something I don't do with my son. I take him seriously, I never mock him or his behaviour, and when other people do, I'll defend his honour like a lyrical ninja.

I have tried to make him talk about his feelings after the fits, but this seems to upset him as well. I think it makes him ashamed. I'll look for ways to tackle this.

But just like you said, Inthistogether, it is isually about me not reading his mind. In fact, I think this might be the bigger issue. The moving lips sentence is funny, we have a similar one, here it's 'mom can't look inside your head'. (We're visual thinkers )
And omg, the random sentences!! ! Yes, this happens all the time, and when he's in a bad mood, me not getting what he's talking about will have him explode. Sometimes he'll say this cryptical thing and I know he'll go mad if I ask him what he's talking about, so I'll frantically think what he could possibly be talking about, like some kind of Sherlock at gunpoint, just to avoid the fit!
But I understand now that is not the way. He needs to understand that people can't read minds and have different perspectives. This has been an issue at school as well. He is constantly correcting his peers (he's well above average reading and math level, so I get that he's like 'come'on, guys, can't you see this), and doesn't understand that they don't like that.

Thank you guys, things are a lot clearer now. Inthistogether, do you have any practical tips or links to explain and/or practice perspective thinking?

I like Michelle Garcia Winner's Superflex Curriculum, but what I found even more helpful is using our natural environment to discuss it. Watching TV works really well because a lot of kids' shows actually have an element of not-knowing-what-the-other-person-did-and-then-making-a-mistake to them. I try to see life as one huge teachable moment as I find naturalistic methods seem to work better for her than anything else. And lots of repetition. For us, it works best if we work on these things in "non-issue" settings (when things are going smoothly) and try to head off blow-ups as best we can.

My daughter is getting a lot better, but to be truthful, it is always hard for me to tell when it was something I did that helped, or if it is just part of natural maturation.

I agree with InThisTogether in that working on these skills on non-stressful times, organically as they come up. or with TV or books is a helpful approach. We have gotten to the point where we can discuss instances well after the fact, but I never do it right after because it will rile him right back up.

My son was very resistant to taking about emotions when he was 3 and 4. He would shriek at me whenever I tried. So I would leave social stories around where he would find them, so he could read about them without me around to embarrass or annoy him. I also took books out of the library for him, too. I think that helped pave the way.

Once he started being more comfortable, I would start labeling his happy emotions and quiz him during happy or happy-excited times to gauge where we were. Then I would segue into the negative emotions and start labeling those (when I was sure I knew.) He also had a lot of trouble distinguishing anger from sadness. I think they blur together sometimes. We are still working on this, and I have added a couple of secondary emotions like "disappointed" and "frustrated" due to their frequency. It is rough, but we have gotten to the point where he will volunteer that he is angry, sad or scared and he is usually right.