Advice regarding discipline

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I have 2 sons. One 5 years old with an ASD diagnosis and his NT brother who is 18 months younger.

My ASD son was diagnosed at 2 with severe ASD but has been doing very well. He is generally well-behaved and has a sweet personality. All his aides and teachers absolutely love to work with him. He is smart and can read books at a 2-3 grade level although he doesn't comprehend everything. He has a large vocabulary but only speaks with single words or very short sentences but can generally make us understand. He plays well by himself but is socially way behind.

The younger brother is a typical rambunctious, ornery 3 year old. Physically and socially he is advanced for his age in many ways. He is roughly the size and has the same strength of his older brother and while not mean he can be aggressive and has sharing issues you would expect from such a 3 year old boy which has caused issues.

Starting a couple of years ago, my ASD son would have meltdowns when his little brother would take his toy, knock down his block structures or mess up his puzzles. He has learned through ABA and from his parents how to deal with this and how to communicate both with his brother and how to get help from mom and dad. We created ABA programs that showed him how to find another toy for his brother to calm him and how to go to mom and dad for help. We also created programs to help him be more assertive and tell his brother no or to wait until he is done with a specific program. All of this went very well and 95% of the meltdowns ended. My ASD son has learned social skills and improved tremendously and much of it from his younger brother. They are the best of playmates most of the time.

About a year ago, my older son learned he could be more assertive and take a toy from his younger brother when appropriate (younger brother not sharing or taking a toy away from older brother). We were happy about this because we don't want our ASD son to always be a pushover and of course with his personality we worry about him getting bullied as he gets older.

In a first "fight" between them about 6 months ago, little brother purposely destroyed a block tower that older brother had spent an hour building. Older brother pretty much flipped out. He punched his younger brother in the face and then had a major meltdown. Little brother was just in shock when he got hit but not physically hurt. After he calmed down, mom and dad spent a lot of time explaining to our ASD son that hitting his little brother was not acceptable.

About a month ago we had another incident. My normally sweet ASD son bit his younger brother on the cheek and left a deep purple bruise after a "sharing" issue got a bit ugly. We gave our ASD son a long time out and had long appropriate discussions with both of them.

Last week they had an incident at school and a teacher called us. They are in different pre-school classes but play together for a short time after lunch. During this play time older brother was playing with a firetruck and younger brother wanted it and had a fit. Younger brother started crying and screaming and trying to take the firetruck. I was incredibly proud of older brother when the teacher told me that unprompted by teacher or aide he took little brother to the toy box to try to find him another firetruck to play with. He found a different firetruck and gave it to his brother. Unfortunately, younger brother didn't want the new firetruck and got mad and threw it striking another child nearby.

Disciplining younger brother is pretty straightforward. He loves the school and his friends and was devastated when we didn't let him go to school the following day. This was our decision, not the something the teachers expected.

I'm a bit old school. I grew up in the 1970's and was the smallest kid in the school for my age. I learned at a very young age that they only way to keep from getting bullied was to be mean when appropriate.

I see now the challenges that my ASD son will likely have with bullies in school and I fear for him and want him to be able to take care of himself. Teachers and other adults can handle many of these situations but they won't always be there. My son for sure is going to get bullied. I hope and pray that when it happens that he can be appropriately "mean" and defend himself in whatever way that he must.

I am looking for any recommendations that other parents may have on how to handle this situation with my ASD son. How can I teach him that punching and biting are not appropriate and that he can ask for help from mom and dad, a teacher or another adult he knows? More importantly how can I teach him that there will come a time when he will be bullied and that if someone is going to hurt him physically he should defend himself in whatever way necessary even if that includes biting or punch? It's just so complex for him to understand.

If you are already having "discussions" with your ASD son after his misbehavior, continue to do so.

You can also play "social games" with your son. Here, you can teach your son that there are alternatives to physically attacking somebody.

You can also show him videos of what you have discussed, so he can see an illustration of what you are talking about.

Fortunately, it sounds like he wants to be "good." That's half the battle right there.

Most of this sounds like rather typical sibling rivalry behavior (the biting incident notwithstanding, of course), but you are wise to be wary of dangerous patterns that may emerge. As you can probably see, it isn't easy to teach a child--any child--how to respond appropriately in the heat of the moment, especially if another child is being irritating or provocative.

For now, I would definitely keep focusing on teaching both of your wonderful kids non-violence, self-assertion, self-control, and problem-solving skills (like trading--how awesome that your son went to all that trouble!). Preparing your ASD son to fight in the future will, as you say, be very confusing, and more importantly, it could set him up for some big problems. Any child with a history of violence or a tendency towards it--no matter what the reason--will be treated differently than a less-aggressive one--and it won't likely be with understanding and patience.

I only read part of it to decide that maybe your ASD son is burned out from using good social skills for when dealing with conflicts because his younger brother has worn him out and pushed him over the edge and now he has no mental energy left because he has gotten so frustrated with his brother. Stress can limit your abilities. Everyone handles stress differently but for some people like me, it changes how we function and act and handle things so we might act out due to the anxiety.

I would just keep your youngest son away from him and also start teaching the youngest how to be nice. Time for lots of time outs. I was also teased and picked on in school and I did get into fights when I got worn out from trying to ignore it and walking away but it got too much for me to deal with it any longer so fighting it was. But I agree with the other poster here that this all sounds like sibling rivalry. Both my NT kids fight and provoke each other and I know how hard it is to keep them separated.

This post keeps drawing my attention. But I don't write because I don't really see anything that I can contribute. And that is saying something. I love giving discipline advice. But honestly, you seem to be doing it already.

This kind of behavior is both normal and needing to be corrected. But you are already doing that.

There is a reason schools don't usually put siblings in the same room. I mean, really, what the blankety blank are they thinking? Putting 5 year olds in for a play time with three year olds? And where are the aids to be watching while all this goes down? Are they combining classes so that they can give people a lunch break, reducing the amount of coverage at the time. It doesn't make sense. It's BEGGING for an incident. I suspect that if you check, soon this 3-5 year old play time will be a thing of the past. It might be worth talking to the school about exactly what is going on at this time, just to prevent future incidences. More chaotic classrooms are ruff on 3 year olds and autistic kids of all ages. What are they doing to keep the order during this time of day?

It seems from the post that the children are in separate classrooms but share playtime. The same is true of my school. We have a Day Nursery (10 months-5) with one room, a nursery (3-4) with two rooms and two Reception classes (4-5). Each class has their own staff and must provide their own lunch cover (lunch cover is a bit slimmer than the rest of the day) but we all share a playground which is in use by all classes for the majority of the day (children can choose to go in or out). The three are rated good, outstanding and good respectively.

This sounds likely to me. It might be an idea to observe your older son for a while for signs of losing patience in the little ways that don't provoke "big" responses, to see if he seems overwhelmed.

Also, when he gets a time out, is that relaxing or recharging for him? Is it not a punishment, but rather time to recuperate? (That is not necessarily a bad thing if it is the case.)





You are addressing three different issues here. Not putting siblings in the same room is good or bad entirely depending on the particular siblings' relationships. For some, being separated could be a welcome break, for others, being together could be a welcome support.

Not having enough supervision during lunch or playtimes might be an issue, but just because there is an incident between two kids does not mean there is inappropriate supervision. This can happen in the classroom too, even right in front of the teacher, given quick tempers and the right stimulus.

But what I really want to address is the idea of mixed-age groups. This is not something that will be going away, it is in fact becoming more popular in recent years and has led to a great deal of positive results not only in social behaviors, but also in emotional regulation and cognitive abilities, because the children are able to interact with, to help and be helped by, a wider range of peers. Separating children based on nothing but age (instead of abilities, interests, learning styles, etc.) is an artificial construction instituted in the industrial age when public education for the masses was instituted for the very first time as a means (I kid you not) to teach the vast waves of immigrants' children to become good factory workers for all the new factories that were being built.

^^ What she said.

You'all are preaching to the choir. But you can't just implement one aspect of de-industrializing the classroom in isolation. Multi-age classrooms don't work in an environment where there are still other aspects of industrialization. Other aspects of the modern classroom are also part of this industrial model. For example, keeping them in classrooms, and not at home, with a single caregiver before the age of 7. Or expecting them to develop skills like sharing at an age when they simply don't have the theory of mind to understand the needs of others,.

I'm wondering how many incidents you are hoping will happen before a school decides to examine their coverage with three year olds? I guess you already said more than one. Two? Three? Seventeen?

In models where we don't treat our children via the industrial model of education, three year olds aren't even in school. Why? It's really not developmentally appropriate for them to be in a ratio of more than two on one. They are still babies. They don't have the capacity to understand putting aside their needs for another person. But they can be trained to obey rules. This is how modern schools force children into developing skills that they do not have the cognitive development to perform naturally. Sharing freely at three years. Reading at 5. These things don't normally develop at these ages. But as I said, if you do enough circle time and work on training kids enough, you can train them to do these skills, even if they don't understand what they are doing. That is what is passing for excellence in today's pre-schools - training, not education. Talk to the best pre-school teacher and they will tell you the same. This insane experiment we are playing on our children has got to end someday soon.

(I'm getting off topic. But really. Trying to school me on industrial model schooling. Really. )

I just need to add, in the names on not flaming a Mommy/Daddy war here, that we have all sorts of very good reasons to put children in school early, too. The needs of parents to have a career, for example, is important. And kids do far better in homes where they don't have ambition-stiffled, constantly-worried-about-money parents. It's a complex issue and I don't think that parent's are bad for putting their little one's in day care or pre-school at all.

Life isn't perfect. No pre-school is perfect. It doesn't make them bad. But they should be examining if their coverage is adequate during any multi-aged play time. It's simply too tempting to cut corners by reducing staff to dangerous levels in this day and age. Since pre-schools are commercial ventures, its up to the parents to insist that standards be kept, or those standards will fall, no matter how good of a school it is. It's just the nature of capitalism to always be looking for ways to spend less to provide a given service.

Thanks for the thoughts.

Being assertive continues to be a huge focus with his ABA team it he continues to improve. He's great at trading but also will quickly give up his toy to an aggressive classmate in some situations when we wish he would be more assertive. His teachers and aides do see him as totally non-violent is a big help to him as they will always step in to help or protect him. The issue I see is that teachers and parents won't always be there and he's going to get bullied and I will want him to defend himself in any way necessary including biting. The issue for him is that it's so complex to understand when he really must defend himself in that way and when he can remedy the situation in another way.

Biting his brother has had a positive impact in his relationship with his brother. His little brother now knows he's not a total pushover and is listening a lot more when big brother tries to communicate something.

My ASD son's normal classroom is for children who have not started Kindergarten and were are least 4.5 years old as of the end of August. The pre-school has lunch available for all kids ages 3 to 5 from all classes. They eat together in a large room and have playtime afterwards. It's during the playtime that the firetruck incident happened.

It's very important in my opinion that my 5-year-old ASD son has the opportunity to develop social skills both with children who are younger and older than himself. If he doesn't get those opportunities now, he may never learn those skills.

You are absolutely correct that my son is sometimes totally burnt out when these challenges happen. He spends 30 hours a week in ABA therapy and roughly another 20 hrs in school. By the end of the day he is worn out mentally.

With that said, I do think his ability to handle stress increase as he gets older and as he has exposure to lots of stress and expectations. He's not getting worse at dealing with stress. He's getting better over time.

As long as he keeps getting better and incidences are manageable and clearly learning experience for both of them, I certainly don't want to separate them.

This took me some time to learn but we are now doing exactly that. If my ASD son has misbehavior that's related to stress or other ASD related sensitivities, we now call it "break-time" instead of a "time out" which he sees as punishment. We allow him to read books or do a puzzle while he calms down.

He now realizes when he's having a meltdown and that it's "not good." About a month ago, he keep saying to me "sorry daddy" in the middle of a big meltdown in a restaurant. I was crying carrying him out of the restaurant because I realized he was trying to apologize to me for something he wasn't capable of controlling. Hopefully with time he'll be able to anticipate those meltdowns and take a break on his own.