Son yells "shut up" when I try to ask him somethi

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i meant to me and she does owe me..... its been an ongoing saga which has annoyed me alot

i didnt read yuor question.. ive had enouth exprience with dificult chilldren.. my sisteer my brother.. a spend alot of time helping them so though my sperm hasnt made a child i do spend my time helping teens that ahe or slighly older . i know being a parent isnt easy i never said it was...

Last edited by scorpileo on 21 Sep 2009, 5:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

scorpileo,

It's obvious that you're in disagreement with pekkla and I'm sure that she's watching the topic. I suspect that she doesn't want to respond to you because it would only lead to confrontation. Instead, just assume that she's reading and give her some tips. It's easy to say what NOT to do but giving positive tips is much harder.

I concur with Jellybean that parenting is very difficult. Everyone has to find the right style that suits them. My wife and I parent very differently. She's more authoritarian while I tend to be more of an understanding buddy. Each style has its strengths and weaknesses and we had our own internal struggles (still do sometimes). Ultimately though, I can't do things the way my wife does and she can't do them the way I do. It just doesn't work that way.

Pekkla, it's been a while since I read this thread but I don't think you've mentioned your son's father. Can he help? Does he parent differently?

It's obvious that your son has a special interest in gaming. This is a good thing (I know it doesn't look that way, but it is). The trick is to set reasonable limits.

Your son is probably getting too old for you to struggle with, so you need to ensure that all violent methods of control/discipline are eradicated. This means that smacking, imprisonment and threats are no longer suitable punishments. If possible, you need to get rid of shouting too. You need to do this in order to stop teaching these methods to your son as a means of getting his/your way. If you don't do this, life in your home may become progressively more dangerous as your son gets older.

Somehow, you need to find a way of limiting your son's gaming time without upsetting him too much. The only way forward in this regard is a compromise. You'll need to talk it out with your son and you'll probably find that you have to give something up too. For example, you might reserve an hour of non-gaming family time but you need to commit to that hour too. That means no taking phone calls during that time etc...

are you insane that will tell him that he can do whatever he wants, and that he CAN be successfully manipulative, which is unacceptable, whether autistic or not.

It would only be temporary. There is an easy out, all he has to do is not say "shut up" to his mother. Not really a high price to pay. I'm against all forms of corporal punishment, but I'm not against establishing standards of behavior, even for autistic children.

He probably doesn't even realize that it's not appropriate language. Of course, to be consistent, the mother should never say shut up to him...

OK. What would you suggest the mother do next time her son punches a hole in the wall & says "I want to kill you"? Remember, this is over something as minor as her asking him to finsih up on the computer & hit the sack on a school night.

Finally someone who thinks autism is no excuse and we shouldn't be treated any different for punishments and be allowed to run wild. I get so sick of that attitude from aspies who are like teens and think taking things away from us is wrong. I never thought that in my teens. I hated having the computer taken but I didn't think I was being abused and all. It was hard yes and I got all manipulative but guess what? I didn't act that way when I was little until I was an adolescent and I never ever thought it was wrong to take things away from kids as a punishment, even their obsessions so I don't even buy that thinking has to do with having emotions of a teen. I see it as being a brat and using their condition as an excuse.

Quoting Aspe

Very good point I think. Sometimes we forget how much of our own bad behavior our kid's are picking up on and imitating.

granatelli.

ask him whats wrong... not hard is it?

indeed it may apear over somthing minor but it seems to be a big deal for him.

gramirez.

of course he cant do what he wants but punishment isnt the awnser here.

and it doesnt realy matter if its only for a day or two. IMO it will remove anytrust he has which i think is low as it is.


aslo ofourse he shouldnt be treated diferent becuase he is autistic. rather becuase he is HUMAN sa of such he needs to be treated as a an independed senient being with his own needs and isues autism is just a labal IMO

No. But the impression I got is he does not want to talk. Otherwise he wouldn't yell at his mom to "SHUT UP!" when she tries to talk to him. Read the thread title & her first post. That's the crux of the whole problem. He has shut down & is taking it out on those he lives with. He needs to grow up & get with the program unless he wants to end up in a much more unpleasant place than his moms house.

So...what is? If he's not being punished, then essentially he's getting away with it.

I think this is getting way too heated on both sides, but I still don't understand what's really going on.
As far as I can tell, Pekkla hasn't directly responded to anything that's been said or asked about the situation. Until she does, there's no way to know. Kid could be a brat, could be melting down, totally burnt out, could not exist for that matter. True, I'm not a parent and don't know what it's like. But there have been responses from parents of children on the spectrum, and she hasn't answered those either. I replied to this thread and asked her what kind of response she did want when she writes these posts, she didn't answer that. Whatever is actually going on, only pekkla knows, and doesn't seem inclined to share. I still don't understand what the purpose of these posts are, or how anyone can have so much conviction that they know what's going on and how the situation should be dealt with when there is so little information! None of the questions have been answered, there's been no response about any of the things anybody has suggested, we have no way of knowing if these are things that have already been tried.
I think that when there's doubt about whether a behavior is a tantrum or a meltdown, the child needs to be provided with a safe and quiet place where they can be alone to calm down in peace, but not free to pursue special interests. That way over-stimulation can be escaped in the case of a meltdown without it being that they've "gotten their way" if it was a tantrum. I've said that more than once. Without a response, without any idea if the concept has been considered, how can anybody here presume to determine whether it's help or discipline that the kid needs?? Everyone here is assuming that the kid is just like they were at that age. Without a response, we don't know.
All the heated-ness is probably scaring her away. Of course, the absence of any answers is upsetting people who have put thought into their replies, so at least some of it is her own doing. She's said that she's an aspie too, so she may not understand this. That's a large part of ToM, remember? Not understanding that others don't know what you know. But once questions go unanswered for long periods of time, it's hard to know whether someone doesn't know that you don't know what they know, or doesn't care. Around here, I try to assume that if someone seems not to care about something, it's because they actually don't know. To me, that feels like giving the person the benefit of the doubt. A few people (not, as yet, pekkla.. that remains to be seen, I guess) have gotten pissed at me for giving them that benefit; when that happens, I take it to mean that they didn't deserve it. If I assume someone is behaving as though they don't care about something because they don't know, and I tell them, and they get pissed at me for it, then that must mean that it wasn't that they didn't know but that they really didn't care. I'm not sure how else to approach it. I don't know how to react when somebody gets pissed at me for working on the assumption that they're honest.

So, maybe she doesn't know how upsetting it is to try to offer insight when she writes these posts, only to be ignored. Maybe she does. Really, I have no clue... but do any of you?
Maybe ignoring my posts is justified, but there are a few other people who have responded to these threads who have experience and knowledge about raising children with ASDs, and someone coming here asking for advice certainly shouldn't be ignoring their questions and insights. Most of this thread has turned into arguing, without anyone having sufficient information to actually base their arguments on. All questions seem to have been ignored. Whether that's because of the arguers, or whether they would have been ignored anyway, I don't know. I don't know how anyone else here would know that either.

Last edited by Maggiedoll on 22 Sep 2009, 1:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Ewwwwww. Punishment. I hate that word with a passion. And I'm not directing this comment toward anyone, it's just that the word itself seems evil. I'm sure that gramirez and everyone else with his viewpoint aren't thinking along the lines of "cruel and unusual" or "correctional institutions" and are most likely suggesting a temporary removal or limiting of privileges, and that might work for some kids, but it never really did for me or for mine.

But this thread has turned out to be a psychodrama much like the pseudo documentary called
Punishment Park:

Members from the anti-war movement, civil rights movement, feminist movement, conscientious objectors, and Communist party, mostly University students, are arrested and face an emergency tribunal made up of community members. With state and federal jails at their top capacity, the convicted face the option of spending their full conviction time in federal prison or three days at Punishment Park. There, they will have to traverse 60 miles of the hot California desert in three days, without water or food, while being chased by National Guardsmen and law enforcement officers as part of their field training. If they succeed and reach the American flag at the end of the course, they will be set free. If they fail by getting "arrested", they will serve the remainder of their sentence in federal prison.

European filmmakers follow two groups of detainees as part of their documentary; while Group 637 starts their three day ordeal and learn the rules of the "game", the civilian tribunal begins hearings on Group 638. The film makers conduct interviews with members of Group 637 and their chasers, documenting how both sides become increasingly hostile towards the other. Meanwhile, back at the tent, the film crew documents the trial of Group 638 as they argue their case in vain for resisting the war in Vietnam. The first group splinters into one group that refuses to accept the rules of the game and tries to resist with violence and another group that goes on towards the goal. The violent group are all killed. As the others comes near the flag they find a group of police waiting for them; it turns out that there is no way to win the Punishment Park course as the system controls it from start to finish.

Quoting Maggiedoll:


I very much agree. The subject matter is of the type that provokes strong emotional and intellectual responses. Very few who have participated in this thread have impartial reactions.

Behind the scenes of Punishment Park:
On one occasion the participants (actors) identified with the situation so completely that the victims began to actually attack the pursuers by throwing rocks resulting in one opening fire in return. metaphors of social and political events of the time. The panic reaction of the film team, believing that the actors dropping down had been shot for real, is genuine. The realism is heightened by using amateur actors, improvisation, and newsreel camera techniques, but Watkins, the director, had rigid control over editing in order to guarantee that his personal vision be expressed clearly, and to guarantee audience involvement.

Hmmm. See the similarities? Very interesting, don't you think?
In my opinion, this is what seems to be going on here in this thread.

This thread is a stage and we are all actors in a psycho drama called "My Aspie Son".

Punishment may be the wrong word. Consequences, that's the word we are looking for.

His behavior needs to have consequences.

Absolutely-tootly.

We don't know what the behavior is. You speak as though you know things that haven't been said. We don't know if he has any options for escaping situations that overwhelm him. We don't know if the little we've been told about his behavior is happening when he's attempting to distract himself from something particularly upsetting. We don't know anything. No questions have been answered.
I believe it was said in another thread that the kid is being bullied pretty badly. The people doing the bullying need some consequences too. If it's all one-sided, it's not consequences. If he gets "consequences" for being irritable that he's under constant torment while nothing happens to the tormentors, that's not consequences or discipline, it's punishing the victim!
How can you say what he needs when not a single question that's been asked about the situation has been answered?? Do you know something about this kid that nobody else does? Or are you just basing it off of his mother's sporadic posts about how bad he is, with no context and no information?
For behavior to have consequences, that behavior must have some kind of choice involved. There have to have been alternatives to what was done, alternatives that he chose not to use. We don't know that he has any such alternatives. Some have been suggested, but his mother hasn't responded.

Here is his behavior as told by his mother over the last few months;

"This getting ridiculous. My 13 year old aspie son seems to be getting more and more unreachable the minute he sits down to his favorite video game. I try to talk to him about dinner, his homework, ask him a basic question, but he just yells "shut up" go away" leave me alone" "why can't you be quiet" or something similar at the top of his lungs. A year ago, this reaction would be rare. Now its all the time. Is he getting more autistic, is he addicted to the game, or what"

"Over the past week my 13 year old aspie son has threatened to kill me several times. Usually he says it after I try to finish telling him something. First he tells me to shut up. Like tonight, he walked into the kitchen to wash his hands, and as usual, refuses to dry them. I say to him that he needs to dry them because he is leaving a puddle of water on the floor. I do not say it in an angry way because I know that I would just be provoking him. But then he says to "shut up", followed by "I'd like to kill you." I am getting really scared. He isn't even screaming the threat.

What to do? I know he needs some help. He seems angrier and more agitated than in the past. He is also having trouble sleeping. Could he also be bipolar? I just don't want social workers in our house everyday or someone to remove him from the house"

"My 13-year old son, who has an Asperger's diagnosis, is getting angrier and more locked into strange behaviors this summer. He has taken lately to throwing little balls against the wall of his bedroom (which I think will eventually damage the drywall). When I try to talk to him about it, come into the room, even ask him a question, he has taken to screaming "get out" at me or the word "penis." Sometimes he will say "suck my penis" which has become a real favorite expression since the beginning of 7th grade. I am an aspie myself and don't think I am being unreasonable. I want him to be safe and not damage our house. Sometimes his 8 year old sister gets caught up in the whole thing. He doesn't do anything harmful to her, but they gang up against me. Any suggestions? I'm getting nowhere."

OK. Is that enough examples for you? If you choose to think the mother is just making this all up, OK, there's nothing I can do about that. But seriously. Is it a stretch to thing a teenage boy w/AS may have anger issues? Come on.

I could find no reference from the mother that he is being picked on in school. If I missed it, please post the quote.

Yes, somewhere in there the kid is mad about something & is acting out. But every time his mom tries to talk to him he acts like an ass. She has AS. He has AS (maybe more). In either case it is unacceptable for him to frighten and be abusive to the rest of his family members with this behavior. If he keeps actig like this he's going to end up in jail, AS or not.