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LizK

Hurting his younger brother

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See my other post 'Feeling upset' as this one may make more sense. In brief Adma has started school, for the first time ever he has started hurting or being socially inappropriate with the other children. He's like this with his younger brother and am wondering if we are not dealing with things so well at home but don't know what to do

 

Until recently Adam has been a passive gentle child but he has been very physical with his younger brother (20mths old) or hurts him. He went through a phase of pinching him and now he goes up and pulls or waggles his ears or pulls his hair. He's forever snatching toys from him and if Adam's angry he will often go and find his brother to hit almost as a way of relieving stress. He never hurt any children at his previous nursery and never fought if we met up with friends. He did recently lash out at a random child at the park after I took a toy off him he'd snatched but that seemed to be an isolated incident. We went to a party yesterday, he was withdrawn for most of the time but he settled down went to join the other children, started pulling their hair and thought their howls and protest were highly amusing. As I said in my other post I think some of this is his way of trying to get their attention and because of his social difficulties he doesn't realise that maybe pulling hair isn't the best way to get someone to play with you.

 

It's the situation at home I'm concerned about as it's not getting any better and I wonder if we aren't being firm enough. Trouble is we did go through a stage of zero tolerance, putting him on the step or sending him to his room if he hurt his brother but it didn't seem to get through to him, often became a game and he'd get sent out 10 or more times only to come back in and continue where he left off. If he did get upset at being put on the step for time out he became so distraught that the point of the punishment was lost. All this made life very stressful, I wondered if it was just giving him negative attention and we decided to try and play it down more when he hurt his brother and use distraction or ignoring. it's sad but even at the age of 19mths his brother has realised that ignoring Adam when he started tweaking his ears or hair tends to be the better option and he only cries now if he's really hurt. My worry is that ignoring and playing it down has lead Adam to think we are condoning this sort of behaviour hence why he's generalising to school

 

Maybe it's not jus that, I don't know. Developmentally he's at the social level of a 2.5-3 yr old and don't toddlers do this sort of thing. His lack of empathy and understanding of emotions of others is a big factor too, he'll sometimes laugh when he make shis brother cry and I worry I'm bringing up a psychopath :(

 

Has anyone else been through this? Any suggestions please? This is all so hard

 

Lx

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Hi,

 

I mentioned on your other thread that our daughter went thru a stage of hitting children in pushchairs. No reason for it starting, and it ended when she began school nursery. She would literally launch herself at ANY child sat in a pushchair and smack them :fight: . It was very stressful, and for some time we stopped going out with her. It came to a head when she hit a newborn baby in Wacky Warehouse and the father wanted to punch my hubby. The mum was shouting that kids like our daughter shouldn't be allowed out....etc etc...you get the picture. We came home, and I just sat and sobbed. She would also laugh her head off if our other two children were upset about something, and found their crying really funny. She sometimes hit them too, but we found this was due to frustration when they wouldn't do EXACTLY what she wanted, rather than just a random act. We found the school were very supportive helping us stop our daughter hitting children in pushchairs, and spent alot of time and effort trying to make her understand this was not appropriate. She seemed to listen to them and take on board what they said, more than with us. As I said, it stopped. She now also recognises when someone is upset, and no longer finds it funny. Infact, if she feels I look upset, she will give me the biggest hug, kiss my cheek, and get upset herself , bless her :wub: I do hope you get some resolution to this, and I'm sorry I couldn't come up with any concrete advice for you. Take care and hang in there :D

 

Debs

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I would agree with bagpuss and get the school involved as much as poss. I don't have much personal experience of this as my son is only 3 and thus much of his upset and lashing out is in a similar fashion to a temper tantrum of any other2/3 yr old.

 

You said your son is at a mainstream, they should have access to the support from the nearest ASD specialist school and should be able to call in the advice of the behavioural people there. I know our ASD school nearby provides outreach services to schools (and possibly families) to support the mainstream children.

 

good luck

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