Dealing With the Outbursts

Cameron’s at the point where, when he does something wrong, the only thing he knows how to do is shout out the most hateful thing he can think of and stomp off. For example, if he hurts his little brother and we get mad at him, he’ll stomp his feet all the way to his bedroom shouting “Tyler is a stupid baby face!” and slam his bedroom door.

“Stupid” is the most hateful word he knows.

It’s not necessarily an Autism trait as most children will do this sort of thing when they’re mad, but it’s still worth writing about because what does set those with Autism apart is their inability to handle or deal with those strong emotions.

This presents a bit of a problem really because it will grow in magnitude unless contained.. you see, you have to deal with it with all children, naturally, but with Autistics, unless you can really help them to learn how to handle it, you’ll start to see more and more of these outbursts at restaurants, family outings and so forth.

At the same time, you have to know when it’s serious and when it’s not because at a young age, and with Autism… just about every outburst can be as loud and hateful as they can make it, whether they’re mildly upset or furious… it all comes out the same.

How do you distinguish? Do you distinguish? Do you handle them all the same or do you let some instances slide and not others?

Temple Grandin once said “You can not punish for sensory overload” meaning, when a child is totally misbehaving because their senses are overloaded, you can’t punish them for that… they’re already in pain! So when a child is already getting hugely mixed signals and lashing out regardless of whether or not they want to be… do you punish them for it?

I believe in raising my child as I would raise him without Autism… an outburst is not ok… hitting is not ok…  however, if I see that there is a cause for his misbehaving such as sensory overload, change in routine, gluten intake or something like that, I will try to find a more ‘lenient’ way to separate him from the situation, get him into his room without him feeling like he’s bad… something like that.

It’s pretty difficult to keep your patience though, when your child is trying to be as hateful as they can after they were the ones that did something wrong… how do you deal with this sort of thing?