Recently a participant on our Autism Parenting Program wanted help to work through a challenge she was having with her Autistic son.
Her son was in the playground at kindergarten and had deliberately pushed a boy into the sandpit. He didn’t quite reach the result he was after, so he went back and pushed him again, just to make sure the boy fell into the sandpit.
Of course, he was reprimanded by the school, calmly and kindly, and was shown social story on keeping your hands to yourself.
This mum was at a loss about this, stating that her son wasn’t usually aggressive or mean and that this is totally out of character. She wanted some advice on what she could do about this situation.
As per usual, my first question is always why? Why does that behaviour make sense to the child? What must that child be thinking or feeling to be behaving that way? Whether the behaviour is morally correct or not, something was happening for this child to trigger that event and we need to understand this before we try to implement any solutions.
After more pressing, different ways of discussing it and getting information from the teacher, the mother was surprised to find out that her son was struggling in the playground because it was ‘so noisy’ and overwhelming to him. He had previously seen another boy push someone over and was sent to a ‘time out’ room where they got to sit in a quiet room and read books. Because of the boy’s sensory overwhelm, he wanted to be in that room and thought that this was the way you needed to get there.
Very often, the autistic brain is very literal and may not think about what a situation means in the bigger picture, or across different contexts.
In this situation, the boy’s behaviour wasn’t naughty or aggressive. He had simply witnessed a situation that led A to B – Pushing a child = going to the quiet room. It’s what he needed, so that’s what he did. No malice. No nastiness whatsoever.
What a game changer for the mother and the teacher!
Because while a social story on keeping your hands to yourself seems like the right response to a situation like this, it would only be effective if the boy did not know that you are supposed to keep your hands to yourself. Even then we would still need to teach an alternative coping strategy and understand why the boy chose to put his hands on another child in the first place. However, now knowing what the real issue is, we could help the young boy with a social story about how to ask to go into the quiet room. Even better, we could also use this incident as an opportunity to talk to the boy about what it feels like to be overwhelmed and use a social story to help him learn how to ask for help when he feels its too noisy or when dealing with some other sensory sensitivity.
Had we not probed into the why, this young man may have been labelled as naughty, aggressive, or mean and been punished, suspended or isolated in some way because the focus was only on the behaviour, not the cause.
This is the importance of why!
It’s the topic that underpins everything we teach in our Autism Program and if you reach out for support from me in our program, it’s always the starting point for finding a solution. Understand the why, and the solution often becomes obvious.
If you want to know more about our Autism Parenting Program or our training program for professionals ‘Inside Autism,’ reach out we would love to hear from you. Support@parentalstress.com.au