We were told to immediately tell difficult child 3 about his autism, but when he was diagnosed he was too young to understand. How do you explain "autism" to a kid who can only barely understand "what" and "where" but can't fathom "why" or "how"?
difficult child 3 was about 8 when he came home from school and said that he was different to the other kids. He said, "I'm a much better reader, and they're all so slow at maths. I'm not so good at other things. But I just don't understand the way they play and I don't understand why things seem different for me."
That was when we explained to him about his autism. I've described this before, I used computers as an analogy - some people have easy child brains, some people have mac brains. Documents done on either can look identical, but the software that makes this happen has to be different for the different computers.
This was also the signal for me to organise "Sixth Sense Program" for difficult child and his class, to help them ALL understand autism.
But at 8, and even a few years older, difficult child 3 just couldn't understand that other people would not necessarily react the way he does, and that people can have different feelings and motivations. We've tried, but it's mostly a matter of keeping on reinforcing it while standing guard and nipping any bad behaviour in the bud.
He's a lot better now, still got a way to go.
And now he's at a drama class for kids with learning problems/developmental delay/autism, he's having to deal with kids/teens who can be very annoying sometimes. One kid he was good friends with, until that kid became difficult and apparently attention-seeking. And yes, that kid is annoying. He will walk around touching the other kids apparently just to annoy them, to get a reaction. It's inappropriate and the drama teacher tries to stop him, but it eventually escalates, the other kids (none of whom are especially patient) will start to get angry with him and then as this kid gets more stressed, he misbehaves more and eventually gets thrown out of the class.
difficult child 3, who likes rules to be followed, gets angry with this boy for apparently deliberately breaking the rules about touching. He also would get upset with this boy when he would disobey his mother and grab a handful of biscuits from the parent' afternoon tea table.
I finally had my chance when there was a program on TV talking about people with Prader-Willi Syndrome, which is this boy's diagnosis. I've had to reinforce a number of times and almost role-play it with difficult child 3, to explain what it must feel like to always be hungry, to never feel like you've eaten enough, to feel like everybody around you is being mean and having bigger serves than you of really yummy stuff, and if he ever gets to eat as much as he wants, he ends up in hospital having his stomach pumped. I told him, "This boy must feel very angry sometimes, especially since he knows you don't have this problem and he does. He gets angry and pokes people to try to make them as angry as he feels."
difficult child 3 is still not good with this kid, but he no longer shouts at him. Now he just avoids him in order to avoid getting angry with him.
It's not brilliant but it's a start.
There is another autistic boy in the class, Aspie I think, who REALLY stirs up this other boy by calling him names. He's younger than difficult child 3 but very smart, and really seems to know how to stir up the PW kid.
I'm hoping that when drama class goes back in a few weeks, that difficult child 3 will be in a different class. The teacher is new too, hopefully this teacher will be better able to control the action.
It really does take time, repeated and gentle explanation, role-playing, time, more explanation, and time.
Marg