At some point in the conversation, he blurted that if I told his sister, he'd embarrass me in a store. I didn't take kindly to being threatened and told him as much. To which he replied "it was a promise, not a threat". By this point I was torqued and said "you know, I hadn't planned on saying anything to her, but now I believe I will", which as expected, mad him angry.
You did well up until that point. He really needs to be able to trust you. But he also needs to learn what is reasonable and to take personal responsibility for his own actions. You telling his sister is what he asked you not to do, and I infer from his response that he at least believed you would not. Then you chose to punish him with, "Now I think I will."
This ramps it up for two reasons -
1) he doesn't want his sister to be told; and
2) he is again afraid that he can't trust you.
You don't need his last one, it is really damaging your efforts.
A better way (and remember, I know that this is difficult right now because it is involving you changing your mental gears and needing to be really on the ball) is to throw it back into his court.
"Son, you know she asked you not to play this game. Now think about it from her point of view - if this were one of your games..." [think of something special to him] "...how would you feel if she had been playing it after you asked her not to? Now it's OK, I'm not going to take your stuff away or anything like that, I just want you to think about it. You did the wrong thing, didn't you? And you do know this. Why do you think you did this?" Keep this as non-judgmental as possible, you want him to try to think, really think, from someone else's point of view. Not easy for him. Then you continue.
"Now what do you think would be appropriate in this situation?"
Let him think and suggest. You might be surprised at how harsh he expects you to be with him. But the best 'punishment' needs to be something he accepts or even suggests - he should himself tell his sister. Confess. With you holding his hand if he needs it. And then he needs to see her reaction.
YOU don't do this. HE has to. Then it's not you doing this to him, he did it all to himself and has to wear the natural consequences.
No punishment you could divise is as nasty as this one.
Now to evening and the mattress protector - these hassles will happen. There will be times you don't notice things and his loud reaction was again primarily anxiety and stress. The best way to handle this is to keep telling yourself, he isn't choosing to be rude or defiant. He is panicking. He is behaving like a mother who sees her child run onto the road in front of a truck. If you were the truck driver pulling up just in time, you could expect a tirade from the mother even though it is not deserved. Once she calms down she would (maybe) be apologetic. But if the truck driver gets upset with her, nothing is achieved. The truck driver needs to remind himself, she is not angry at him but merely trying to cope with the sudden rush of adrenalin and panic over her baby. You shrug and move on, maybe deal with it by talking about it later when he is calmer. Again, this is where we choose what to deal with and when.
The problems are worst when he is tired (and mentally exhausted from holding it together as best as he can for the day) and you're also tired and fed up. I do understand, truly I do. I'm feeling a bit like this at the moment, dealing with concerns over mother in law (who's been very difficult child-ish) and difficult child 3 being more than usually a handful. An aside on this - difficult child 3 had a very bad day yesterday, I was horrified by some of the things he said and did, I had thought we'd been making great progress. But late last night he came in to say, "What has been wrong with me today? Could it have been that cappuccino slice I ate this morning? Or maybe my medications just aren't working so well lately."
So he is aware of it and doesn't like being this way. A good start.
You say "I can't agree with tolerating bad behavior because he is Autistic."
Read this statement of yours through again. Can you see the unfairness of it, from his point of view? It's like you're saying you can't agree with tolerating clumsiness and falling over the furniture from a blind child. Maybe that blind child manages to manouvre around the place sometimes without falling over, so she should be able to manage all the time, even if you've just rearranged the furniture.
Sorry, that's not how it works.
You need to keep remembering - your child is not normal. His brain is wired differently and he needs to learn a different way.
Maybe a better way for you to think about him in this, is to picture him as a Martian, a creature from another civilisation. He can speak your language but that's about it. Everything is alien to him and he has a great deal of difficulty understanding local customs. He is highly intelligent and learns very fast in some areas, but other issues are difficult for him to grasp because the differences which seem subtle to you, seem so very different and complicated to him.
Now stop and think about how you have interacted with him. When you end up yelling at each other, you are teaching him that this is how to communicate. He probably cannot comprehend the subtle status difference between adult & child, parent & offspring, teacher & student. Instead it's easier for him to simply use you as his model. And one thing you can't do with your alien from Mars, is give him the "do as I say, don't do as I do" routine.
Interesting that he has said to you things like, "it was a promise, not a threat," and "don't embarrass me again." I strongly suspect that you yourself have taught him these phrases. So when you hear them, please remember that he is using them NOT the way you did (in other words, he's imitating you because he needs to, he's not doing it to mock you). Now I'm not critical of you for saying those things - crikey, I say them myself! But you WILL hear your own words coming back at you. Sometimes (when you look back years later) it can be amusing. But at the time it can be frustrating.
Thinking back to the evening and the mattress protector - if this had been any other kid, it wouldn't have been an issue. But your son 'knows' that the mattress protector is important and also worried about its absence. with both of you tired, it just was a recipe for disaster. And there will still be disasters, this does take time.
Now you wanted alternative scenarios, so here is what I suggest.
When he first began to ramp up because the mattress protector wasn't there, you say, "whoa! It's OK. We have two choices. Slow, take a deep breath and listen to them. We could go without for tonight because the plastic sheet is in place. Or we could go back to the laundry and get the clean mattress protector. It is there, it will only take a minute. So what would you like to do?"
You give him the choice. If he is too concerned about doing without the mattress protector, it is still less hassle to go get it (or take him to go get it together) than to let things get out of hand. If either of you ends up yelling it's a time waster as well as an energy waster. You use less energy going to get the mattress protector than you do arguing over it. Don't give him bad labels (such as lazy, good-for-nothing, difficult, bad) because it ramps up his anxiety. Your aim is to keep him calm. In doing this, you are laying the ground work for him to learn to keep himself calm.
YOu are right to not want to "be at his beck and call and jump when he says" (or what you said). But there are better ways. If you feel he's simply making excuses about it being "too hard" because he wants to get back to his video game, then make it clear (gently) that if YOU have to go get the mattress protector, he needs to come along too. "So you can see where it is, because you need to learn how to work with me."
Keep pushing the "work with me" and "we'll do it together." Your ultimate aim is for him to learn to do it for himself, but this intermediate stage does seem to take longer with the autistics (including the high-functioning ones). So with the bed - work as a team. Get him to hold one side while you hold the other. Keep the mood as light as you can. If you're tired, say so.
And if he says anything tactless (and crikey, they sure do, constantly!) then handle it with humour. You can even say, "I'm glad that was me you said it to, because I understand. You need to learn to not say things like that to other people, who are less likely to understand."
Treat it as a lesson, always. So he's not getting away with it, but tis is not the same as the average kid being cheeky or deliberately insolent. This is a kid who simply doesn't know the right thing to say. This isn't "attitude" although it so closely resembles it. You need to keep gently reminding him of the right way he should have said or done something. And if it all gets too much, clam up, go silent and walk away. Find yourself somewhere to put yourself where you can get right away from him until you calm down enough to handle him without screaming. I think there should be a market for padded cells for parents like us - our own personal refuge where we can throw things, scream and get it out of our systems, so we can go back and give our kids what they need, instead of what knee-jerk instinct says they should get (which just makes these kids worse, because it give them examples of how NOT to behave).
It's amusing - you asked us for suggested alternatives of things to say to him. But this is what you need to do for him - role-play the alternatives for things he should have said instead. You help him learn in a gentle way, and you will get what you want from him behaviour-wise sooner than you otherwise would.
You can do this. Read the book (Explosive Child) because I think it will help. Your husband needs to read it too, esp being ex-army (so is mine). If he can't read it, you need to explain it to him because you both need to be on the same page to the finest detail. Get him to lurk here or join here, it can help. Mine did this and then joined some time later. So your husband won't be the only male, not by a long shot!
Marg
