Expert: James Michael Roan - 9/20/2007

Question
My 7-yr-old son is high-functioning with language, in a second grade regular classroom, doing well academically.  The issue is that he is getting aggressive in school.  He has started (over the past few weeks) hitting not only kids once in a while, but also his aide, and made a swat at his teacher as if he would hit her.  He has been doing the same thing at home with his father and I.  He does this when he gets mad at a request or response he is not happy with.  Time-outs of course will not work at school (occasionally at home).  He seems to get even more angry going over the rules.  Social stories are not getting the idea through to him - he understands he's behaving poorly, he's acting like a teenager - like he doesn't care!  We just don't have any good ideas on how to approach this behavior/attitude.  What happened to my happy-go-lucky little boy?

Answer
Hi Kim;

This is all too common for boys with AS around this age. It seems as if it's a developmental stage they have to work through. There is no quick fix or formula.

Here are some of the sources for their behavior:

1. Many kids with AS are unable to attenuate sensory and social stimuli. As result, they get wound up so tight that anything sets them off.

2. They have a concrete thinking style which fosters a need and demand for sameness especially in adherence "by others" to the rules. Teachers are often a source of problems here because although they demand rule adherence from their students, they are all too often breaking the rules themselves, which frustrates and angers kids with AS.

3. Kids with AS at this age also attribute "intentionality" to the behavior of others and lash out when another child bumps into them or when an aide or teacher fail to live up to perceived promises.

It is really this concrete thinking style that interferes with their academics (writing and social studies) and social situations, which by definition are political and situational rather than predictable and the same from day to day.

There is hope! Kids with AS are able to somehow learn that there is unpredictability in their schedule and that it is o.k. to some degree. Ask the occupational therapist at your school about a self-regulation program called: "How does your engine run?" This helps them to begin to learn about internal signals indicating their arousal level is increasing and how to tell a responsible adult so that they can bring themselves down to a manageable arousal state.

Finally, inherent to AS is a limited sense of the "other" and social thinking, or empathy if you will. They rarely consider the feelings of others because they are unaware that others have them. This too will develop to a limited degree as adults work to teach them about others and their feelings, etc.

The next few years will be the most difficult and should improve from there out. I encourage you to go to Michelle Garcia-Winner's website: www.socialthinking.com and look at her materials for teaching social thinking. Good luck.

Kind regards,
James