Nearly 5 Year Old with Aspergers Lets Others Hurt Him

Updated on June 17, 2010
J.K. asks from Berwyn, IL
4 answers

My son is nearly five and has very high functioning Aspergers. He is very very verbal, doesn't have much in the way of sensory issues, and communicates fairly well. Problem is, if someone else hurts him, he doesn't protest or ask for help. 2 examples - yesterday, his baby brother got on top of him and was pulling his hair. My older one was trying to roll up like a turtle to escape, but didn't say "stop" or "help" or even "ow". #2 - We were at a friends house, and they have a boy about a year older than him. I walked into a room to find my son laying on his back on the floor and the other boy was sitting on his forehead. Again, he didn't try to get away or call for help. About an hour after that one, he had a MAJOR meltdown; I assume that had something to do with it.

Anyway, so obviously this is dangerous for him. We are doing some role playing with him, and really need to step it up. I'm wondering, have any of you had the same issue with your child? Did he/she develop better communication regarding being hurt? Any other suggestions?

He just started attending a social skills/speech therapy group so hopefully that will help a lot.

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A.C.

answers from Cincinnati on

hi-
have you tried either social stories or talking about "sticking up” for himself?

there is a great website
http://thegraycenter.org/bookstore?page=shop.product_deta...
(e.g. books: “Siblings: You're Stuck with Each Other So Stick Together”; books on bullies (http://thegraycenter.org/bookstore?page=shop.browse&c...)
Another great book (may need to modify it's for 7-9 yr olds):
http://www.amazon.com/Stick-Up-Yourself-Personal-Self-Est...

good luck!

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M.R.

answers from Columbus on

Social stories and role playing will be a good theraputic tool, but it will take a lot more than therapy for him to generalize this to novel situations. If he has a basic languge issue with categorization skills, he may not recognize what is the same about the incidents, even though it seems obvious to those of use with this language-concept process in tact. It is one of the most frustrating things about parenting a high functioning child with asperger, some of them just do not see simulatities between situations and have great difficulty in using what they know in only very slightly differnet situations. All you can do is to get him more langauge therapy, focus on social stories, and enrol him in a socail skills class with the same focus, and then supervise him more than you would a typical kid his age. This is a continued issue for our 18 year old, even today. The issuse is categorization and generalization.

M.

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J.Y.

answers from Chicago on

My 4 year old son who has some special needs was like that. I spent, and still spend, a lot of time role-playing different situations with him. I would tell him exactly what to say and do in that situation. At first he would only react if in the exact situations we role-played as he is very concrete in his thinking. Now, he seems to understand a little more about being able to defend himself and will at least cry or complain when someone is hurting him. I know my son needs a lot of repitition to learn what to do in social situation, good or bad. Keep talking and playing with him. Hopefully he will learn to be comfortable in expressing himself in those situation. Good luck!

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A.B.

answers from Chicago on

Sounds like we are in a very similar situation. I have a very high functioning, but on the spectrum, 8 year old boy whose has a brother 2 years younger and a sister 6 years younger. I am responding to both your post here. Don't worry about the pop culture. It will come. Your five year old sounds exactly like my son when he was five. We got the diagnosis around five and did a lot of early intervention with the school district. The progress has been amazing. Definitely keep him in speech and try to get him in a social skills group. It will help. As someone else said, even as these kids get older, they will need you more to navigate the social scene and how to react. By the way, my 8 year old now defends himself against his brother!

We kept him in sports, even though he was not very coordinated, because he liked to be around the other kids. It has paid off in that this year (2nd grade) he loves being on the team, gets regular exercise and can relate to many different kids because he knows alot about sports. (When he was five he was totally into space and dinosaurs.)

The meltdowns will continue. My child is wonderful at school and other people's houses and saves his meltdowns for us. It is their way of letting go. I have learned that the best thing I can do is to stay even tempered and just ask questions. I found that having a couple of good friends over frequently and monitoring the playdates also helped when he was that age.

Let me know if you have any other issues you want to talk about.

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