Your child might bang their head on the floor when you tell them that it’s time to put away the train set before dinner.
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Working out what your autistic child is trying to tell you with self-injurious behaviour can help you decide how to manage it.įor example, your child might find it hard to switch from one activity to another. Managing self-injurious behaviour in autistic children and teenagers Positive behaviour support is always preferable to physical options. Physical restraint can be dangerous to both you and your child, and can often increase your child’s anxiety and make the situation worse. If you find you have to use physical restraint when your child has an aggressive outburst, speak with your child’s paediatrician or a behavioural therapist about other options. Seek help if you need to use physical restraint For example, you might have a picture of a quiet place in your home that your child can go to. Visual cues can help in these situations. You might also need to get other people to move out of the way for safety. A quiet enclosed space outside might be an option. Aim for short phrases or even just a couple of words – for example, ‘Sit down’ rather than ‘Lachlan, come over here and sit down’.įor everyone’s safety, make sure your child isn’t close to anything that could be harmful – for example, shelves that could fall over or glass objects. So it can help if you don’t say too much. It’s hard to process what someone else is saying when you’re feeling stressed, and this is especially true for autistic children, who can have trouble understanding language.
By managing your own feelings and staying calm and quiet, you won’t add your emotions to the mix.ĭuring an outburst your child will be feeling very stressed.
Most aggressive outbursts happen because your child has feelings building up and can’t communicate them. This is the first and most important thing. So it’s important for you to have some strategies to deal with the aggressive behaviour when it happens. You probably can’t prevent every outburst from your autistic child. Dealing with aggressive outbursts from autistic children and teenagers
Our article on managing challenging behaviour in autistic children explains how to do this. One way to manage your child’s aggressive behaviour is by changing the triggers for the behaviour. It can be helpful to ask yourself, ‘Is my child trying to tell me something?’ For example, if your child doesn’t like corn flakes but can’t tell you, your child might hit you as a way of saying ‘Take it away, I don’t want it!’ When children can’t express feelings or ask for what they need or want, they might use aggressive behaviour to communicate. Understanding how well your child can communicate is also a key step in finding out what’s causing the aggressive behaviour. Try keeping a diary of the behaviour for 1-2 weeks, noting what happens before and after the behaviour. You can do this by looking at what’s triggering the behaviour and what your child is getting out of it. If you understand what causes your autistic child’s self-injurious and aggressive behaviour, you can help your child learn to manage the behaviour. Understanding aggressive behaviour in autistic children and teenagers If your child is ever in immediate or life-threatening danger, call emergency services on 000 straight away.
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