How much anger/aggression typical for 6yo?

[Still_Learning]

DS turned 6 in August. He was diagnosed with Asperger's back in March. We've been really struggling with some of his behaviors over the last year. From age one until five he was sweet, mellow, pleasant and charming. For a bit over a year now things have been drastically different. He's irritable and goes from zero to screaming at me in 1 second. The best word I can think t describe his is "surly".

We are all walking on eggshells, but he gets set off by unpredictable things. I'm tired of being yelled at and even hit and kicked.

How much of this is typical for his age group?

I'm not sure where to turn, I feel like I've completely failed as a mother.

[Lisa1970]

This is typical with kids with aspergers.

I am debating today if we should go on a field trip. DS8 has pdd-nos and he can fly off the handle and have a meltdown in a second. We send him to his room when he does this and he has learned that he must go to his room. We live in an area where wait lists for therapies and such are years long. We have been waiting since 2008 for hippotherapy. We started on the waiting list for OT and such in June and looks like he will hopefully get in by January. The whole diagnosis process took about a year because of wait lists. We have been on a waiting list for 2 different behavioral health places since June too. One place actually still hasn't even moved us up to the actual wait list due to the current wait list being too long. The other now has us set up for an intake interview, where they will decide IF they want to accept us, in November.

So for now, we just plan our days around quick escapes to going home.

I am very sorry about what you have going on. I wish I could be more encouraging. But I am sitting in the "my child has autism spectrum disorder and there is nothing for him" camp. My dh and I are considering moving to a different state or even country because we keep reading about other states where kids have things like therapy, and sensory integration therapies and all sorts of things.

[Lisa1970]

Nope, he attacked his brother while I typed my response to you, so we won't be going anywhere today...again.

[briesberry]

I could have written your email one year ago. The violence in our house was extreme, and our daughter was only three-going-on-four. None of the professionals would help us - mostly they told us she had a difficult temperament and we would have to learn to deal with it. I was convinced that she had Asperger's but no one would diagnosis her at such a young age.

It was several months before I found something that could help, and by then our daughter was four years old. One day I stumbled upon Collaborative Problem Solving, and it is the only way we brought sanity back to our lives and our house. It was something of a challenge to implement with a four year old, but even so we could tell it was helping, and the progress we saw convinced us to keep going with it.

CPS has given us a way to find out what is bothering our daughter and how to find realistic, lasting solutions for those problems. It has taught her to communicate what she's feeling and what she needs and to look for a solution rather than lashing out. She still has problems in other realms, but life is much more manageable and the violence is pretty much gone.

You can get an overview at livesinthebalance.org. I bought the book (I think the title is "The Explosive Child") and it guided us in implementing CPS. Take a look and see if it might help your family too.

[pregnant@40]

My child doesn't have Asperger's, but yes, my 6yo has started to exhibit surly behavior this year for the first time ever. I can relate to walking on eggshells, the rapid temper, physical outbursts, etc....My friends report that it's happening in thier kids, too. All of them started school this year, so perhaps that has something to do with it. I also have read a developmental book that describes how 6yo's can become really defiant, roll their eyeballs, yell, etc... but that things start to calm down around 6.5 yo. My husband and I have had to adjust and employ new parenting techniques, and it must be working, for things are getting better now. He has seemed to grow up a bit, so maybe surliness is part of the growing pains.

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edit: pulling a few quotes out of "Your Six Year Old, Loving and Defiant" by Ames to describe what they say about a typical 6yo:

"bipolarity is the name of the game, seems to live at opposite extremes...entirely different than five....six is a hard age to be...frequent reversals of letters and numbers....extremely ambivalent....stubborn....especially embroiled with his mother; whenever things go wrong, they take things out on her....the child is now the center of his own universe....wants to be first and best, have the most of everything, win...six is beginning to separate from his mother, and in his typical opposite-extreme way, one minute he says he loves his mother and the next minute he may say he hates her...behavior takes a marked turn for the worse in many directions...may start crying about everything....consistently refuses to "mind"....defiant, won't do as told....can be violent, loud, demanding, and naughty....demanding and difficult....but still relatively immature, extremely insecure, anxious to be loved and praised...cannot bear to lose or hear criticism....very vulnerable and sensitive emotionally.....his enthusiasm is contagious, when happy he dances for joy...."

Edited by pregnant@40 - 12/10/10 at 1:31am

[Lollybrat]

I have a 6 year old boy with high-fucntioning autism and we have been dealing with his anger and aggression for some time. It's a common problem for kids with Autism Spectrum Disorders, which includes Aspergers.

Many kids with ASD have a hard time identifying their emotions. Others can name their emotions, but cannot regulate them: they experience the emotion as eaither "on" of "off". Like you said, they can go from 0 to screaming in no time flat. My DS has both problems. So we have been working on helping him recognize and name his emtions, as well as realize that emotion come in different intensities. I bought him this book:

My Book Full of Feelings: How to Control and React to the Size of Your Emotions http://www.amazon.com/My-Book-Full-Feelings-Emotions/dp/1931282838/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1291988823&sr=8-1 

It teaches about 6 emotions (happy, sad, calm, angry, frustrated, worried) and 3 sizes/intensities (little, medium, big). The book has dry-erase pages where you and your child identify things that trigger each emotion (in each size) and also write down what your child can do when he experiences these emotions. We've been working on this for a while, but it has really been helping DS. He refers to his book a lot, both to understadn what he is feeling and to remember his coping strategies. He is beginning to understand that it is OK to have these feelings, but not OK to act certain ways because of them. It's a lonmg on-going process for DS to learn this things, but we see him making progress.