Hi i am new to all this, and i am at end of my tether. My son aged 15yrs was diagnosed with High Functioning Autism on 1 August 2006. I have known all his life there was something different about him, yet medical professionals wouldnt help. Once he went into Senior school, things got worse.he refused school, was very down etc etc....finally he was referred to local hospital who took a year to diagnose him..
Proble, i have now is that he is extremely violent, abusive etc....he has caused thousands pounds worth damage to house.......destroyed his bedroom..he sleeps on matress on floor as he used his bed as a weapon.....he now uses other items in his room to throw at anyone who goes near him. Today was last straw....he attacked me!!! Luckily my oldest son was in the house and had to drag him off me. I also have 2 daughters ages 2 and 11......i now fear for their safety as son with autism keeps saying he wishes they were dead......
Any ideas on how to deal with this sort of behaviour......
We have tried routines etc, but son just keeps breaking them.
At the moment he is on the lowest dose of Risperadone (think that how it spelt) but it hasnt done anything to help him.
Any ideas warmly welcome.
Sounds like your son is in a depression and is Bi-Polar as well. My son had gone through this too with angry outburst cursing like a sailor and even destroying things when he was a junior in high school. We ended up putting him on 10mgs of Lexapro to combat the depression and he is on 1500mgs of Depakote to combat the Bi-Polar tendencies. He has been able to come off the Lexapro a couple of years ago.....He is now 20 yrs old and doing very well. He still has to take the Depakote and he tries to control himself when he feels he is losing it. I think there is hope for your son if you can address the issues of the depression and the Bi-Polar. Would get him to doctor as soon as possible.
Thank you so much for that. Today is day 4 of violence. He has destroyed 2 doors totally today, and threatened ( to stab) my oldest son. I telephone my sons social worker and they have sent a Crisis Intervention Officer round to see us. He has just taken my son out to play snooker. It feels like he is being given priveleges for his actions.. The hospital are agreeing to a meeting next week (too long), to discuss my son further. When he violent at home, there is no help to protect us from him.....it scares me what he is going to do next
I just think he needs to be on some different medication and counseling needs to put in to place. My thoughts and prayers are with ya hon! I truly hope you find a quick solution to this unsafe situation.
Can you restrain him?my son was like for several years, I think it was due to puberty, he beat me up every chance he got, he grabbed a butcher knife and lunged at me and tried to stab me, I had no choice I had to defend my self and my daughter, once I did he realized that now I fight back,the violence slowed down because I got sick of it tired of him punching me in the face tired of broken bones I couldn't take it anymore he was 250 and 6 feet at the time police would come out only for a few minutes noone would help me during that time he had several med changes and when he turned 16 it stopped,he is 18 now and very sweet, he wouldn't hurt a fly now and he is still living at home, he is on depakote 500 in am and 1000 at night lamictal 200 mg twice a day, seroquel 300 mg am and pm and remeron for sleep,he too was also dx. with bipolar, is there any angencies that can help you with him to offer support? good luck.
ps. my son is also high functioning autism, but do keep in mind you have to make sure he doesn't hurt the other kids my son would hit my daughter when i wasn't looking I had to move her in with my parents to keep her safe.
Boy, do I feel your pain. My son is 14 now high functioning and verbal and has been violent since he was 6 years old. His attack of choice then was bitting (ouch- I got the scars to prove it!). After changing schools several times he finally stabilized in a 3-5th grade class with an excellent teacher. Then he started Jr. High and it was a nightmare for us. He got restrained brutally several times and it was probably the worst school year of his life. He started a different school the next year and it started all over. He got restrained so bad one time that he attacked me when I picked him up and pulled out a large clump of my hair out of my head and broke my eye glasses. Finally, I got him in a non public school that specializes in behavior management. He is able to now stop himself, not at 100% but can verbalize to me that he wants to attack or hurt someone. He is on 500mg Depakote, 20mg prozac and 200mg sequoel. It seems as he gets older he is "getting" that being violent will only make things worst. He's still not as tall as me yet but is gaining. His Dad is 6ft so he is fearful of him. It seems that once he hit puberty and those hormones went wild he got violent again. I am thankful for the school intervention and the skills he has been learning. But it can still be trying at times. Sometimes, I never know when he will go off. You think you see the signs and them boom they go off. We try to encourage him to verbalize his frustrations and he will tell me "when things bother him" so we can remove him from a situation. All we can do as parents and caregivers is try to understand and teach our kids the skills to recognize when they are going to lose it. But sometimes it is so hard.
I think you need to get him out of the house and into a hospital where they can evaluate his needs. he's dangerous to you and the rest of your family, not to mention your walls and doors.....
I know he's your son and you love him, but he's out of control and you need to protect your other children.
My son is seven years old son has autism as well as uncontrolled absent seizures. Over time he has become increasing agressive. In the last two months he have been hitting and kicking students at school; and just two days ago punched a para and gave her a black eye. The school has now reduced his day down to only 3 hours.
He is on seroquel and his psychiatrist increased his dosage to 100mg a day for the aggression (seroquel is similar to risperdal; but my son had bad side effects to that). It is extremely stressfull as we have four kids as well and I do not want to see any of them get hurt. But I have to look our for my normal functioning children as he gets older. If the aggression gets out of hand we will not be able to keep him here at home as we have other little kids.
But...we are also currently struggling to find the right treatment to get his seizures controlled as well. Just be careful so that you or your children do not get hurt. Maybe his meds need increased to be effective???
~Summer~
Last edited by sdgarcia83; 10-27-2006 at 03:58 PM.
hi i'm the aunt of an aggressive autisic nephew. as long as i've known about autism i've tried with some success redirecting my nephew's attention to want to do something else i.e. listening to a favorite song, eating something liked, reading a favorite book. If all else failed i'd rock him in my arms and sing to him..Let me know if these help
My youngest son was thought to have autism but he didn't. He had all of the classic signs. He has schizophrenia. He is not violent. My older son with epilepsy and schizophrenia is the violent one. He would put holes in the wall when he was growing up and throw favorite books of mine away. No telling what else he did that I did not know about, besides the fact that he tried to take a knife to me. I talked calmly to him and he gave the knife to me.
That is when he started going to phospitals. They did not believe me when I told them how he behaved. Then when he would behave that way in front of the doctor I always got an apology. Now that he is an adult, he wants to move in with us, but he tells his father, not me, that he wants to burn down the house. He does not live with us and he never will. He might not only burn down the house but he might also kill us. He is on medicine and lives in a different town where they have the facilities he needs to take care of him.
I do not know if this is depressing or helpful, but it is the truth. Do not ever keep a violent child like that in your home. It is in the news here quite often of violently aggressive children and adults killing their parents.
Yes, I am back soon because I forgot to tell you all of the positive things I did for my violent son. When he was first going to school, the school, was not too crazy to teach him. I talked to the teachers and they told me that he did not need to read to graduate from High School. I taught him and my other children how to read, that was one way of redirecting all of them from TV. I taught them 4 hours a day after they came home from school. Some people thought that was too much, but they did learn reading writing and math. They still thank me for it today. I also taught my sons and daughter to cook. What! teach sons to cook. Yes! Sons are usually living on their own before they get married or their wife gets sick and sons need to cook.
I also took them to get togethers with friends. I wanted them to have recreation and learn to interact with other people. They always behaved better with other people. My friends knew of their health problems, but always treated them as normal, like they did me. My husband was self-employed for a while and he taught all of my children to work.
Thank you for listening. I hope this has been a help.
Hi everyone, my son who is 24 years old with fragile x syndrome also was starting to get very aggressive when he was 16. He still has his moments now. He was taking risperdal for years and I thought it wasnt working as well as it had in the beginning asked his doctor to try something different. Well first he put him on depakote and it seemed to make his aggresson worse, so then the doc said that he needeed a higher dosage so he increased it. It made his behavors even worse. So then he tried him on the seroquel and behovoirscontinued to get worse,so he changed the seroquel to a higher dosage. Well his behavoirs were so bad that summer that he ended up with only his mattrice on the floor to sleep on. He also would just wake up mad for no reason and start throwing things. I had to take everything out of his room to.I relized that his behavoirs were not as bad on the risperdal and he went back on it. Things got better and I put all of his things back in his room. I wish we had never tried the seroquel and the depakote, because they seemed to make him more angry. In the past few years he has also been on abilify. It really helped with his aggresseiveness, but it made him have tremors in his hands. He had a sezuire this year for different reasons and they put him on diliantin. It effects him the same as the seroquel and depakote. Ive talked them into taking him off that.
If he grabbed a knife and tried to stab you then he could end up killing you while you sleep and stabbing your daughters in their sleep. I say get him out of the house and into some sort of mental hospital. If you dont believe me go to Yahoo and look up Symptons of a Psycho Killer.
I would have him put into a Mental Hospital, right away. You don't want to risk your life or your childrens lifes, you said it yourself, your oldest son had to pull him off of you, what would happen if no one was around. Every heard of the Amityville horror?
Talk to your oldest son and see what he thinks about a Mental Hospital.
I do not understand The Police not doing anything after an attempted murder, sounds like a joke.
This is only my opinion, but instead of putting him in a mental hospital, maybe you might put the knives or other dangerous items that he might use to harm you and your family in a locked up drawer. I have used alot of things to child proof our home when my son was smaller, as if Im sure you have. Ive worked in homes for people with mental disabilities and that is one of the first saftey rules, to keep all knives and sharp items in a locked drawer.
Im sorry that I didnt read the post from the beginning. I mostly was responding to the post before mine about the mental hospital. I just dont think that its good to have them living in a mental hospital. Ive worked in them before and they can pick up alot of negetive behaviors from others. As I stated in one of my last posts my son always seems to have extremly aggressive behaviors when he has ben put on seziure meds. Sometimes the meds can cause the moodiness and aggressiveness. One med we have tried is abilfy. It worked really well with him except he had hand tremors bad. All of our children are different and what works for one may not work for another. I wish you good luck with your son. It is so very hard for us at times as parents. cj
Rather than considering permanent lockup in a "mental hospital," -- at least at this time, -- it might be reasonable to consider the possibility of a short stay at an inpatient facility, to get meds stabilized. That would be my preference -- with hopes of having my son back in a week or so.
It does seem like the outpatient path is creating a lot of risk for you & for your family. Locking up knives etc. as much as you can is not unreasonable, however many of our kids are bright & just about anything -- including their own bodies -- can be used as a weapon. The trauma & insecurity of other family members justifies considering all options available.
You do know that you can call 911 & have him restrained at any time, right? For better or worse, that may put him into the ER & force the supervising docs to reconsider their current line of treatment.
my son is also 15yrs and is very violent and also i have 2 youger children and like you he has the very same problems all i can say is your not alone its very hard ,do what i do take one day at a time, also why not try to go on a break away course i am going in a few weeks dont know if its any good what it is suppost to be is, train you how to break free from the person who is being violent with out harming them or yourself the social services should be able to tell you where the classes are ,
when the violents started happening i thought i was the only with this problem so thankyou for makeing me feel that i am not alone
and good luckxx
my son is extremely violent 
Re: my son is extremely violent 
hi i'm the aunt of an aggressive autisic nephew. as long as i've known about autism i've tried with some success redirecting my nephew's attention to want to do something else i.e. listening to a favorite song, eating something liked, reading a favorite book. If all else failed i'd rock him in my arms and sing to him..Let me know if these help
