ASD and responsibility-taking for wrongs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you model taking responsibility? Do you overreact to small issues? My DS with ASD is a big apologizer but that’s probably because I always apologize when I’m wrong. No person (kid, adult, NT or ND) is going to react well to being forced to apologize or to take the blame for mistakes that is out of proportion to what actually happened. And sometimes people are harder on kids on the spectrum because they put them more under the microscope.

Not responding to a “small issue” escalates it. Deal with and take responsibility, large or small.

Too often the small issue is lied about, then happens again, is lied about, an argument ensures; the lying and omitting get double downed on, and now it’s a two issues.

If you bring down the hammer disproportionately then the kid will learn to avoid admitting they are wrong. True for NT and ND kids.

You already said that.

Why don’t you give some examples of what to do and say in the moment.

Because if you ignore everything going on at the habits and manners level, you will raise a monster.

if you pounce and shame the child based on not performing apologies correctly, that is actually a recipe for creating a monster. my strong suspicion is that you are not modeling appropriate apologies and have excessive expectations for what an apology or taking responsibility should look like.

anyway, what it looks like is that if I knock over my kid’s toy I say “sorry, let me pick that up for you.” If he spills his milk, I say “Let’s clean that up” and help him do it. if I lose my temper I sincerely apologize when I calm down. if he does, he does the same. this latter I sincerely believe he does because he sees me do it and mean it. I don’t demand an apology from him.

if he’s just saying things like “mom, it wasn’t my fault I broke that - it was cheap” I just ingnore it and ask him to pick up the pieces. I don’t demand he verbalize something.

[Anonymous]

Do you think he feels remorse or is it a communication issue? In the moment, my middle schooler gets swamped with anxiety and if pushed will freeze or eventually get angry. But he definitely feels bad and will initiate apologies once he’s recovered from the initial attack (which is definitely how his body’s fight or flight response interprets it). We have tried to give him scripting on how to apologize I. The moment so it doesn’t require brain power he doesn’t have. We’ve also talked to his teachers about good ways to approach him.

But honestly, there are teachers that shame and overpolice kids on the spectrum, so the way you described it does make me a little uncomfortable that might be going on here.

My kid also has issues being responsible for all of his homework, etc. but that is an executive function issue and doesn’t have anything to do with apologizing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you model taking responsibility? Do you overreact to small issues? My DS with ASD is a big apologizer but that’s probably because I always apologize when I’m wrong. No person (kid, adult, NT or ND) is going to react well to being forced to apologize or to take the blame for mistakes that is out of proportion to what actually happened. And sometimes people are harder on kids on the spectrum because they put them more under the microscope.

Not responding to a “small issue” escalates it. Deal with and take responsibility, large or small.

Too often the small issue is lied about, then happens again, is lied about, an argument ensures; the lying and omitting get double downed on, and now it’s a two issues.

If you bring down the hammer disproportionately then the kid will learn to avoid admitting they are wrong. True for NT and ND kids.

You already said that.

Why don’t you give some examples of what to do and say in the moment.

Because if you ignore everything going on at the habits and manners level, you will raise a monster.

if you pounce and shame the child based on not performing apologies correctly, that is actually a recipe for creating a monster. my strong suspicion is that you are not modeling appropriate apologies and have excessive expectations for what an apology or taking responsibility should look like.

anyway, what it looks like is that if I knock over my kid’s toy I say “sorry, let me pick that up for you.” If he spills his milk, I say “Let’s clean that up” and help him do it. if I lose my temper I sincerely apologize when I calm down. if he does, he does the same. this latter I sincerely believe he does because he sees me do it and mean it. I don’t demand an apology from him.

if he’s just saying things like “mom, it wasn’t my fault I broke that - it was cheap” I just ingnore it and ask him to pick up the pieces. I don’t demand he verbalize something.

OP here. This is exactly the problem we're trying to deal with - this is the type of response that he does best with. The school seems to be pushing it more and wanting him to show remorse.

He also has anxiety, and as one of the PPs pointed out, I think there's a lot of shame and embarrassment related to the anxiety that comes up when he makes a mistake.

We do model it at home, but part of the ASD diagnosis we've experienced is that he does not just "pick things up" from the social environment without explicit instruction and practice. For example, we saw "please" and "thank you" for many things, and my NT kid picked it up as a toddler, while my ASD kid did not.

I'm looking for help in how to help with the explicit instruction part without triggering the anxiety and defensiveness part. And also that I sort of doubt the school will be able to do this super well on the fly, so how to get them to back off enough that if they can't be where the instruction happens, then they at least won't make it worse for him by making him feel under attack there so he can't learn it outside of school.

[Anonymous]

This school sounds nuts to me. The reality is that plenty of NT 12 year olds aren’t particularly remorseful and try to blame someone/something else if they break something, bump into someonr, etc. No one can “make someone” feel something in their heart of hearts — not can they read someone’s mind.

Does this school have experience with SN? Are they some kind of Christian school that thinks they have some kind of superiority in the remorseful department? Is your kid actually purposefully injuring people or breaking objects? I would be side eyeing the heck out of these people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you model taking responsibility? Do you overreact to small issues? My DS with ASD is a big apologizer but that’s probably because I always apologize when I’m wrong. No person (kid, adult, NT or ND) is going to react well to being forced to apologize or to take the blame for mistakes that is out of proportion to what actually happened. And sometimes people are harder on kids on the spectrum because they put them more under the microscope.

Not responding to a “small issue” escalates it. Deal with and take responsibility, large or small.

Too often the small issue is lied about, then happens again, is lied about, an argument ensures; the lying and omitting get double downed on, and now it’s a two issues.

If you bring down the hammer disproportionately then the kid will learn to avoid admitting they are wrong. True for NT and ND kids.

You already said that.

Why don’t you give some examples of what to do and say in the moment.

Because if you ignore everything going on at the habits and manners level, you will raise a monster.

if you pounce and shame the child based on not performing apologies correctly, that is actually a recipe for creating a monster. my strong suspicion is that you are not modeling appropriate apologies and have excessive expectations for what an apology or taking responsibility should look like.

anyway, what it looks like is that if I knock over my kid’s toy I say “sorry, let me pick that up for you.” If he spills his milk, I say “Let’s clean that up” and help him do it. if I lose my temper I sincerely apologize when I calm down. if he does, he does the same. this latter I sincerely believe he does because he sees me do it and mean it. I don’t demand an apology from him.

if he’s just saying things like “mom, it wasn’t my fault I broke that - it was cheap” I just ingnore it and ask him to pick up the pieces. I don’t demand he verbalize something.

OP here. This is exactly the problem we're trying to deal with - this is the type of response that he does best with. The school seems to be pushing it more and wanting him to show remorse.

He also has anxiety, and as one of the PPs pointed out, I think there's a lot of shame and embarrassment related to the anxiety that comes up when he makes a mistake.

We do model it at home, but part of the ASD diagnosis we've experienced is that he does not just "pick things up" from the social environment without explicit instruction and practice. For example, we saw "please" and "thank you" for many things, and my NT kid picked it up as a toddler, while my ASD kid did not.

I'm looking for help in how to help with the explicit instruction part without triggering the anxiety and defensiveness part. And also that I sort of doubt the school will be able to do this super well on the fly, so how to get them to back off enough that if they can't be where the instruction happens, then they at least won't make it worse for him by making him feel under attack there so he can't learn it outside of school.

I would honestly ignore the school on this point. It’s not really appropriate unless it’s somehow disruptive. If they care, then they can provide some pragmatic speech therapy. He’s on the autism spectrum- his reactions are often not going to look like what you expect, and sometimes that makes teachers or admins mad because they think the kid is being deliberately disrespectful. So unless they are pointing this out as a way to talk about what they are going to do to support his pragmatics, miss me with that unhelpful advice.

If the school really is bringing down the hammer then you can call a meeting where you discuss in detail what’s happening. My kid had a lot of behavioral issues earlier and certain admins and teachers would make it much worse when their immediate reaction was to try to force an apology or their expectation was that he would respond the way an NT kid would. So we had to talk it through that they were never going to see the reaction they wanted emotionally and that we needed to focus on him stopping the behavior for now, not freaking out about how he “didn’t even say he was sorry!!”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This school sounds nuts to me. The reality is that plenty of NT 12 year olds aren’t particularly remorseful and try to blame someone/something else if they break something, bump into someonr, etc. No one can “make someone” feel something in their heart of hearts — not can they read someone’s mind.

Does this school have experience with SN? Are they some kind of Christian school that thinks they have some kind of superiority in the remorseful department? Is your kid actually purposefully injuring people or breaking objects? I would be side eyeing the heck out of these people.

I agree. I want to know more about the incidents that are leading to this response from the school.