What are some ways to make hanging out with an autistic preschooler less stressful?

I have an autistic almost 7-year-old grandnephew, and it can be very trying, even for those who love them the most.

His voice is naturally high-pitched and often he needs to speak very loudly or shriek. Melt-downs are inexplicable and at random; in our family they are resolved only by his mom, dad or grandmother physically removing him and relocating him to an area that he knows is his quiet spot, where no one will bug him or take his toys. It is specially designed for him when he visits his grandmother.

His 9 year old and 3 year old brothers can also trigger a tantrum, even when they are doing what they normally do together.

At the moment, sadly, there are no answers.

I love your good intentions but I would probably not let your daughter spend time with him. Does her son go to some sort of school or group and is he getting the support offered by social services? He should be getting daily behavioral therapy, occupational therapy, and physical therapy, and the mom should be provided both support and resources.

Can you spend a little time with her without your little girl? LIfe for these parents is very difficult.

We have a similar situation with a neighbor. I don’t want to go into detail that would make it possible for people to identify me / the situation if they found this on the internet – but will suffice it to say that I second @gailcalled‘s opinion. Spend time with the mom – but don’t expect to try to get the kids to play together.

Based on what we experienced, I’d worry a lot less about your daughter getting “used to” the behavior or thinking his outbursts are acceptable behavior—and much more about her feeling uncomfortable/unsafe playing with him.
At ages 3 and 4 she isn’t going to understand why he’s upset/having a tantrum..and toddlers aren’t known for their empathy, which, ultimately is what she’ll need to try to play with him and accept his unpredictable reactions.

Also, it’s a case-by-case situation..some kids with Aspergers / Autism do not have these kind of meltdowns or have different issues—our son has another friend who Aspergers but it manifests primarily with tics / obsessions on particular topics. Right now he’s stuck on making farting noises—which is honestly perfect 3rd grader humor! We have no concerns with having this friend over for playdates & birthday parties – he doesn’t have meltdowns or ever hurt other kids.

When I was a little girl I used to play with a boy who had downs syndrome. I didn’t even know he was “different” until my mom pointed out to me he looked different. He sometimes become frustrated or lost control of his emotions, and that just meant it was time for me to leave. Kids get upset all the time. As long as your daughter is not in danger and not afraid I don’t think I would be too concerned. Hopefully, the boy will get out of the easily triggered tantrum phase soon, even having autism. As she gets older you may be able to explain it to her if she has questions. However, if you feel the situation is having a negative impact on your daughter, you should have no guilt about not allowing interaction between the children.

What I wonder is when he freaked out about her washing her hands, what did his mother do? Is she doing anything to interviene or calm him down? From what I understand autistic children need routine, so I guess since washing hands at the “wrong” time is a break in routine it is hard for him to handle.

Another thought is to make sure the autistic boy has the toys he likes best whether at your house or his.

He’s just been recently diagnosed. His mom sometimes tells him to take a deep breath and calm down, but it makes me think of someone trying to tell a thunderstorm to be quiet. She’ll try to talk to him a little bit and then she’ll give up and pretend to ignore the situation. Sometimes she’ll comment “He’s so much better since he’s been going to therapy!” Which may be true because I stopped seeing her for almost a year because his behavior was so out of control. And now I can tolerate him in short stints.

I don’t know what sort of services he’s getting because she doesn’t talk much about it. I don’t want to poke and pry but I am curious.

@gailcalled – I think his voice is the same way as your grandnephew. That’s why the voice doesn’t bother me too much. He has a really high pitched voice and talks way too loud.

@geeky_mama – I don’t know why I don’t worry about him hurting her. I am sort of a hovery mom and this is the sort of thing I SHOULD worry about, but I don’t worry about that. I get a bit surprised my daughter doesn’t seem to care. Once I asked her a question about some activity she was doing that day and she said something like “I colored and ‘Fred’ screamed today!” as if screaming were a totally normal activity one could do while someone else colored.

@JLeslie as I’ve said, his mom isn’t too big on intervening right now. She just said “She can wash her hands. It’s OK. Calm down.” Which just went “Whoooosh” over his head.

@keobooks: Would that people knew how to help autistic kids with their behaviors; stemming (repetitive motions), tantrums, shrieking, and other responses deemed inappropropriate.

it is like the better mousetraps…the world would beat a path to your door if you discovered guaranteed ways to help the kids and their parents. Sometimes one thing works, sometimes another, often nothing.

Does your daughter respond to the little boy’s shrieking? I often have to leave the room when our little guy gets wound up and unable to accept any help.

intervention has a better chance of (using very specific techniques) working if the child is not too wound up and overwrought. Expecting many autistic kids to outgrow their behavior is sadly overly-optimistic.

But every child in this pickle is unique. Still the future is scary for all concerned.

I wonder whether your neighbor knows about the family support organizations available. They have meetings, forums and a ton of information, including all the latest research.

My daughter doesn’t respond AT ALL to his shrieking. Mostly, she goes on doing whatever she was doing. Usually, this means she’s doing her own thing – as she’s more into parallel playing right now. But a few days ago, it was a bit hairy. All the kids (she has an older one too) were talking into a fan and he wanted to sing a song into it. The older one knew to get away. My daughter kept going for the fan. He would wrench the fan away from her and scream at her. She just kept going back and talking into it, which sent him into hysterics. As he kicked and screamed, she stepped over him and started singing into the fan.

It’s like—it doesn’t faze her one bit. Maybe her utter lack of empathy that goes with being a toddler insulates her from it.

Ideally your socialization with the mom & her autistic son would have clear rules and time limits. Since he’s 4, and I’m unclear as to what part of the spectrum he’s on, I’ll guess that emotionally he’s about 18–24mos.

How would you allow your daughter to play with a two year old? Do that.

From about age 3yrs to about age 6yrs, parents of autistic kids are at their wits ends. SPD, Sensory Processing Disorder, is at it’s peak during that time period for most moderate to high functioning kids.

Knowing this, overstimulation is a no. If the mom isn’t setting boundaries (which it sounds like she wasn’t since the kids were possibly over-excited by the fan play), then you’ll need to be the one setting up the times and activities for the play dates.

For now, if you’re willing to socialize with mom & son, help her create his success. Keep the play to a time limit. Have clear expectations for the play time. Know what activities you’ll have the kids do and have them lined up & ready to go.

About this incident & your concerns over your daughter’s possible behavior from it:

”Last night he threw a fit because my daughter wanted to wash her hands after playing in the sandbox. She went into the bathroom and started to wash her hands. He screamed “NO!! YOU WASH YOUR HANDS AFTER YOU GO POTTY!! YOU DIDN’T GO POTTY!!” And he fell to the floor screaming and kicking and crying over this.”

Explain to your daughter that this boy has very strict rules in his head. Not all of the rules are correct. My best guess is that he got in trouble for washing his hands too much, so his mommy may have said something to the extent of “No, no. We wash our hands after potty.” And in turn, he took this to mean, “This is the only time we wash our hands.”

In therapy he will learn how to not enforce his rules on others…..But this will likely happen years from now in social therapy.

For now, you could just let it go, then explain why it happened later on your own to your daughter. If you & she remain calm in front of him when he’s melting down, he should work his way through the meltdown quickly.

I would also explain to your daughter that his brain operates differently than hers (many of us use gaming systems or Mac vs PC to explain the difference). He needs a bit more time processing requests. He also does better when he’s been told and showed all of the rules and boundaries.

Well done for the attempt. I had been living in pretty much full isolation for 10 years with my step son and having to accommodate his behaviour. My husband’s ‘so called’ friends never came over and I was just left to trying to deal with it all when his father would leave for weeks at a time. A few would visit for very short times and then would never come back and one helped out when I first got here, but she stopped calling when it all got too awkward. If they did come over for a coffee, they never brought their kids. It was all too difficult and my step son’s behaviour was too hard to explain to the kids. It got to a point where I never even took him to the grocery store because I could not handle his melt downs, especially because I didn’t speak the language when I first arrived. I would have to go shopping when he was at school or before he arrived and get what ever supplies we needed.
If someone would have come over and just helped out with practical stuff. I couldn’t run the vacuum cleaner when he was there either because he would FREAK. A neighbour helped me write out some phrases in Norwegian phonetically so I could communicate with him on a very basic level, because his parents left me with him for a whole week the first month I got here. It is amazing how small things can mean so much.

We went to the zoo yesterday with the family. It went much better than I thought it would. He slept in an oversized stroller almost the whole time. The only part that made me start to worry was when a guy accidentally tripped the boy and he broke down into tears—no meltdown though.

I assumed the change in routine and the crowd was going to send him into hysterics but he just slept for most of the time. He liked the animals he did stay awake to see. He was actually much calmer than usual.

@keobooks I find that very interesting, because my girlfriend’s son was a terror when he was young, and still at 11 can be quite a challenge. Around age 2 or 3 he was diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder and ADHD. One time she came to visit me for a week with him. He was about 5 years old if I remember correctly. He did constantly challenge his mother, had tantrums, constantly disobedient. Even when alone with me he enjoyed being bad. I hate to use the word bad, but I think it is understood. I think there is a difference between a child that just is having trouble communicating, is uncomfortable, and has a tantrum out of frustration (common with toddlers) and a child that wants to spite and do things that are simply not ok and they know it. Anyway, one day we went to one of those zoos where you see the animals in their natural habitat and you drive through in your car. He sat still the entire time, calmly looked at the animals, pointed out things he liked. It was probably almost two hours, and that was after having to drive up there to bein with. Then we drove 40 minutes out to the beach, stayed there for a half an hour, and then we went to eat. We were all hungry, and the service was a little slow, but he held it together, we all ate, and then drove home about 35 minutes. The whole day was maybe 6 or 7 hours; his mother and I still marvel at that day.