Families For Life | Aggressive Behaviour: Children and Teenagers with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can behave aggressively towards themselves or other people. There are lots of strategies you can use to help prevent and manage your child’s self-injurious or aggressive behaviour.
Aggressive behaviour, self-injury and autism spectrum disorder
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) don’t necessarily express anger, fear, anxiety or frustration in the same way as other children.
They can sometimes express these feelings through aggressive behaviour towards other children. Sometimes they’re aggressive towards themselves, which is called self-injurious behaviour. They might hit, kick, throw objects or hurt themselves – for example, by head-banging.
Children with ASD might behave aggressively or hurt themselves because they:
have trouble understanding what’s happening around them – for example, what other people are saying or communicating non-verbally
can’t communicate their own wants and needs – for example, they can’t express that they don’t want to do an activity or that they want a particular object
are very anxious and tense
have sensory sensitivities, like an oversensitivity to noise or a need for stimulation
want to escape from stressful situations or activities.
If your child is ever in immediate or life-threatening danger, call emergency services or 995 straight away.
Understanding aggressive behaviour in your child with autism spectrum disorder
Understanding what causes your child’s self-injurious and aggressive behaviour can help you to change or reduce the behaviour.
You can do this by looking at the aggressive behaviour as an ABC sandwich:
Antecedents: these are ‘triggers’ for the aggressive or self-injurious behaviour.
Behaviour: this is the way your child responds to the trigger.
Consequences or ‘rewards’: this is what your child gets out of behaving aggressively, like being allowed to go on with a favourite activity, or to leave a stressful situation.
You can work on your child’s aggressive behaviour by changing either the triggers or the rewards your child gets from behaving aggressively or self-injuring. Here’s how you can do this.
Understanding how well your child can communicate is also a key step in finding out what’s causing the aggressive behaviour. When children can’t express feelings or ask for what they need, they might use aggressive behaviour to communicate.
It can be helpful to ask yourself, ‘Is she trying to tell me something?’. For example, if your child doesn’t like corn flakes but can’t tell you, she might hit you as a way of saying ‘Take it away, I don’t want it!’.
Behaviour-based interventions based on an Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) approach can help with your child’s self-injurious and aggressive behaviour. These interventions use specialised, structured techniques to teach children new behaviour and skills.
Managing an aggressive outburst from your child with autism spectrum disorder
You probably can’t prevent every outburst from your child with ASD. But you can try to manage the aggressive behaviour when it happens. Here are some tips.
The first and most important thing is to stay calm. Most aggressive outbursts or tantrums happen because your child has feelings building up and he can’t communicate them. By managing your own feelings and staying calm and quiet, you won’t add your emotions to the mix.
During an outburst your child will be feeling very stressed. It’s hard to process what someone else is saying when you’re feeling stressed, and this is especially true for children with ASD, who can have trouble understanding language.
It can help if you limit what you say to short phrases or even just a couple of words – for example, ‘Sit down’ rather than ‘Leon, come over here and sit down’.
You might need to move your child to a safer place, away from anything that could hurt her – for example, shelves that could fall over or glass objects. A quiet enclosed space outside might be an option. You might also need to get other people to move out of the way for safety.
Visual cues can also help in these situations – for example, you might have a picture of a quiet place in your home that your child can go to.
Physical restraint
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.
Physical restraint can be dangerous to both you and your child, and can often increase your child’s anxiety and make the situation worse. Positive behaviour support is always preferable to physical options.
Managing self-injurious behaviour in your child with autism spectrum disorder
Working out what your child with ASD is trying to tell you with self-injurious behaviour can help you decide how to manage it.
For example, your child might find it hard to switch from one activity to another. He might bang his head on the floor when you tell him that it’s time to put away his train set before dinner. You could try warning him five minutes before you need him to pack away by showing him a photo of washing hands and sitting at the table for dinner. This will give him a warning, plus time to finish what he’s doing.
If your child has been doing a puzzle for 10 minutes and starts to pull her hair, she might be trying to let you know that she wants to do something else. Offering her a new activity might stop the hair-pulling.
Your child might hit himself because he wants you to look at him and talk to him. Going over to him and giving him attention will stop him hitting himself. The next step is teaching him to get your attention in another way – for example, by saying ‘Mum’ or coming to you and showing you a help card.
Your child might be feeling frustrated and need help. For example, your child has been playing with a doll but the leg comes off, so she starts to scream and scratch herself. If you help her fix the doll, it will stop her hurting herself. The next step is teaching your child to show her frustration in another way – for example, to say, sign or show a picture to tell you when she needs help.
A note about responding to self-injurious behaviour
Giving your child what he wants can strengthen the behaviour and make it more likely that your child will behave in the same way in a similar situation in the future.
A better long term strategy is to:
prevent the behaviour by avoiding situations that trigger it
teach your child to express his needs in a more positive way
ignore self-injurious behaviour and reward your child when he expresses himself in a more positive way.
This can be hard to do without professional help to work out why your child is behaving aggressively or self-injuring.
Getting professional help
An experienced professional can help you understand and manage your child’s aggressive or self-injurious behaviour. This might be particularly helpful if you’ve already tried other strategies without success.
For example, the professional might use functional analysis to work out why your child is behaving aggressively or is self-injuring. Then the professional might create a positive behaviour support plan that includes strategies to reduce the behaviour and teach new behaviour.
© raisingchildren.net.au, translated and adapted with permission
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