DS1 is 10, and has Asperger's. He's always been angry and violent - I have scars from when he was a toddler, and so does DS2, who's currently 7 - but it's recently escalated, and I just feel like I can't cope. He's only 10 but he's behaving like some of the angry and aggressive teenage boys there are threads about here.
Tonight I had to stop the boys playing a game that was getting out of hand I was exhausted (we moved house on Monday), and I didn't handle it well. DS1 launched into a torrent of abuse you're a fucking bitch was about the best of it. We have these outbursts every couple of days (always to me, never DH), and I've been trying not to respond, just let it wash over me, and ignore as much as possible. But tonight it just got to me, and I held his arms as tightly as I could and said in a kind of quiet shout 'never call me that, never call me that' over and over again. Obviously that just fanned the flames and in the end I left him to it and went and soothed DS2 and put him to bed, and came back and apologised for hurting him (DS1 that is) and he apologised for shouting. And then finally went to bed more or less peaceably -- in fact as if nothing had ever happened.
I don't know how I can handle these situations better, and I am really scared about what will happen in years to come as teenage hormones kick in. I try to pick battles, but I have never found a way of making consequences work -- it just provokes yet another outburst. To be honest I feel like a total failure as a parent.
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Teenagers
Ten-year-old teenager
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niminypiminy · 13/12/2013 21:10
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