4 Year Old Son Pinching And Biting | MyAutismTeam

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4 Year Old Son Pinching And Biting
A MyAutismTeam Member asked a question 💭

My son is 4 years old. He was diagnosed with ASD at 2 and is still non-verbal. He has always been very sweet and gentle and happy. There was a little bit of mild biting a couple years ago when he was teething, but that stopped. He also used to pinch a little bit, but it was only once in a while and all we had to say was “safe hands” and he would stop. A couple weeks ago he starting pinching his mother on a regular basis. Always when she would either tell him it was time to leave the park, or… read more

posted October 11, 2020 (edited)
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A MyAutismTeam Member

Redirect. Don’t say no but redirected some thing he would actually want to do. Give lots of time for transition. Biting and pinching are both signs of frustration. Teach him to show his dislike in some other way since he’s nonverbal.

posted October 12, 2020
A MyAutismTeam Member

Welcome to Mat Family once you can identify the triggers distractions to help reduce such triggers can be put in place like games and activities that engage the oral muscles like blowing bubbles will likely reduce biting, hope it helps.

posted October 12, 2020
A MyAutismTeam Member

I have had the same thing. Unfortunately, these habits may come and go in cycles. One month he may have biting and pinching as the preferred method of communication, the next it may be kicking and head-butting, after that slapping and pulling hair. I thought once we were thru all those they were gone; not necessarily. Don't get discouraged tho because if it does cycle back, kiddo has probably got more communication skills and you know what worked last time.
I was told the same thing Betsy (above) said, don't react (yeah right, don't scream) because any attention (good or bad) is attention. If you give attention to a bad behavior, the kiddo has learned what they can do to get your attention next time.
This is probably double for a nonverbal child. Not having the tool of using their words, they have to find another way to tell you what they need or want. When they are doing what seems completely valid communication but they aren't getting thru, they escalate from the original frustration. Makes sense, but doesn't help the problem of biting. It did help my understanding of how/why it gets to that point, and helped me to extend the length of time it took me lose my mind.

*** Have you thought of teaching sign language with videos?
My son was typical at first and grew to be overly verbal. I used videos and he used the main ones even when he started talking. If they can get their message across, maybe less escalation to aggression.

***Have you tried an audible timer? When my son was in the 3-5 range, just telling him 5 minutes didn't matter (at nearly 7 he still has no concept of time), but he did understand,"There is a few minutes left to play, I'm going to set the timer and when it rings, it's telling us we have to go home." It worked and now he doesn't need the actual ring, I can just tell him its time to leave and he comes. DISCLAIMER: at first, just mentioning u may have to leave soon can set off an episode. At that point you don't give them the extra few minutes. They will eventually learn that they don't want to react badly or they don't even get those extra minutes. It sounded so weird to me when his severe behavior therapist said, "sometimes we have to risk causing the behavior to practice correcting it", and "it will get worse before it gets better". Ill have to say, she was right, and it did help.

posted November 6, 2020
A MyAutismTeam Member

Idk if this will help everytime he bites or pinches try not to react loudly or anything but just point to the ground and make him sit for a few minutes also let him know before you have to leave the park point to your watch and say we have 5 minutes before we go

posted October 17, 2020
A MyAutismTeam Member

He isn’t getting any ABA at school right now unfortunately because they’re only in a hybrid model where he’s only going twice a week for 2 1/2 hours. But the school system in our town is terrible anyway. We’ve only recently come to learn that the elementary school is not what we thought it was going to be.
He uses the program LAMP on an ipad to communicate with us what he wants. He’s very smart and navigates through it exceptionally well to tell us what he wants to eat, what he wants to watch on tv, what he wants to play with, etc. The problem is when he wants something that we tell him he can’t have. We’ve been telling him he can’t have certain things for a long time now. It’s only the past couple weeks that he’s started to be pinch and bite when we sometimes tell him he can’t have something or have to leave the park. And we just don’t know why it’s happening all of a sudden.

posted October 11, 2020

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