Has the school conducted a functional behavior assessment? If the behaviors are happening at home too, you can conduct one yourself. All you need to do is take a close look at the situation surrounding the behaviors. Try to find out when he is most likely to do it and where and with what people. This may take a while. Sometimes, you find a pattern, which could help you to determine a course of action. Check online or with the school's psychologist or Occupational therapist to see if anyone has a Motivation Assessment. It is a questionairre that helps determine the function of a behavior. After you find the function, I can give you some ideas to try.

You stated that he is a high functioning child with autism, but he is three, so as with any three year old, there is a lot to learn obout this world...maybe try some of the following books to help him navigate this thing called life: Nagivating the Social World, Teach Me Language, Social Skills Book (by Jed Baker) or the Social Skills Picture Book (Jed Baker).
And don't forget visual supports to remind him--visuals even for high funtioning children with autism. Sometimes a sticky note with a written message (for readers) can work WONDERS!!!! Especially in the midst of a meltdown, when words are no longer a useful tool.
AutismClassroom.com
Question. Discuss. Learn.

It took

Your son is sure a cute little guy. God knew what he was doin' when he made these kids so darn cute lol... and FUNNY.
My son can be absolutely hilarious at times. In any case I'm glad you found our little group. Sometimes I wish we all
lived in the same neighborhood.

Hey, feeling your pain, no good answer. Are you doing any of the special diets?

We didn't have anger issues, but our 7 year old with PDD-NOS has improved a lot since we have done dietary interventions. Two weeks in a row after a great ABA session, we went to Walmart, picked out a movie, walked THROUGH the toy department, waited in line to check out (yesterday, there were 7 people in line with lots of stuff, 10 minute wait), put movie on the conveyor belt (instead of thinking if it left her possession she wasn't going to get it back and freaking out), and waited while I paid. She did says "Lets Goooooooooooooooooooo" about 20 times.

I have no idea if the diet (SCD) does all the things they say, but eating good food seems to make her all around happier (us too). She is loving to eat and eats everything we put in front of her.

No more meltdowns! Solid poops are a fringe benefit.

Fielding J. Hurst

http://autismparents.net

http://autismretort.com

My son's worst tantrums occurred, without a doubt, when he felt "like a victim whose story was just not being heard." Usually, this was because whatever was really bothering him (specific bullies, smells, noises, lights, etc.,) was not being made to go away. He was, thankfully, not very physically agressive, but that does not mean that he never expressed physical agression during some of his tantrums. On occasion I was bit, hit, kicked, etc. while trying to control a tantrum. It has been years and years though since my son has had a tantum. Making them go away involved a multi-pronged approach and that approach had to keep changing depending on the individual cause for each series of tantrums.

Pinning down what was REALLY bothering him at any particular point in time was perhaps the toughest task. Sometimes it was that he was being bullied at school (and getting the school to discipline and elsewise deal with its bullying problems was a BIG challenge). Sometimes it was the smell of fresh cut grass (so we wouldn't try to haul him out the door right after mowing the lawn if we could possibly avoid it). Sometimes it was a noisy crowd (so we bought him a good set of noise canceling headphones to use instead of "ear buds") Sometimes is was a buzzing flourescent light in his classroom (which he reacted to like most peole react to the sound of nails on a chalkboard), so his teachers always made sure that their lights were in good repair. Sometime it was something we could do NOTHING about, so we had to painstakingly teach him to tolerate it and, more importantly, to relax while tolerating it.

The foundation of ABA is ANALYSIS; and there are books and books on the subject that offer a myriad of scientific approaches, fill-in forms and data sheets, and lots of advice on how to analyze complex behaviors (like tantrums) in people who cannot come right out and say "I'm angry because..... The process is tedious, cumbersome, and difficult - and often because it is tedious, cumbersome and difficult, it seems to be ineffective. The process of analyzing our children's behaviors in such painstaking detail usually frustrates us more than "whatever" frustrates our kids; BUT, this still does get us off the hook - we still have to accurately analyze the situation to determine the REAL cause of the behavior BEFORE we can develop a plan of action to help make that behavior (if it is an unwanted behavior) disappear.

For most of us, the process eventually boils down to a combination of "gut feeling" and "trial and error" - and most of us get better and better at it as our kids get older. On their part, most of our kids get better at communicating their issues to us as time goes by.

However, because they are autistic, they often have as much difficulty as we do in determining what the real source of their anger is. For us, it is difficult because we are not experiencing the thing first hand; for them, it is difficult because they are experiencing the world on a sensory level far differently than anyone else around them is experiencing it. This lack of "common-ness" of sensory experience is what ultimately disables our children AND us. To compound the issue further, it is important to remember that no matter how different their sensory experiences are from ours, those experiences are "NORMAL" to them. Because we do not share the same experience, we have difficulty communicating through the differences and we often overlook the enormous impact even small differences in how we perceive things through our senses can have on how we understand (or misunderstand) a lot of situations.

Social situations, because they are so complex, are the ones most frequently to be misunderstood by a person with autism (even as an adult); although simpler situations can be affected as well. For example, a room we think is quiet, might well be UNBEARABLY noisy for a person with autism; and sometimes even now I catch myself dismissing my son's complaints out of hand. He might comment, "Boy this room is noisy," and I'll thoughtlessly mutter back, 'No, it's not." If he subsequently feels himself getting agitated, he also feels less able to "blame" how feels on the noise simply because my feedback already told him that the room wasn't noisey enough to be a problem. The key here, is that it wasn't noisy to be a problem FOR ME, not him.

Determining what is REALLY bothering a person who cannot accurately communicate that essentially tidbit of information to you is, I think, the biggest challenge facing us parents of ASD children, teachers, and anyone who is in contact with your child. The sad reality is that most teachers, friends, store clerks, waitresses, bus drivers, school peers, etc. will never take the time to help us find out either - so. for survival, we (as the parents) have to learn how to listen more acutely than normal parents, we have to be 1000 times more observant than normal parents, and we have to develop almost superhuman intuitions about where exactly it is that our own child is coming from and we have to learn how to relate that information to everyone else in our children's worlds. NOT an easy task - in fact, an impossible one. but we persist in trying because the bottom line is we all love our kids. The same boat? - Baby, we've all been there.

It's also common for kids with autism to also be bi-polar. My son is less verbal than yours but he has shown many of the same behaviors that you described. We're just trying to get him on some calming medications and also we try hard to avoid triggering his outbursts. Usually they are the worst at night when he fights going to sleep, so we try to make sure he doesn't nap and we try to wear him out with activity. Of course, that also wears us out :(

My son is 4, and also high functioning, except in communication. He was not officially diagnosed with ODD because it is something that is more like an underlying symptom of Autism. He has been put on Risperdal. Michael went through anger phases but not so violent. His problem was regulating those defiant emotions. I have seen such a change in him since the meds. I am not one who likes giving my baby meds... In fact I gave up on one because he just would not take it. But the Risperdal is a life saver for me, and it keeps me sane.

Where are you from, maybe there is a in home program to help with impulse and behavior control. Th neigbor girl was getting therapy like that when her mother remembered to make the appointments.

Sounds pretty common to me. I had my husband make a hole in our bedroom door (about the size of a
small window, big enough to put your head through but too high for my son to reach). I use the room for time out. My son
scratches, bites & throws things. Time out is pretty cushy lol. He's got the "big bed" and tv. He just cant hurt mommy
or the dog. I only keep him in there long enough to cool down (five to ten minutes normally) and I watch him real
close. Maybe there's something going on at the school, you never know, maybe he's trying to tell you something &
cant so he has a melt down.