ANATOMY OF A TANTRUM
Summer is a time of hotter temperatures and celebrations of independence, and just when the we receives many calls asking how to handle tantrums. This is because more parents of our children are diagnosed each spring, just at the point in the year that funding for year round services is reduced or, this year, even eliminated for our Autism community. These articles will attempt to dissect and discuss the developmental ages, stages, forms, and functions of tantrums from several perspectives. Our goal will be to answer frequently asked questions about the often mutual mental processes, communications, and interactions that foster tantrums or facilitate calmer outcomes across home, school, or community for people with and without Autism.

Topics will include:

• Cause and effect aspects of tantrums: Why they happen and what they may mean for each of us.
• Developmental stages and social situations: The characteristic stages and usual settings we may see temper tantrums arrive with and without warnings.
• Realistic role definitions: How we can avoid upsets by better understanding ourselves and each other.
• Self-calming strategies: How we must work to be calm in the face of upsetting emotional experiences.
• Behavioral reinforcements and reducers: The basic Parenting Dos and Don’ts and Teacher Tips and Traps that can provide us with better alternatives.
• Fostering positive self-concept: How we can gain and maintain autonomy and self-control in the face of the confusing and constant impacts of Autism.

We hope you find some of your questions and our answers here helpful in creating a better understanding of Autism and of the nature and anatomy of a tantrum.

What do you mean by the term tantrum?
This word refers to a sustained period or state of outward emotional upset, usually extreme anger, accompanied by out-of-control speech and behaviors. Some people feel that it is demeaning to use "temper tantrum" to describe emotional displays we judge as immature for a person’s age. What else can we call it--a fit or a snit? Those seemed even more demeaning to the parents and professionals we survived. And calling it an upset does not distinquish between our right to have appropriate and useful expressions of valid upsets. Maybe the act of tantruming itself has an innately demeaning aspect that is impossible to name without capturing this negative quality. Roget’s Thesaurus has many descriptors for our emotional upsets. None are any less negative names for the expression of extreme disequilibrium we see in the inappropriate outbursts of rage or bad temper by persons with, and without, Autism who have lost, or not yet gained the capacity for self-control. Therefore, for now, we will make due with “tantrum” for our purposes.

This Editor’s Notebook
Note: these articles were originally published with the author's permission in the The Net Journal of the Autism Society of Oregon. Summer Issue 2003 Sharone Lee, Editor and Author. They have been returned their home at Threshold, but have been kept in our public pages for your use:

How can adults ever be ready, become able, and remain willing to parent and teach children with Autism to have a calm affect, an aware hopeful self-concept, a purposeful outlook, competent and adaptive functional skills, more caring attitudes and realistic expectations, cooperative behaviors, and a positive identity? Doesn’t Autism impact the very sensory, communication, and social development progress which help typical children achieve these goals? How can we acheive them in the face of Autism?

The answer is at once, simple, but daunting. FIRST, we adults must work to have a very calm affect, very hopeful self-concept, very purposeful outlook, very competent and adaptive functional skills, very caring attitudes, very realistic expectations, very cooperative behaviors, and a very positive identity. We must do this because Autism impacts reciprocal access to the sensory, communication, and social capacities, which allows us to help all of our children reach these same developmental milestones. This is where our commitment to the mutual work of first surviving Autism and then, striving for both our own and our children’s and students’ fullest self-development and learning potentials must begin, and progress, throughout our lives as we live, work, and cope with Autism together.

How do we do all of this when Autism is so overwhelming?
We start by achieving calmness for ourselves and with each other one day at a time--one step at a time--now. This journal/page offers us a question and answer map of the early developmental paths into emotional awareness and the nurturing roads out of having either under controlled or over-controlling feelings begin to dominate all our lives. We will define the mutual problems and double binds that tantrums represent for our children and us as family and service providers. The added practical parenting and teaching tips are the ones that help us predictably avoid getting lost in the woods of tantrums or abuses of power. It is very important to get going in a well-balanced vehicle of best Autism practice at an early age, because if we do, it makes life much easier and our work more effective as parents and teachers. However, if we missed the boat young and have an older person will Autism who is still getting very upset or using tantrums to communicate and control, do not despair. Human development is often a more forgiving task master, and people with Autism are usually ready to start again, able get on a positive path, and often surprisingly willing to cope with the changes that can create better outcomes. Therefore, parenting and teaching must begin with OUR OWN healthy self-care, self-control, self-determination, and self-direction. We are our own toughest challenge here--not a tantruming child.
Sharone Lee, M.A., Editor (of The Net Journal of the Autism Society of Oregon 2001-2003)

Infantile Rage & Autism

Why do infants (age birth to three) typically begin to have tantrums and what causes them to begin later and last longer for children with Autism?
Typical infants naturally experience moments of inner discomfort, physical pain, emotional distress, and sensory overload or boredom to a degree that causes them to feel a sense of general rage, due to their own helplessness to alter these states of feeling themselves. When caring adults provide an infant with continuity of support and developmentally appropriate levels of pleasant stimulation and warm care, then a typical child will develop a bond to those adults, and gain a hopeful sense of expectations of things and people in their world. Then infants feel safe to begin to explore the world and learn more on their own. Between 12 to 24 months old infants become more functionally independent from their parents. This new freedom, along with their emerging emotional autonomy brings typical infants into greater awareness of, frequent contact and usually, new conflicts, with the world and the people around them. However, in this big new world they run into things they cannot handle and delays of gratification when people limit their access to what they want when they want it. Their immature brains will still experience infantile rage, which expresses itself in a loss of emotional self-control, yet, in a more socially aware and purposeful manner. This is when we see what we think of as a tantrum.

If parents have been provided with the adult development support, parent education, and care taker relief we need during the pre-diagnostic years of caring for an atypically “difficult” baby (who may be diagnosed with Autism later), we can usually have a fairly positive experience, even in the face of having a child who often feels infantile upsets. Whereas, families who have “easy” babies (who also may later have Autism), report they are very passive and happy. Both “very difficult” and “too easy” infants may be delayed in reaching the later stages of experiencing and expressing emotional stress from daily life in a more organized and productive manner. They are often less self-aware of themselves and have delays in integration of all their senses of their world.
Adults can learn calming, sensory integration, and social interaction strategies for infants with these delays. Then we can help children with Autism move out of either the “nightmare” stage of being difficult or the “dreamy” stage of being passive and into becoming a developing toddler who can then experience their upsets in a way that will actually produce a typical temper tantrum. This is good. The earlier we get into and out of this stage--the better.

CALMING STRATEGIES

What do we do with upset infants who never calm down or passive infants who never seem to engage with people, objects or places enough to become upset?

Dualing Infant Calming Strategies and Dual Stimulation Modulation Tips
All infants with Autism may need more times of traditional and untraditional calming methods and stimulation modulation supports, which may include raising and lowering the levels of arousal.
•They may need to be swaddled tightly in blankets if they are tiny, or squeezed between pillows and even matresses for more deep pressure and/or need brushing on their skin to greatly increase light-touch stimulation. (Do NOT use these same sensory modulation materials and activities as part of any well supervised and professonally trained restraint protocals you may choose to use. Do not do these with great force that even might injure or interfere with breathing. So never do any of these strategies if you are upset yourself.) •They may need to have longer time with specific sucking and/or chewing materials and activities. •They may need to lie on their sides and be gently swung--in a hammock and/or get into using much more dynamic swinging equipment and patterns. •They may need total quiet or actually quiet to fairly loud “white noise” like the shushing typical babies like (remember the sound of the heart in the womb is as loud as a motor like a vacumn or washing machine or car engine--which is why these can calm infants), and/or very structured auditory integrative sound therapies or time listening to Mozart’s music.

Sensory Integration & Floor Play Activities
Provide ways to move back and forth from more calming to more arousing levels of stimulation.
For information on SI resources Call: 1-888-357-5867 or go to www.SensoryResources.com
Call: 1-800-228-1698 or got to
www.southpawenterprises.com
Email: infor@sensory int.com or got to: www.sensoryint.com

AND

•Learn more about early infant emotional development and the fun “Floor Time” strategies
of Dr. Stanley Greenspan. His two key texts First Feelings and The Challenging Child) can help you engage in first child-lead and then some more organized adult guided play as more appropriate developmental support systems.

Dr. Geraldine Dawson’s research at the University of Washington’s Autism Center also provides similar infant playtime methods using duplicate sets of infant and early childhood sensory motor toys. First sit with the child and follow their play activities. Do this until you see them noticing you following them several times. Then you try leading by doing something even more interesting or stimulating or complex with the same toy. If you have a very passive infant to does not move at all you may need to reverse the process and be leader first until they notice the toy and begin to engage in it. Then go back to following them. Use these dual materials and leader adn follower strategies to assess their independent play levels first and then to try to model more stimulating or less over or under aroused play activities. This is a therapuetic treasure, well-worth the price of the second toy. Just stay in charge of your follower and leader roles even if they seem upset by them. (DO NOT ever let the child take your toy from you--it is OK if they tantrum. This helps them learn objective yours, mine, and ours concepts of toddlerhood. Link to "What to DO about tantrum article to read about ways to clarify this kind of sole owenership from temporal turn taking and sharing spaces and their differing boundaries and social expectations.)

•Use matching objects along with fewer concrete words in softer deeper tones at a slower pace creates more meaningful communications and new critical sensory information connections.

Avoiding Toddler Tyranny & Tantrum Traps
How can I make my child with Autism behave/be happy?
Most families report that at some point, their child with Autism often becomes upset in ways that seem impossible to cope with using only our intuitive parenting strategies. Starting with best practice typical parenting approaches is a helpful foundation, but we often need to build best Autism practices on top of them. However, first we adults may need some training in self-control and self-care before using them. This is because the first secret of avoiding tantrums is that YOU MUST COME FIRST! Yes! Effective tantrum work, as family or service providers, requires that we adults practice mature self-control first.

We must get the sleep, water, food, rest and recreation breaks, and exercise we need (which may be more or less than we may want or expect) in regular intervals. If we are not able to control ourselves to do this self care WE are NOT READY to work or cope with any child’s tantrums. However, dealing with years of infantile rage or passivity, which are each less purposeful or organized behaviors, can cause parents or care providers exhausted from poor adult self-care and family distress, to respond to older children with Autism as if they are still babies. We can become lost and out of control ourselves, right at the time we need to be helping a person with Autism mature. This actually increases the risk of out-of-control upsets by both the child and the adults. This is why parents who are without the adult development support, parent education, and care taker relief we need are at risk of unintentionally falling into two kinds of parental binds. The first bind is the belief that we must control our tantruming child with authoritarian force. The second bind is that we must give into our child’s demands in order to keep them happy so they will not tantrum. These are two forms of mutual tyranny and traps, which often lead to living in tantrum quick sand for the long term. The goal is to avoid OUR ADULT behavioral briar patches first.

The mutual tyranny of being overly authoritarian, by controlling a child with force, is that the adult becomes bound to a person with Autism in rituals of conflict that trap us into ineffective cycles of controlling or punishing, and which actually model being aggressive for the child. The mutual tyranny of being overly permissive, by giving into each demand, is that the adult is bound to become only a vending machine, by giving over our adult decision making and limit setting role to an out-of-control person with Autism--which puts yet another stress on them, and actually drives them into being even more frantically out of control. Therefore, attempts to avoid tantrums by over controlling or always pleasing a child just create negative outcomes. The key is to DO predictable and firm limit setting, while proactively BEING very warm and caring.

SELF-CONTROL TIPS:
What am I supposed to DO when my (verbal) child is tantruming--just ignor them?

No. Do not just ignor anyone's negative behavior. But be sure you let the problem remain theirs and follow these seemingly simple guidelines that can help you master who you need to BE here.

The Basic Rules of Tantrums
The TYPICAL Parenting Rule is: Do not do ANYTHING that might reinforce a toddler’s tantrum or tell them that you are in a bind. Let them feel their bind of losing control. Let it be their problem.
The Autism/ATYPICAL Parenting Rule is almost the same rule:
Do not do ANYTHING that might reinforce any tantrum as either a communication, social, or coping strategy, to which we must react. Let a tantrum be their problem.
This often means we should virtually DO NOTHING AT ALL. This does NOT mean we “just ignore” tantrums--it means we verbally, visually, and physically communicate that the tantrum is not useful at all, that we do not understand screaming, and that being out of control will not bring any useful response from anyone. If a tantruming child is more focused and able to listen, say a calming parenting script:

“First ...(Child Name) must finish upset...Then...(Child Name) must Calm Down

(Adults Name) sees (Child) is upset. (Adult) will wait until (Child) is ready."

Then wait until they are FULLY relaxed breathing slowly and ready to follow you (do not fall for them just telling you--or yelling at you--that they are FINISHED!) Only when you can see, hear, feel and KNOW that they are finished with being upset, then can you shift to the next step

“First ...(Child) must Calm Down...Then...(Name a task they must do correctly and calmly)

(Adult) sees (Child) can calm cown. (Adults) will wait until you are ready to do (task)."

Then wait until they are FULLY ready to do this small passing skill level bit of work ALL BY THEMSELVES. (Do not fall into helping them or providing comfort as tantrum compensation--and do not just let them go back to play or rewarding activities or people instead of the little task.) Simple Name of any fairly very simple concrete demand you know they can do at this age and stage of development. Therefore, this is where you Name of the next thing you as the adult needs done--preferably a simple transition to a nearby little work kind of task, before play--it helps to have a basket of simple put in or put away tasks nearby for after tantrum tasks. Then wait until they are FULLY relaxed breathing slowly and ready to follow you (do not fall for them just telling you--or yelling at you--that they are CALM!) Only then can you shift to the next step of clear communication with two calm people. They learned the way up Mount Tantrum with our help, but they can only learn the way down Mount Tantrum on their own steam. Give them the time and space they will need to climb down and stay down as two more self-controlled autonomous persons. It works.

CALM CLEAR COMMUNICATION TIPS
Speak in a slower and flatter unemotional voice, while always feeling warm and firm inside.
If this “sets them off” that is OK--it just means they understand you and that you are not being the good old nice chatty and compromising vending machine you have been--this is a good thing!
If they get out of control and try to hurt themselves, harm others, or damage property, just quickly move them or secure them in a safer place and repeat the script below in a flat voice:

“(Adult) sees (Child) is feeling (mad-sad-afraid). (Child) must always be (gentle with self, kind to others, and careful with things even when (Child) is upset.

(Adult) will stay/will not go away. (Child) is in a safe place.
(Adult) will wait until (Child) is ready.”
Then WAIT nearby, appearing to be busy with your own simple task, but be ready to react quickly.

They may become more upset at first. Just STAY CALM yourself and this will let you become able to GIVE them the TIME and SPACE they have needed to learn to self-calm. They can do it, they just do not know that yet. Let them learn this about themselves. Do not ever allow them to leave where they are supposed to be, hurt themselves, harm others, or ever damage property during a tantrum cycle, or at other times either. This is the nature of the emergence of healthy baseline of toddler skills. Yes, A pillow to lay on, a blanket to hide under, timely toilet breaks, tissues for wiping, and water sips are natural supports to calming down--for you too! (Which is why we start as young as possible.). ALWAYS consult your doctor before using these strategies on children with seizures or other medical problems, but we have used them with children with many medical conditions and the reality is that this method puts less stress on the person than a life time of being out of control does. So we do still recommend you use them for all but the very most fragile children, in any case do not let health risks of minor seizures let them become tyrants--it will create serious risks that will impact their health and education in even worse ways.

Trust us--this is A SURE BET to help your child learn self-control.

Preschool Parenting Education Path
This all seems impossible to manage at home or school. How can we possibly parent or teach a tantruming child anything when they are upset?
(First, please recheck the texts above. We are in agreement that you cannot teach an out-of-control child anything and that you cannot ignor the tantrum either--the tantrum is the thing here. We must separate teaching times and spaces from the time and space they need to LET THEM LEARN to autonomously calm down. See Tantrums as USEFUL developmental windows of opportunity that we want to handle well in order to GO THROUGH them and CLOSE THEM DOWN so we can be FINISHED with that stage of development and MOVE ON and UP.)

A few of us receive a diagnosis of Autism when our child is between 18-32 months old. Then we may get started on learning best toddler-with-Autism parent practices very timely, when our children are smaller and easier to handle. Then it will feel more “normal” to give them the need kinds of time and spaces they need to calm down. However, most of us do not get our diagnosis and information about how to parent young children with Autism until our child is 3 or 4, or even 5 to 10+ years old, in the case of Asperger’s Syndrome. We may have to accept that even though our child is older and we expect better behavior from them, they may need some remedial developmental work to get out of tantrum quick sand and to catch up before they enter their new school grades. It is possible, if we just get started ASAP--now! Once you internalize the calming strategy of letting being out-of-control be their problem, you will see them go up and down Mount Tantrum, until they realize that they are getting no where. (Do NOT punish or rescue them at ever higher peaks--or this mountain will just get taller.) Let go of fears that allowing your child work out their own upsets will cost you either their respect or love. The opposite is true. Most children show BOTH more appropriate regard for adult authority and affectionate affect, even most children with more severe Autism. Once a child begins to do self-calming and knows that adults WILL have firm limits and provide warm care, no matter what happens, they begin to mature and change--in direct response to our adult maturity and changes.

During calm times, we may now proactively learn and teach the sensory and self-regulatory, and adaptive communication, and positive social skill strategies we both need to avoid tantrums. Then our children WILL become more purposeful in their play and relationships, and more competent in the communication and learning tasks they are capable of doing. These doors will just naturally open when the autonomy of self is mastered. This is the pay off for the hard work of finishing upsets. However, because of our children’s innate functional delays, slower maturing patterns, and vulnerability to regress, we must be vigilant in our positive and proactive approaches. Then, we will have smoother sailing and great opportunities to teach during the school age years.

THE ROAD MAP AHEAD
At the very same time children are becoming more ready, able, and willing to calm themselves down and have better self-control, instead of tantruming, we will both need to be gaining an understanding of the power of communication to help us both notice and name problems, and engage in negotiating better solutions with each other now. Therefore, all parents and all teachers must parent in relation to ending tantrums, and we must both see ourselves as guides on the path to children learning how to be a sensory self-regulating, power of communication aware, and socially cooperative person with Autism. Here are some tips: •New favored sensory integration activities can provide a great dual system of calming and rewards for work at home and school. •Whether we will choose a more verbal and typical skills training (behavioral) or a visual systems and adaptive skills training (developmental) approach, WE all need adaptive communication and social skill training methods that match to who we are--this is not a "special" need.

•For less verbal and less social children with severe Autism, object based systems can provide immediate connections and even open hidden doors for later picture and word-based learning.
•Using clear start and finish materials containers along with separate work and place spaces, even “very difficult” children can get much more calmed down and focused to learn how to learn.
•For preverbal children, with emergent capacities for symbolic learning, drawing and/or photo picture systems can create clear “First...Then...” message boards-- for use with the strategies on page 3 too! They can also help us set up clear work directions and social play routine information.
•For more and less verbal and social people Carol Grey’s Social Stories™ are helpful for learning how to build the shared verbal and social skill bridges we need. Together these strategies are the start of a road map to success.School Age Problems & Potentials.

Why should teachers have to deal with tantrums at all? Shouldn’t parents just take care of discipline in the home?
For typical children (without any significant history of trauma, environmental stressors, or serious health or developmental conditions), tantruming usually can, and probably should, be resolved well before kindergarten. However, for many students, school must be a place that helps them develop more positive and mature behaviors. For example, most school age students with Autism, have pervasively disordered, and differentially splintered, cognitive and psychosocial development, with complex and highly unique learning challenges, in comparison to students with no, or only singular, delays. This reality means that all the knowledge, awareness, skills, and ableness of people with Autism may be more shattered and disorganized, than simply just impaired. Therefore, their innate and ongoing problems with social awareness, reasoning, and judgment can become highly enmeshed within their highly varied academic potentials. This very profile complicates their, and our, possible progress using typical teaching materials and methods. This can create mutual frustrations in, and obstacles to, relationships with their teaching staff and school peers. If unresolved, our conflicts of understanding and losses of basic rapport may create situational tantrums, which are distinct from naturally occurring and developmentally useful stage-related tantrums. This reality is no one person’s fault. It is a well-documented cultural and functional problem related to the nature of being together as people with, and without Autism, in settings with an ongoing lack of Autism resources and training for all adult providers. When we accept this hard reality, we take the first step towards transcending its grip. Therefore, while becoming self-controlled must remain the problem of persons with Autism, fulfilling the commitment to individualize their education, as calm and mature guides, represents our adult developmental potential, as parents and teachers. If we provide a balance of equally high supports and high demands--relative to students’ specific developmental levels, and stimulating and unstressed daily rhythms of work, recreation, and relief, we can help all students show fewer upsets and more positive purposefulness and productive competencies across home and school. Finally, engendering real empathy for us all in this, our mutual endeavor, is a crucial adult obligation. However, current budget problems may be fostering “get tough” ideals within school programs for students with Autism with very scary, and ironically, very expensive life long results. We must advocate together, to avoid this trap.

TEACHING TIPS & TRAPS

TIP: ASSESS Use your senses in an objective way (by suspending subjective judgments). Observe what happens before, during, and after calm-vs-upset school sessions--videotapes help here.
TRAP: GUESSING Using mind reading or intuition to estimate how ready-able-willing a person with Autism may be to do a task, or why they get upset. (Tip: avoid this lazy assessors’ temptation-- plan your work/work your plan.)

TIP: Do individualized, adaptive, needs-based planning, with a flexible approach to problems, in authentically inclusive programs.
TRAP: Trying to mainstream students by rigidly insisting on doing everything the same for everyone. (People only experience being included when settings negotiably adapt to our needs.)

TIP: Aim goal-related activities, like teaching arrows, at specific targeted skill objectives (i.e., use colors they know to sort correct amounts of items into numbered bags, to learn how to count.)
TRAP: Throwing a target at your targets (i.e. simply repeatedly demanding a child count items, in order to meet a counting goal.)

TIP: Have mutually manageable daily schedules set up across home and school. Communicate where/what sequences clearly, predictably, and accurately. But, be sure to keep routines flexible.
Never work harder than people with Autism--never stop working to find the best path to reach us.
TRAP: Expecting too little or too much from our selves as adults, or from people with Autism.

TIP: Lower stress--communicate by talking less, in a slow, quiet, and deeper voice, using concrete (visually descriptive) language.
TRAP: The definition of being dysfunctional is doing the same thing, over and over again, while expecting a different result. If the communication forms and styles you are using with a person with Autism are not working--change.

Mutual Teenage Trials & Triumphs
What do we do when teenagers with Autism get upset?
First always remember that if any person with our without Autism has trouble staying calm in daily life situtatons, or calming themselves down to cope in authentically stressful situations, then their development is not complete nad fully matured yet. They need CALM adult support systems and self-regulation demands put in place by people with the maturity and authority to do this. There are two natural points in human development wehre this need will naturally arise. In toddlerhood and in puberty. This is when the brain is designed to master self-control by first experiencing a lack of autonomy and often a loss of self-control to regain independent self-regulartion. Certain brain conditions will and some parenting situations may compromise this getting done in a timely age appropriate way with a more positive outcome.Do not worry--this human developmental need is universal and thwaw human behaviors are ones that can change and gain stability in the direction we need if we BOTH work at it using these best Autism parenting practices in concert with a well-establihsed Autism intervention model.

Whether or not adults have done better or worse at helping our children and students with Autism mature and avoid tantruming earlier on, human development gives us one last BIG natural opportunity for this growth in puberty. Yet, we often misinterpret this stage of life as a time of immaturity and emotional turmoil. In reality, like the toddler years, this stage of developmental is ripe with potentials for gains in sensory regulation and self-control, cognitive and communication skill growth, and more positive affect and social identity, for all children. This time of many major biological, cognitive, and psychological changes may begin between 9 to 13 years old for girls and 10 to 14 years old for boys. While it is true that huge hormonal swings can make some for some rough days, in reality, all the physical, intellectual, and emotional growth of this period can create real gains in maturity and functional skills too. This progress can actually lead to real reductions in upsets in the long run. While there are risks of occasional tantrums, only a few teens must deal with experiences of sudden regressions, (or dramatic improvements), most must cope with their slower but steady progress, with few big ups or downs. What research shows about typical children during adolescence is that they may often get into conflicts with adults who are going through our own times of turmoil. We adults are reevaluating our careers, our families and marriages are under stress, aging concerns now nag us, and we may feel compelled to review of our unresolved conflicts and regrets from our life, at the same time our teenagers are blossoming into fresh, new, untried adults. This dynamic dual chemistry can foster mutual turmoil. Mixed into this complex time at home, and in our schools, is the reality that the vast majority of “we teens with Autism” will have innate difficulty completing all the childhood stages of self-aware psychosocial development and must struggle with issues of self-control and gaining mature self-calming, self-regulation, self-determination, self-direction, and self-identity for the rest of our lives. (If we did not, we would not meet the criteria for Autism.) However, the Catch--22 is that, no matter how well students with Autism have, or have not, done in grade school, suddenly the academic, behavioral, and social skill bars are raised much higher in middle school, and again in high school. This may bring on risky situational tantrums, which require best practice Autism programs. Working together to become calm well-balanced adults who are seeking autonomous self-realization, up to our fullest vocational potentials, must now apply to us all.

CAUTION TEENS AT WORK
What do teens with Autism need?
I will let the voice of what children, teens, and adults with Autism have told me answer here:
“We will need LOTS of highly structured productive work times and LOTS of choices for favored recreational activities during frequent breaks. We always need the style and manner of our work and relief activities to be adjusted to our developmental levels and our preferences--even more than we did when we were toddlers! Please accept us, as who we are, and fully support us in who we may still become as adults, now.” The most dangerous beings for teens with Autism to come into contact with, is one or more adults who are ready, able, and willing to do whatever it takes to keep them happy. We attempt to constantly meet all of their expectations, and wants, instead of their needs to mature and learn how to cope with life’s delays or denials of gratification. Such good-intentions fall prey to the difficult life span egocentric characteristics of Autism, and will leave every other adult in the person’s homes and work sites with the consequence of having people with Autism who only see typical adults as mere vending machines for objective pleasures and instant gratification. This is a greatest risk of harm practice. The most rapport-breaking and mutual injury risky beings for teens with Autism to come into contact with, is one or more adults who are ready, able, and willing to do whatever it takes to control them. We attempt to force them them to meet all of our daily expectations, and wants, instead of to meet both our needs to mature and learn how to cope with our jobs’ delays or denials of gratification. Expressions of cruel judgments and harsh “teach-em-a-lesson” approaches exacerbate the difficult socially isolating life span characteristics of Autism, and will sadly leave every other adult in the person’s life and programs with the consequence of having people with Autism who just see typical adults as sources of only unpredictable aversives.