How to cope with your child with Autism if they self-injure

How to cope with your child with Autism if they self-injure

As frightening as it can be sometimes for parents,
self-injury for children with autism is not all that uncommon.

Not all self-injury means the same thing on every occasion
nor is it the same in every child with autism.

The first thing a parent should do is decide if it is giving
the child with autism some pleasure from the act
of injuring or if the injury is a way of trying to tell
the parent something.

For example, your child may repetitively bang his or her
head against the wall as a sign that an ear infection is
going on.

It can often be triggered by excessive arousal.

This becomes the caregiver’s job to reduce the external
noise and other arousal issues that can trigger the onset
of self-injurious behavior in a child with autism.

Certain frequencies of sound will trigger the behavior more
so than others.

On the other hand, the child with autism may be using the
behavior to bring on a heightened sense of stimulation to the
body.

A child like this needs training in sensory integration
to normalize the senses.

Other kids with autism will engage in self-injury as a
social means of getting attention or as a means of
avoiding doing a task.

For example, the attention-getting behavior should be
ignored and the child who uses the behaviors to avoid
getting out of a task should be encouraged to finish the task.

The trick to any unusual behavior is to do a functional
analysis.

In other words, what happens before the behavior and also
afterwards to the child with autism?

Also is this a routine behavior (i.e. something learned)?

Secondly, what, if anything controlled the behavior in the
child with autism?

Answering these questions will give you a means of managing
the behavior in many cases.

The Parenting Autism Resource Guide: A Complete Resource Guide For Parents Who Have Children Diagnosed With Autism.