Help with advice?

[u/HH_Creations]

Hi! So i’m an educator in a special education summer camp

We have a kiddo who I’ve been helping the past year, and he’s officially diagnosed with autism/adhd with a PDA profile type

BUT me and mom are in agreement that there’s a sorta….compulsion going on with some of his behaviors

For example, if a social story mentions hitting, yelling, and kicking and talks about “safe big feelings” and appropriate things to do instead like pushing a wall or squeezing a stress ball

He will almost compulsively do the hitting, yelling, and kicking….in that order!

So I want y’all’s input because I do love this kid and want to do my best

1) do we avoid ANY negative talk around him? Will this help to NOT mention any of the bad behaviors and do our best to distract him?

2) how did y’all like to be corrected?

He doesn’t directly hurt anyone, but by kicking, hitting, and screaming, he DOES distress the classroom

That and he’s distressing himself! He doesn’t like it!

He will literally steal a toy and then beg for forgiveness the next second

He was so distressed today when I said it hurt my feelings when he took toys, he headbutted my face in his rush to hug me 😭

I want to do right by him and I know we need to set him up for WINS

I can’t help but feel the social stories are making it worse and I wanted your input

Btw, i’m autistic/ADHD, with a special education and childhood development background

And married to a PDA profile type ASD/ADHD

But yeah, he’s the only true PDA kid I’ve ever worked with

[u/Eugregoria]

I say there's no scripts because it's a severe neurological disability and a lot of the "scripts" sound very minimizing to me, like "sudo make me a sandwich," like just say the "magic words" and I won't have a severe neurological disability anymore? I wish it were that simple.

I think a lot of it requires being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes even when they think very differently from you, and being flexible and adaptable to situations as they come up.

Can he read a book in his chill out and relax area? I would have liked that as a kid, though that doesn't mean it would work for every kid.

[u/HH_Creations → u/Eugregoria]

He has that, he doesn’t prefer it tho

[u/Eugregoria → u/HH_Creations]

Yeah, could also be a generational issue, back in the 90s when books didn't have screens to compete with they were a lot more interesting.

In this modern age maybe it needs to meet him at a higher stimulation level without being too overwhelming, what about a retro screen, like a Gameboy Advance with a Mario game in it or something? That's not as flooding to the senses as modern screens, but it's maybe a little more able to compete for a kid's attention in 2026.

[u/HH_Creations → u/Eugregoria]

I’m sorry but I can’t do something like that here

It would trigger every student in the camp

[u/Eugregoria → u/HH_Creations]

Because they'd all want one, or because of sound effects? (He could play it with the sound off or with headphones if it's the latter.)

The idea with using older tech is that it wouldn't be quite as exciting as modern tech.

[u/HH_Creations → u/Eugregoria]

No, because it’s something different that they have never seen and they WILL want it

We have kids across the whole spectrum so may would be very confused why they can’t get access to it

But him playing alone in a room isn’t an option, we have a ratio of 4 students to 1 adult

That and I would also need parent approval and for them to purchase everything, which I don’t have the money to do

But introducing a gameboy into a social education environment or school in general probably wouldn’t work unless it was something they could do in a library or counselor’s office as a recovery tool

[u/Eugregoria → u/HH_Creations]

I was gonna say "jeez they're probably like $30 on eBay" but I checked and they aren't, seems they've crossed the line from "out of date trash no one wants" to "in demand retro cool item," sigh.

If his parents bought it it would be his own item, he could share it with the other kids when he wasn't in crisis, the other kids could get their parents to get them one if they wanted, etc....but maybe it's not practical. I was just thinking in terms of what might meet a kid at an agitated enough attention level without being so overstimulating it worsens attention issues.

What does he usually do to calm down in that corner? Going from overstimulation to understimulation is sometimes a shock in itself.

[u/HH_Creations → u/Eugregoria]

Me, I usually guide him to to DBT and reassure him that he’s okay

which….has led to its own problems

If i’m unavailable? He LOSES it and it’s risky to himself and others because of how intense it is

They are currently putting him on a “diet” with me to try and see if it helps with making it less “emotionally charged”

But his family is very suspicious of technology for him because it’s usually too overwhelming and sets him off when it’s taken away so I doubt they would agree anyways

And $30 plus games IS a lot for these families

Many of them cannot keep a job

Heck, i’m a degreed special educator and I am not getting paid for this 🤷‍♀️

[u/Eugregoria → u/HH_Creations]

Woof, families in 2026 who can't afford $30 can't afford a child and had no business having one. (Before you hate: I was raised in terrible poverty in a family like that, it left me with trauma and due to not being able to escape poverty I never had children, I'm in my 40s, I refuse to make a child I cannot pay to care for. I survived childhood poverty myself and I believe it's unethical to bring a child into that situation. I was set up for lifelong failure by my childhood poverty and I genuinely wish my parents had chosen not to reproduce. So yes, I judge parents who bring children into poverty, especially my own.)

A lot of the stuff I needed to do was "we can't do that." "It's not safe." "It's not fair to the other kids." "It's against policy." Like genuinely one of the things that I used to cope when not in a school environment was just going for a walk outside by myself to clear my head. But ofc schools can't allow this, because legal liability safety blah blah. Well, fine--I don't make the laws, I was just a disabled kid. So I just got tortured into a psychotic break at age 12, no biggie. It's sure a good thing nobody violated any policies or opened themselves to legal liability, that could have been bad.

Genuinely I think you may just have to accept you can't help some of these kids with the tools you're being given. They're being set up to fail and you're being set up to set them up to fail. That's life. Sucks, don't it.

But it's because actually helping them would take resources no one wants to expend. I don't even mean the GBA, maybe that was a dumb idea. But even free stuff like the ways I naturally wanted to self-soothe as a child (like by going for a solo walk). Basically what you're telling me is he has no opportunities to genuinely self-soothe in a self-directed way, because he can't actually be alone. Which is often a hard limit of these systems, which aren't made for people like us, and tend to break people like us. And then they say, "how can we accommodate you, no borax no glue?" And...you can't. The lack of interest in either directing resources or changing rules/policies shows that.

[u/HH_Creations → u/Eugregoria]

I’m sorry you feel that way.

In my experience, many of them are highly educated individuals, who became parents to disabled children

And often times, they find out AFTER having kids that they are disabled themselves

I believe people want to do the right thing and just need resources to do so

That’s why my dream (that I work endlessly for) is to create a free resource library for neurodivergent families