“I hate you.” “I hate Grandpop.” “You never help me.” When your child finally has words and the words sting, it can feel crushing. In this episode of The Autism Mom Coach, Lisa reframes those moments through a truth about verbal autistic kids: for them, language is a blunt instrument, especially when they’re emotionally triggered. Through two stories (a client’s son melting down over a broken printer and her own son declaring he hated being at her house, really about a Millennium Falcon), Lisa shows that these harsh words are a fast, unfiltered way to express feelings, not a verdict on you or your relationship.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Why verbal autistic children often use language as a blunt instrument, reaching for the quickest, most dramatic words to express displeasure rather than the nuanced version a neurotypical filter would produce.
- Why a moment of harsh words is not a teachable moment, and how reacting, defending yourself, or lecturing tends to escalate things and can even invite more of the behavior.
- How to neutralize the charge by reframing what’s happening in real time (“my child is saying words because they’re upset”), so you can stay calm now and address communication later from a clean, grounded place.
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Transcript
You are listening to episode 156 of The Autism Mom Coach: When Your Kid Says Mean Things. Welcome to the Autism Mom Coach podcast. I am your host, Lisa Candara. I am a lawyer, a life coach, and most importantly, I am the full-time single mother of a teenager with autism. In this podcast, I am going to share with you the tools and strategies you need so you can fight like hell for your child without burning out.
Let’s get to it.
Hello everyone, and welcome to the podcast. I am so glad you are here, and I hope you’re doing well. I wanna start off this episode with two stories, one from my own and one from a client that really illustrates what I’m trying to say here. A couple of weeks ago, my client’s child had a snow day, and he was really intent on printing something out so that he could color it.
He is a big map aficionado. However, my client was also working from home that day. The printer is in her office, and it either wasn’t working or she just wasn’t able to give him access to it because she was working. So then he s- decides that he wants to go to Grandpop’s house, and he loves Grandpop, and when he goes to Grandpop’s house, he’s usually there for hours.
But two hours later, my client gets the call from Grandpop that the child wants to get picked up. This was really unusual, but Grandpop didn’t seem to be phased by it, and she went and she picked up the child. And when he got into the car, the child said, “I hate Grandpop.” And this was really startling for my client because they had such a close relationship, and she was trying to understand what happened that he wanted to come home so quickly.
Well, roll it back. Her child was trying to print a map. He was unable to do it at home, but he knows that Grandpop has a printer, so he got himself transported to Grandpop’s house, and lo and behold, Grandpop’s printer isn’t working either. So obviously the child’s frustrated because he had a mission, and that mission was aborted.
And so his mom gets called. He’s now in the car coming home, and he’s saying, “I hate Grandpop.” That’s story number one. Story number two has to do with my son when he was about six years old. I was divorced from his father at that point, and Ben would go back and forth between my home and his father’s home during the week, because we split custody.
And so one day he gets to my house, and he goes upstairs, and he throws himself on the bed and he says, “I hate being here.” And I’ll tell you, that crushed me. I was just like, “Oh my God.” And I was just so, so upset, and so I went into that over-accommodating mode like, “Oh my gosh, this must be really hard for you, you know, living between two households,” and I’m, like, blubbering on and on.
And he just sits up, and he looks at me. He’s like, “No, it’s not that. Dad has the Millennium Falcon at his house, and I wanted to play with the Millennium Falcon today.” So what do these stories both have in common? And to me, that is a truth about our children with autism who communicate verbally that we need to understand.
For them, language is a blunt instrument, especially when they are emotionally triggered, the words that will come out of their mouth are going to be the words that express to you as quickly and dramatically how they are feeling. “I hate you. I hate Grandpop. I hate being at your house. You are so mean to me when you have a boundary.”
These are the things that your kids are going to say, and what I see a lot of my clients do is jump in and want to say, “No, no, you don’t hate Grandpop. Remember you love Grandpop” and give 10 reasons why we love Grandpop and, “Oh, you don’t hate being here. Look at all these other toys you have. You got the Millennium Falcon at Dad’s house.
We got the Death Star.” Or the client defending themselves like, “I’m not mean to you, I’m just trying to do what’s best for you” and then explaining away her decision-making to her child who’s just upset. So I want to ground you in this. Language for our children is a blunt instrument. We all hoped and prayed and paid for the day when they would finally talk, and for some of our children that does happen, and we are so grateful.
That doesn’t mean that they’re going to start communicating in any sort of sophisticated way. A lot of the ways that our children communicate are quick and to the point, “I want this. Goodbye. I’m leaving. I want to go” and they communicate to get their needs met to express their displeasure quickly. So little boy in the back seat of the car isn’t going to say to mom, “Wow, really a disappointing day.
First I tried to do this at your house, and then I went to Pop’s house, and he didn’t have it, and wow, I’m just really frustrated.” No, he hates Grandpop. Same thing with my kid. Not, “Oh, I wish I had this toy to play with today, but instead I’ll play with something else.” “I hate being here.” And same thing for you.
If you’re setting a boundary, you’re taking away screen time, you’re doing something that your kid does- doesn’t want you to do, they hate you, you’re the worst. They don’t have that in-between filter that would have them come up with something that was like, “You know, Mom, I know you’re really doing the best for me, but right now I’m really frustrated because I really would just love more screen time.”
No, that’s not what they’re going to say, and I know this is frustrating. I know when you finally hear words from your child with autism and those words are, “I hate you,” it can feel pretty crushing. I understand, and we’ve been raised to believe that children who talk like this to their parents are rude and it’s a problem with the child and all of that.
I get it. We get to have standards for our children. We get to have expectations for our children, for sure. However, you are not going to be able to communicate those to your child effectively if you’re reacting to these words. Because if you’re reacting to these words in the moment lecturing your child, first things first, this is not a teachable moment.
If your kid is saying things like this, they’re probably pretty emotionally charged. They’re probably in their own full-out fight-flight. This is not the time that new information is going to penetrate the surface, and even then when you signal to them that these words get my attention and they get me amped up, well, maybe that invites them to say it more.
So you really need to start with this. Words come out of your child’s mouth. That is what’s happening. Okay? That’s what we call a pure circumstance. Not child says he hates Grandpa. Child said words about Grandpa, right? As neutral as you can possibly get it. When you do this, you take the charge out of the words, and then you get to decide, “How do I wanna think about my frustrated five-year-old and how he reacted after disappointment after disappointment today?”
Right? Do I wanna jump down his throat? Do I want to believe he’s a bad kid who doesn’t love Grandpa? But none of this is available to you if you’re taking it personally and reacting to it That’s why it’s so important in those moments when they are saying words that you find triggering, that you are able to reframe those in your mind.
Child is saying words because they’re upset. Child is expressing discomfort in the quickest way possible. This is why it’s so important for you to be able to reframe their words in your mind in real time, and this could be just as simple as, you know, reframing, “I hate you” to they’re really upset, or “You’re annoying” to they need some space.
I just thought of another example where this comes up with my client, where her child says to her, “You’re not doing anything to help me.” Now, this is of course after hours of my client giving her child every option under the sun, trying to help her with her coping skills, trying to co-regulate with her.
But her child is just still feeling so amped up and out of control, and the fact is, Mom can’t make this stop. So the child will say, “You’re not doing anything to help me.” And in that moment, Mom is irate. Like, “What are you talking about? All I do is try to help you.” And she would then start to rattle off all of the things that she’s doing to help, and meanwhile, the child’s still upset.
Now Mom is upset. No good comes from this. So remember, when your kids spout off things that aren’t nice or aren’t true when they are upset, their first job is to not take it or make it personal, not to make it mean that they’re a bad person, a bad kid, that they don’t like you, that they hate their brother or their sister.
In these moments, these words are just a tool for your child to express as quickly as possible how they are feeling. And when you can think about it like that, it’s like, okay, my child with autism who, who struggles generally to communicate, has figured out how to use language in a way to get attention very quickly and to communicate displeasure or disgust very quickly.
Like it or not, that’s a skill, and when you’re coming from this point of view, you are gonna have the calmness and the capacity to help your child find different ways of communicating their angst or displeasure, but not in this very moment. You could wait hours, you could wait a day, you could wait a week to have the conversation, and you’ll be able to have it from a clean place because you’re not going into it with, “I need to talk to you about how disrespectful you are,” because that’s going to set them up and it, it’ll just set everybody off.
Instead, you can bring it up as casual as you can and offer a different solution or way to them that they can communicate how they are feeling. And of course, a lot of this is going to be age-dependent, and by age, I don’t just mean biological age, I mean developmental age, too. All right, final thoughts.
Your child’s words might be blunt and unfiltered or even harsh at times. They are just a way of communicating, and it’s not personal, even if it feels personal, even if it’s directed at you, even if it’s very specifically directed at you. When you can separate your emotions from the words that are coming out of their mouth, you will be better able to help your child communicate in a way that is more effective and appropriate.
All right. That is it for this week’s episode of the show. I hope you found this helpful, and I will talk to you next week
Thank you for listening to The Autism Mom Coach. If you are ready to apply the principles you are learning in these episodes to your life, it is time to schedule a consultation call with me. Podcasts are great, but the ahas are fleeting. Real change comes from application and implementation, and this is exactly what we do in my one-on-one coaching program.
To schedule your consultation, go to my website, theautismomcoach.com/work-with-me, and take the first step to taking better care of yourself so that you can show up as the parent you want to be for your child with autism
