looking for insight/suggestions

[Guest guest]

My son is a seven year old nonverbal autistic.

We don't have a lot of different behavior problems with him, but right now we're

contending with one huge one.

It surrounds objects. He'll be playing and everything will be fine, and he'll

suddenly go into a frenzy we have dubbed " daffy duck phase " and just start

throwing things, or putting things in places they don't belong. We are

constantly looking for lost objects, some of which are pretty important (my

husbands hearing aid, for instance---worth $1000.oo).

Despite constant supervision, he still manages to do this. There's only so much

" higher ground " in which to store things, especially since there seems to be

nothing wrong with his problem solving skills and he'll drag things to stand on

or just climb to get what he wants. He is pretty adept at figuring out

complicated storage as well...the hearing aid was thought to be safe because it

was in a hard case that requires some manual dexterity to open, and that case

was inside a zippered case which was inside of a zippered bag.

Sometimes objects are just thrown against walls, sometimes they're thrown into

the toilet or the trash, rendering one of our two bathrooms now useless. We've

dug so many things out of the toilet I can't even begin to list them; from

clothing to toys to tweezers, to markers, you name it. Now something's down

there that won't come out and we've even augered. The whole toilet has to come

up. Sometimes they are stashed in one of seemingly endless hiding places he's

managed to find. It has even become part of his bedtime routine to launch

several items out of his room after being put to bed for the night. Worse, he

throws things at his window very hard. We clean room by room and find things,

but usually by accident...not when we need them. He threw a stapler at school

directly at the teacher's computer monitor, so it's happening there too. Of

course, the school is calling it a " safety " issue.

This is not a tantrum out of anger, if anything, he thinks it's funny and will

often giggle uncontrolably when doing it.

The school is concerned, and we are having a hard time at home. It's impossible

to secure everything every second. He ruined an expensive brand new cell phone

of my daughters throwing it in a drink. He has put things into my oven that

have subsequently caught fire because I didn't know they were there and turned

it on. We have removed the overhead light fixture from his room because he

threw a stuffed animal up inside it and it nearly caught fire. He throws things

in the fish tank despite our repeated efforts to fortify it and put it too high

to reach. It just seems like a never ending battle. Has anyone else gone

through this? If so, what did you do?

TM