Hitting is considered an aggressive behavior in autistic children, but it is more often a form of communication. Read on to learn how to identify what the hitting means and how to stop your autistic child from hitting.
Take these steps to stop an autistic child from hitting other people.
How to prevent hitting in children on the spectrum
Understanding why autistic people hit to communicate
Invasion of personal space
Autistic and similarly neurodivergent individuals value their personal space. A reflex in autistic children is to push out unwanted sensory input.
If you enter an autistic person’s space without permission, you have removed their autonomy. Autonomy is the ability to self-govern oneself. An example is if you tried to force an autistic child to hug you and they reacted similarly to a cat that doesn’t want to be held.
Hitting you is their way of enforcing their boundaries. From an autistic perspective, you were in the wrong and they were in the right.
Oftentimes, non-autistic parents invade their autistic children’s space during autism meltdowns or autism shutdowns. These meltdowns are perceived as tantrums because of the hitting, but it is a survival reflex.
By respecting your autistic child’s personal space, you can avoid being hit. You do not need to be right in front of them in order to make a point.
External stimuli
Autistic, ADHD and similarly neurodivergent individuals are often overstimulated and overwhelmed by external stimuli.
There could be an immediate sensory aspect disrupting their self-regulation, which is easy to pinpoint.
More often, however, there is a distant sensory aspect that is harder to figure out. You will need to investigate every aspect of the environment they are in where they are hitting.
At a previous job, my anger instinct was to slam my hands on the table. My office was hot, my coworkers were “scared” of my rocking back and forth stims, and the servers in the room buzzed loudly.
When I was on the sales floor, these feelings didn’t go away. I wanted to throw product, which I couldn’t do. I couldn’t do anything I needed to properly self-regulate. My issue wound up being my employer’s constant technology issues that I couldn’t fix myself.
Although it was not ideal, I had to remove myself from the situation completely in order to avoid self-injurious stimming behavior. It took me months to realize this was the top root of my issue.
Have patience, and you will eventually find what is causing your autistic child to hit. In some environments, you may be able to remove stimuli or move them to a sensory-free room where you slowly reintroduce stimuli.
If the behavior is happening at school, work with their teacher to determine what is happening in the classroom overall during the behavior. Sound can set off autistic people in a snap, especially if they’re already overwhelmed.
How to redirect children with autism who hit
Don’t immediately explain why hitting isn’t okay. Wait until they’re relaxed and not hitting. Don’t require eye contact while you explain, either.
Consider sensory options like Playdough, Kinetic Sand, Mad Mattr, or Thinking Putty. It gives autistics something to hit without harming themselves or others, and without destroying property.
How to teach autistic children not to hit
Reading books that teach emotional regulation and how to identify feelings will help equip autistic children with the tools they need to communicate their needs. Since hitting is communication, you need to help them find alternative ways to communicate their needs.
An autistic child may find a classmate’s constant jokes disrupts their senses and default to hitting, which they may have learned means to stop doing something. (This is one reason why you shouldn’t spank your autistic children, as they cannot distinguish why it’s okay for you to spank them as punishment but it’s not okay for them to hit someone as punishment.)
Figure out what stimuli is causing the hitting, since it is most commonly a reactionary behavior than something done out of malice. Then find a solution to prevent it in the future.
With everything, respect their personal space. If you get hit because you entered their personal bubble, it is on you. They could have been trying to stim, and you were too close for them not to hit you.
While autistic people may struggle with spatial awareness when it comes to them invading other people’s personal space, they do not miss the fact that someone else has entered their personal space. Stimming includes hand flapping and arm swinging, which can be mistaken for hitting. Stimming increases aggressively the more stimulated an autistic person is.
Autistic children who are hitting themselves are typically directing their frustrations caused by the above reasons inwardly, onto themselves. This is most common in autistic children who undergo Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy.
Every autistic person is different. If you need help identifying why your autistic child is hitting, comment below with your situation for a more customized answer.
My son is 15 year old and he just begin not hitting people but objects after he turned 14. When he has his meltdown, he destroy anything and everything in his way. I cannot figure out his triggers. It just happen randomly. I have been dealing with this for a year now. He has never done this before. He is like a different person when it first started. What is your recommendation to stop this behavior? Thanks!
Hi Christine,
Meltdowns never happen for no reason. The triggers could be literally anything, which could take a while to determine them. During an autistic meltdown, we have zero control over our emotions. We struggle to regulate ourselves. What is your son doing before his meltdowns?
Meltdowns cannot be stopped or avoided, as this will only add to the outcome later on. It’s like when you shake a bottle of soda and try to open it without letting it spew. Cooling down a meltdown is a lot like that, and it’s not always for the best. Some sodas will taste flat when opened without spewing when it needed to spew.
The goal should not be to avoid/stop meltdowns — it should be to remedy the triggers. Pay more attention to his behavior before the meltdown. Read and watch videos by autistic people on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram (not their caregivers/parents/etc.).
A trigger can be as extreme as school stress/bullies or as simple as the sensory input of your voice.
As far as objects go, try replacing them with plushies, stuffed animals, etc. Give him a safe outlet for those emotions, like the garage door or his bedroom wall, to toss those soft items at. Get some toys that squeak, etc. Let him pick out what he likes. This way, you accommodate his need to express and regulate his emotions, and release them during the meltdown, instead of encouraging him to bottle it up and redirect that stress inward.
Make sure you don’t force the plushies. Don’t lie, but if you can share how you express yourself sometimes when you’re angry, do that. Autistic people tend to relate things back onto themselves in order to empathize, so anecdotes help! Don’t say, “We don’t throw objects when we’re mad,” or, “This isn’t normal!” Don’t address any of that. Your #1 priority is to first redirect him to a safer way to relieve that pent-up anger, then discuss potential triggers once he is regularly going to the safer route.
I say this to everyone, because it’s true: Autistic children/teens need therapy. Parents never think their children experienced trauma and tend to dismiss/invalidate when they share things. Your autistic child needs someone other than you to talk to about their life, especially since some of those triggers might actually be you. (This is not to come across as an insult; it’s just the truth.)
Autistic adults do not maintain much contact with their parents/caregivers/guardians after they gain independence, because the people who raised them tried to be everything.
You’re not failing as a parent by putting your child in therapy. You’re outsourcing/delegating the role of therapist to an actual therapist so you can keep your sanity and give your child what they need. Use the time they’re in therapy to spend time with just you (nails, hair, at-home spa, nap in the car, whatever you want).
Raising a child takes a village. You deserve a village, too.
So many of these types of articles talk about how to parent the situation, but the reality is that we’ve learned that already, it’s when he’s not under our direct supervision that’s the issue. We can’t teach the whole world how to remove triggers from him, and we can’t seem to explain the situation to him with any sense that he truly understands his actions.
How can he learn to live in the world if the world is what bothers him so often?!