One thing I’ve learned as an autism mom is that behaviors are communication

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]So, my son got suspended last week for biting an aide at school.

[00:00:05]School's over and he is now half days in ABA. Yesterday, he did bite an RBT. That is one of his helpers, his therapist at ABA.

[00:00:17]Sawyer doesn't love change. It's one of the biggest things we're working on and the staffing changed was very quickly because there was an emergency. And from what I've gathered, it was a little bit hectic and I think it put him into fight or flight and he was confused and he bit down on his RBT.

[00:00:34]Biting somebody is never okay. Hurting somebody is never okay. One of the comments I got on my other video about the suspension is how do we deal with punishments at home. So, like I said in my other video, there's accommodations for his punishments because of his disability. If this was my typical child, they would have lost their tablets for days and days. They would have had chores. There would have been probably some academic stuff. Maybe there would have been some running or some something big and there would have been a lot of conversations and they would have lost a lot of stuff because hurting somebody at that kind of level is a big deal.

[00:01:18]Sawyer, when he got home, he lost YouTube. That was his big punishment. He had to write an I'm sorry letter to his aide and he he did have a 3-minute timeout and then I did make him read five pages in his book.

[00:01:36]And today, he will have other small consequences like that. We will be talking again about hurting people and he will have more more academic stuff he has to do and he has lost privileges on his iPad as well.

[00:01:52]So, as you can see, it is different than my typical kids cuz it has to be.

[00:01:57]It has to be different. He does not fully grasp what's going on. I do believe he will one day, um or at least get close to it. But this is what's going on in our home. Autism is no joke. This is hard. Autism is so hard.

[00:02:15]His understanding of the situation is so hard. And so, that is what's going on. And I just wanted to share.