autistic child who spits every 5 seconds

[CathieMM]

I have a little boy with autism. From time to time he goes through phases of behaviors that are socially unexceptable and down right not exceptable. His hitting has been a real problem for going on a year. But now he spits on his hand, on people, on the any and everything in reach. I know that he does not see this as being gross, mean, and as desrespectful as the rest of the world does. He seems to see it as entertainment. I say "seems" because he is non-verbal. It seems to make no differnce when we say not to do this, or give time outs.

To give you a little background, he was recently taken off Respirdol. This med does have give him dry mouth and excessive thirst.  So after around 3 years of being on the med he now has all this excessive saliva. What do I do to help him, my family and all the poor teachers that are constantly being spit on? How do I teach him this is wrong? Then get back to not hitting, and finally focus on learning all the other things that he needs to be learning.

Are we feeding into it by giving him all kinds of attention? Or are we not doing enough to show him how wrong this is?

[CathieMM]

Thankyou so much. That is also in the works.

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

With autistic children many of the common-sense parenting techniques of behavior management will not be as effective as they are with children who do not display such serious developmental disorders. You should enlist the help of a professional who is certified in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), who will come to the school and home and develop a plan for behavior modification.