Not All Self-Defense is Equal

One of the things we most feared happening with son #2 came true this weekend. He got big enough and aggressive enough that he can overpower me.

Son #2 has fairly severe autism. He is non-verbal, and smack in the middle of puberty. This is a bad combination. For years we've been able to control his occassional aggression, although control involved physical restraint at times and exhausting battles that could go on for an hour or two. But this weekend, he moved past the invisible line we had been able to maintain, and accomplished what, in plain terms, was a beating. Of me. Even though his dad was in the room and reached us within seconds, he was not able to get son#2 off me for about a minute. Although I recieved no specific injury, and was not in bad shape on the scale of how things could be, I was still left with enough physical trauma to cause several days of depression, stiffness, soreness, and general unwellness. I have been told that beatings, even with little to no outward physical signs, is traumatic to the body and requires recovery. I have now experienced this first hand.

The problem now is what to do. Clearly I would be in big trouble if this happened when no other adult (preferably a big strong one) was around. I have found a real gap in advice and training for parents in this area - it is difficult to find information on physical restraints, and when you do it is all aimed at using containment first and the least possible amount of physcial force. I think that is good - but no training seems willing to talk about what to do at the next level. When containment and low physical force doesn't work.

On the other hand, self-defense training is all about incapacitating your assailant. And while I am confident I could still do that to son #2 if necessary, I want to find something in the middle. I want to find self-defense that seeks first to stop or avoid the force being rained down upon you. I feel like I the tools to handle both lesser and greater attacks, but the serious attack by someone whom you want to avoid hurting as much as possible just isn't addressed by training or literature that I can find.