My son has Aspergers so any advice is appreciated

[bleedingheart]

He of course struggles with social interaction.

Unlike some Aspies, he rotates between obsessive interests. He really likes social order topics. So Ants, Bees, and Wasps are fascinating to him. He normally rotates the topics given the season. He adores computer games with complicated rules and where he can build societies to his liking.

On the outside he appears very normal and very rarely to people pick up on his issues. In fact, he has been labeled "the little professor" and my friends and stranger will tell me..."boy he is such a smart kid"...
But if he has to transition to something he gets really mad and can't handle it.

His full diagnosis is Aspergers, OCD, and depression

The problems we are facing lately are:

troubles understanding slang and the body language kids use when they are together

understanding why people pick on each other and how not to react..I found him at the after school program under a table recently and we discusssed how this wasn't a good strategy for dealing with people.

in school he struggles with writing and reading...his concrete learning style does not lend itself to inferences or getting in touch with his feelings...


The one good thing is that his love of computer games is one bridge to communication with other kids. So he has had one friend come over and they played on the computer for three hours...now I know that is not ideal but it is a start.

[idgiehkt]

1. not much advice, just empathy

I had a horrible, horrible time with this one:
"understanding why people pick on each other and how not to react" when I was growing up. I have probably just learned how to deal with this stuff in the last few years. I could not take the advice people gave me because I did not understand the behavior in the first place. I had to understand the concepts from the bottom up, from a psychological perpective, before I could learn ways to react that did not make me a target. I don't know why on earth that is true. I found it positively infuriating when people would say "don't let it get to you" or "don't let them get the best of you" or don't let people know what your soft spots are because they will go for them every time"...I just wanted to scream WHY-WHY-WHY? Why do people act like this? Why do they want to hurt people's feelings, hit their 'soft spots' etc etc. I couldn't make heads or tales of it. It wasn't until I started 12 step groups and therapy and reading about transference and projection and compartmentalization that I began to understand the behavior, it was hopeless for me as a child because I didn't understand what motivated it so any answers people gave me like those above sounded very shaming to me and like I was being blamed for someone else's behavior. My problem was compounded by the fact that alot of this behavior was coming from my father, because he liked to do things like interrupt me every time I tried to start a sentence until I would run to my room crying. He had quite a bit of fun at my expense, and my mother would always say some variation of 'don't let him get to you' or 'don't let him know he's getting to you'. That was either way too complex or not nearly complex enough an explanation. What I really needed was a sane rational explanation of why my father enjoyed hurting my feelings and humiliating me so much. Sorry I have veered into such a personal topic here, I just empathize so deeply with the feeling of not being able to understand the motivations behind bullying behavior. I really didn't have a grasp on it til I started reading Alice Miller, particularly "Thou Shalt Not Be Aware", and "For Your Own Good" when I was in my mid-twenties. There I found a rational explanation of why people bully and transfer their pain to others that they can't get rid of any other way, and why children act out behaviors they can't articulate. I don't know what help this might be at all, except that because he is so intelligent it might help him to have a sophisticated explanation.

One that a friend in a counseling group gave me was "Hurt people hurt" i.e. hurt people hurt others. I always try to remember this, if I can, when it comes to bullying behavior. I think aspies are very vulnerable to it for some reason, although I don't know what it is that makes it so obvious that we have these vulnerabilities. I don't think that we can "hide" them like other people can. My heart really goes out to him. I honestly do not think that these group situations will benefit the aspie child that much...they were torture for me and I am still the same, if not more isolative socially, than I was as a child, so they did not 'change' my natural tendencies toward introversion. He may be very comfortable with adults and do just fine with them. He may never be comfortable with kids his own age; the fact that they are calling him 'the little professor' tells me he might already have those tendencies.

[lumberjack_jeff]

5. Your post is a perfect example of why I love my son.

I try not to play favorites, but my son with autism is the most honest, conscientious and kind person I know.

Explaining to him why people are mean will be a challenging conversation. "Hurt people hurt" is useful, but incomplete. The reality is that people are often cruel. Read "stranger in a strange land". This is irrational, I know, but there are times when he makes me embarrassed to be neurotypical, and thus have something in common with the bullies.

My only advice for the OP is to seek opportunities for one-on-one social interaction. The one-on-one dynamic is much more forgiving of people's uniqueness.

[bleedingheart]

8. I have explained to my son that some people are cruel

I have also explained that some people do hurt others because that is how they are treated at home...it is just too hard for him to understand.

[bloom]

11. I remember

when my son was 2-3 and we were at a park and I was trying to give him the warning that was suggested that parents do - about strangers and how it just did not compute with him.


Some of the issues you described remind me of my son (who is working on his doctorate now). He was such a bright kid- and interested in so many wonderful things. He was also picked on - left out and such. (He was never diagnosed with anything - it really didn't occur to me that he would be). He made the conscious decision his own self in middle school that he would work on being sociable. While he will never be the "life of the party" type of person - I think that this has helped him in life.

[yankhadenuf]

14. I have noticed that too!

That must be a wonderful by-product of autism! My 26 year old is sweet and naive (as long as he takes his meds, that is), and also has the highest moral character O8) (and a very good sense of humor... sometimes he takes my jokes too literally, then he will turn around and say something literal and fool me because he is really just joking! :silly: )

[Deja Q]

2. He sounds a lot like me when I was a child...

Thank you for posting that.

I wish I could give more than empathy; all I can say is find ways to keep him trying.

I could surmise the depression is brought about by the Asperger's Syndrome. Aspies often develop depression, anxiety, and other conditions because of the problems with social interaction (and sometimes other related factors.)

[bleedingheart]

9. today he asked a kid who nice to him and is apparently a friend to him

"are you still my friend"...my husband spent some time explaining that while we understand why he does that, friendship is implied by behavior and that asking people to confirm this is not something that you want to do...

He isolates himself, he tries hard but I really think he is so lost in emotions he doesn't understand and isn't quite sure of himself. It does depress him and he gets so upset if he is corrected because of his perfectionist nature. If we try to help him with piano, he will start saying.."I am no good"...and meanwhile he is playing beautifully but we want to help him with one small note....it can be so upsetting for us by the end of the day because we feel so bad for him...it can also be frustrating.

[hunter]

3. In school I was a prime target for bullies because I was so reactive.

Come up quietly behind me, flick my ear, and I'd punch you in the face. Then you had an excuse to beat me up. I hated school. I got shoved into muddy gullies, pushed down stairs, stuffed into lockers, my stuff stolen, gum put in my hair, my bicycle vandalized... the list of things kids do to torture others is quite impressive.

I still don't get it, but I won't be bullied anymore. Bullying me is about as much fun as punching a brick wall. I wish I had some advice. A lot of who I am is scar tissue. I was lucky that there were always adults around to explain that my tormentors were wrong, and maybe give me some clues on how I might avoid trouble. I was remarkably blessed that I didn't get much idiotic "Be a Man!" advice. I was a small skinny kid, and fighting back really wasn't a realistic option. When they divided us up by weight for wrestling in P.E., me and another kid were the lightweights, we only had one another to wrestle, and when we did the entire class was laughing until the teacher took pity on us, stopped the match and made everyone run laps. After which I got beat up, of course, because it was obviously my fault everyone had to run laps. I think PE teachers are a little wiser these days, but 35 years ago there was still a lot of stupid militaristic stuff. Be a Man, well fuck that, I'll be me.

Ants are fascinating. An ant colony is best thought of as a single organism. A well established ant colony actually has some intelligence to it -- it thinks very slowly, but it does think. People? Sometimes I don't know about them.

[Deja Q]

4. !

:hug:

Your post hit a chord with me... thank you for posting it.

:hug:

[hunter]

6. !

:hug:

[Outrider]

10. Same here

I remember those fun days all to well. I was easy to get a reaction from so I was one of the "targets" in my class. Fortunately, or unfortunately for my discipline record, I was also one of the bigger kids in my class and even though I couldn't defend my self verbally I more than made up for it physically. It still makes me mad that very early on I was picked out as a trouble maker by the school and no matter if I started a fight or not I was somehow always the root of the problem and received the majority of the punishment. I am glad that I held to my own code and never intentionally tried to cause harm to others because I could have done some serious harm if I had tried.

[Pithlet]

7. My son hasn't been integrated into the mainstream class yet

So we haven't had to deal with that so much, yet. We've had some issues with other children in extended family calling him weird, but I don't think he picked up on that, and they all live far away so it isn't a daily occurrence. I wish I could offer advice. I'm glad to hear that he's at least had some experience with a friend coming over and sharing his interest. That's a very good start.

[yankhadenuf]

12. Meetup Groups for Asperger's

There are many Meetup Groups for Asperger's... find one close to your home , and make sure that you join one that is designated for children OR adult Asperger's (depending on your child's age group). I could not find one, so I started my own private Meetup Group for adult Asperger's.


http://aspergers.meetup.com/about/

[yankhadenuf]

13. Center for Autism and Related Disabilities C.A.R.D.

Son did not meet his first other Aspie until the age of 22! The neuro-psychologist that evaluated him had a group at one time , and my son thoroughly enjoyed this weekly meeting with them. When the neuro-psychologist discontinued his group sessions , then we found a Center for Autistic Related Disabilities (C.A.R.D.) near us. The C.A.R.D. meets two or three times of month with adult Asperger's and mainly deals with socialization and self-help issues together.

I started a Meetup club just for the fun stuff, and we meet once a month at a bowling alley, movie theatre, restaurant, etc. My Meetup is for the Adult Asperger's parents too. I have the options to keep my Meetup private and screen the folks who are pending members (I require that they be adults with OFFICIAL diagnosis of Asperger's , that way it keeps my group with genuine adult Aspies and their parents). We all really relate to each other very well, including the parents, because we all totally understand each other's lifestyle and needs. We parents share a lot of information with each other, such as medical, nutritional, legal, educational, and governmental bureacratic info.