Hi I'm new - please help me!

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Hi, I'm new and ....

I'm absolutely going out of my mind. Please just listen to me. I have nobody to talk to about these things.

I have a twenty year old son who has tried to kill himself three times, who has flunked out of college twice, who has increasingly manifested all the symptoms of high functioning autism.

Let me give you an example: He has sat next to me trying to complete a paper for a college class for FIVE HOURS and has no more than a page written. Frozen.

He is a perfectionist. He argues incessantly. He is depressed.

He is driving his mother and me nuts. We love him, but....we are both about to lose it.

We have got to get this boy professional help but do not know where to turn?

Are there any excellent residential treatment programs that WORK?

Help. Dear God, somebody...please help.

Thanks.

Welcome to Wrong Planet.

It can get better as we get older. My parents were in a similar situation when I was in high school. I know that isn't going to help you in the here and now but sometimes knowing this can make it easier to deal with the harder parts of life on the autism spectrum.

If you don't get any good leads from this thread, I'd recommend making a more detailed thread in the parents forum.

I certainly can't recommend everything my parents did to me as an aspie. But what you could do is to refuse to provide him with anything other than the very basics from now on--food, clothes of your choosing on his back, and a place to live. Tell him if he wants anything else that he'll have to get out and earn it on his own, and then offer him any help you possibly can toward this end short of doing a job for him.

Earlier there was a thread on "learned helplessness". As unlucky as I was to grow up and live my first thirty-five years in an environment where AS was unknown, I was lucky insofar as the world cut me no excuses for not being able to make it on my own. I think in a lot of cases this isn't happening with younger aspies, and it does them no good. At first, he may hate you for it, but in the long run, it's pretty hard to have any self-respect when you are totally helpless.

Just my thoughts though.

If suicide is a real concern I would suggest getting him immediate professional help regardless of what conditions he may have. If he's a real threat to himself he may need to spend some time in a controlled environment. While that's going on, you can continue to get advice on the other less threatening potentials here. God bless.

I replied in your post on parenting:

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt186967.html

Welcome to WP!

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

Welkome to WP

Mick