Getting dragged in by classmates

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That's what we are doing and so far it is working. Once we had our "issue" he became much more aware that sometimes he has no idea what is going on and that he can easily misunderstand things. Sometimes he ends up asking me very embarrassing things that most moms of 13 year olds probably NEVER get asked, but we both would rather have that happen in the confines of our relationship instead of in the midst of his peers. The trick is to be totally non-reactive when the question is asked and to answer it as matter-of-factly as you would if he asked "Mom, what does photosynthesis mean?" I will admit there have been times when I didn't know what "it" meant either. Thank goodness for Google!

LOL, it took me MONTHS to find an acceptable explanation of why the C is squared in E=MC2; we pretty much had to cover relativity in fairly exacting detail to get there - can't wait for the day when DS starts correcting his college professors...

I will also say this: I am totally unsuccessful at being nonreactive for things that trigger me, even though it is the way to go.

The reason I'm mentioning this is that sometimes I think special needs parents feel like they have to do everything perfectly...but it turns out that despite his challenges, my son is in some ways more resilient than an NT kid. We recovered and moved on - we've found as parents that what it takes is to carefully label your own behavior as wrong and inappropriate and apologize and accept consequences, just as we'd expect for our son.

YES! THIS! I do this do. I screw up, I apologize. A older mom (to NT kids, but not relevant here) once said: I think part of being a good parent is also showing them that we are people, not superhuman. Kinda off topic maybe, but important.

I feel the pressure of being a special need parent is getting to me at this point, not only due to this story, but it adds to it. I feel like I need to explain every little thing to his teachers and caregivers, to other parents; because I feel like I'm always the usual suspect to people who just don't understand Aspergers. Can I blame them? Maybe not. Does it make every little incident a lot more stressful than it needs to be? Definitely so.

Oh, momsparky, you are so lucky! I had to answer the question: "Mom, what does c*m mean?" He had gathered it didn't mean "move yourself over here," but he was unable to figure out what, exactly, it did mean. That lead to other conversations that I know I never had with my parents! It also made me realize how many things our kids are exposed to that we have no control over. For the literally minded, and for those with pragmatic issues, it just adds a whole other layer.

I have apologized to my kids since they were toddlers. It was the one thing that I think damaged me the most from my childhood. My father was very volatile and sometimes completely out of line. I knew he was out of line. But he never said anything to acknowledge it or apologize and I think the emotional scars would have been much less if he would have acknowledged that he was out of line and said he was sorry. I wouldn't call myself volatile, but I do make mistakes.

I know what you are talking about. I don't have this problem so much with my son anymore, but I do with my daughter (9 in 4th grade). I have been trying really hard this year to simply stop explaining. Well, at least to parents. I still explain when necessary to her teachers because she is mainstreamed without supports and sometimes I just need to make sure they are seeing her clearly. There has only been once this school year that I couldn't help myself. We were at a birthday party and she went into complete shut down mode because of the environment, including selective mutism. I couldn't figure a way out of not explaining that. But for the rest of it, I am really trying hard to just let her be her with no explanations.

It may be different for me, I understand, because my daughter is mild in her presentation at this point and usually only looks "quirky" to others (unless, like at the party, she completely loses her ability to compensate). But I have decided people will either need to accept her as quirky with no explanation....or not. She has 2 good friends. One I am pretty sure has ADHD and one who has a twin who may either have at least a foot on the spectrum or ADHD, or both, so I have found their parents to be pretty accepting. They actually seem relieved that I do not mind the hyperactivity and impulsiveness at all. They both used to be very cautious when dropping the kids off to play and I recognized their nervousness. It's the nervousness of "do I say something, or do I keep my mouth shut and hope everything goes OK?"

My son also has all quirky friends. I only know 2 of the kids parents (because he doesn't hang out with the other kids outside of school yet), and it has been the same with them. A kind of unspoken, shared relief to know that their kid has a friend who doesn't care that they are weird, and parents who don't care either.

I am sure at some point, I will have to deal with parents of non-quirky kids again. Or something will happen where I will have to try to explain. But for now, I am trying really hard not to, ykwim?

LOL, InThisTogether, we've had those too - in fact, I had to find a children's book about sex because at 5 or 6, DS became fascinated with how babies were made and wanted a detailed explanation of the mechanics. (We found this one, for parents who are in that boat - Mommy Laid An Egg - in the book the kids wind up teaching the parents the "right" words with doodles that were accurate enough to satisfy my son's curiousity without being TMI.)

He was even more interested in how babies come OUT, because in the museums and in picture books the woman is usually split in half and he wondered how that happened.

Fortunately, we didn't run into those kinds of words, but I did have to find a literal way to explain why b**ch is a bad word unless people are using it to describe a mother dog, because unless he knows WHY, he's not going to follow the rule. (I finally explained that it likens women to slaves who can be caged or chained up for the purpose of making babies - he was horrified, but accepted that.) We were also lucky enough that one of his favorite teachers who we were friends with outside of school - so when that stage of kids calling everything they don't like "gay" came around, I was able to frame it in terms of a family he knew and a person he respected.

It is very, very hard to balance the insatiable need for information with TMI...but we've managed somehow.

Sorry if this derails the OP's post, but I figure many of us deal with this stuff.

That's a great attitude. I want to get there too. I'm stuck in a 'you must understand my child'-mode. It's draining and pointless. But I can't seem to shake it. Partly probably because neuroscience is my special interest. And partly because I want people to understand his behavior. But then when I disclose, it can backfire as well. It would be easier if I could just accept the understanding vs misunderstanding / judging as something I have little control over.


On the contrary, I like the derail.

You will get there. I am a year "ahead" of you chronologically (though my daughter was diagnosed young...at 2, so I might be even "further" ahead in terms of time span since diagnosis), and I am only just getting there. It still takes a lot of mental energy on my part. I have spent the last 7 years hyper-vigilant and explaining everything to everyone. Honestly, it is a hard habit to break. I just sometimes think that people wouldn't even notice some things that I obsess over, or if they did notice, it would be a momentary "hmmmm...." whereas I almost imagine people walking around for hours thinking about the last quirk they saw. Plus, I sometimes feel like it makes me look neurotic when I painstakingly explain something so as to provide someone with "understanding," when perhaps from their perspective, it was nothing but a tiny blip on the radar. IOW, I have come to wonder if my attempts at explaining everything to everyone only draw more attention to her quirks and missteps, and maybe even make issues out of things that may have gone largely unnoticed or easily forgotten in the big picture.

It is perhaps a bit easier, too, because she has learned some self-advocacy skills (with my help and her exceptional school psychologist she had the last 2 years). She actually sat with her 2 new friends this year and explained to them "If I don't meet your eyes, it means I need some time to myself. I'm not mad." She loses eye contact and becomes mute when she starts getting overloaded, and usually the 2 girls just kept coming up to her, crowding her, asking what was wrong, etc. Which only made her feel more overloaded. Her explanation seems to have worked for them, so far be it for me to interfere and think I need to explain more than that.

It's hard though. I have to remind myself all the time. They had a school assembly-type thing recently. To demonstrate the dances they learned in gym class. Her friends did not stand by her. I felt bad....until I realized that she didn't feel bad. She was smiling and enjoying herself. To a degree, oblivious to the kids around her, but smiling and happy. She got a little flappy. And I started looking at the other parents to see if anyone was watching her. No one was. Not the parents. Not the kids. Then, other kids crowded around her and I wondered if I should go retrieve her and move her more to the edge of the group. But I didn't. And she did fine. There she was, in the midst of all the 4th graders, managing herself without any help from me. Quirky? Yes. Requiring explanation? Apparently not!

As a disclaimer: I may be back 3 weeks from now with a totally different attitude. It is easy to feel on top of the world when things are going well. But experience tells me that one day, something will happen to knock me down a peg. So, I think I shall just enjoy this while it lasts!