We need help with discipline for our 18 son!

Post Reply New Topic

Hello All,
My husband and I are new to all of this. Our oldest son who is 18 will be takin his testing for Asperger's in August but the doctor already said that more than likely he does have it just don't know the severity level. He constantly disobeys, argues, backtalks and disrepects us. He is the most well mannered young man around anyone else. We are at our witts end because we just found out about Asperger's a few months ago. I have been tellin my husband for the past 4 years something was different about our son. He had been diagnosised with ADHD and OCD and he does have anger issues.

We don't know what to do and we are gettin so frustrated. We don't go back to see the doctor until his testing.

Any parents out there or even teens that can help us please do. We will NOT give up on our son! But it is startin to mentally wear us out!

Thank you so much!

Sorry if I need to give examples of things let me know. We don't know where to go from here. I haven't been able to find any support groups in my area yet just a friend of mine who's children have Asperger's and she told me about this website.
Thanks!

Whenever I see this combination, I get a red flag for receptive/expressive or pragmatic speech issues or social communication disorder. I wonder if the Doc is adding something to evaluate these deficits to the evaluation. (i.e. OWLS-II, TOPS-2 adolescent, SDLT - A, CELF, and there are others). If this is the case, then addressing this issue and improving communication would help resolve the family arguments.

He might become less angry once he has a diagnosis as he will have a better understanding of why he feels the way he does. His anger issues might be more due to frustration more than anything else. Of course, many teenagers are rude and badly behaved towards their parents whether they have AS or not.

Can I ask when and in what circumstances he disobeys? Is it when you ask him to do something, or tell him to stop doing something? Some people (me included) have problems with transitions between one activity and another, for example going to bed or changing from one activity to another. Do problems arise on family outings or activities or on a one to one basis?

No wonder you are exhausted with this, I hope we can give you some advice. I too was a very difficult teenager, but as an adult I am very different and have a good relationship with my parents so there is lots of hope.

I'm going to try to be civil.

I lived in sheer hell for most of my younger life because my parents were obsessed with such concepts as "respect", "obedience", and "backtalking".

They had no idea that I need things to be explained to me logically, IE WHY I "have to" do something, or WHY XYZ is important, and appeals to their own authority didn't cut it.

Perhaps your son is much the same way

One of the basic diffence in AS is not know you are disobeying or disrepecting. You have to know your parents want to be obeyed and repected. And read the nonverbal signs. Help him learn give good reasons becase i said so will not work on someone with AS. How about treat your son as an adult and not a kid and you wondor why he backtalks as you put it. Get off your power trip he does not see it or if by logic he does see it good for him for not backing down on a unfair
task. Your son is his own person not a carbon copy of you. End rant heeh And yes i have AS so i know of what i speak.

Umm well I hate to say it but he is 18, could it be you guys are trying to possibly put too many limits on him? I mean legally with him being 18 he does not necessarily have to listen to obey everything you guys say. I mean at the age of 18 you should be more concerned with helping him learn how to survive in what people call the real world....or help him with alternatives like SSI if he can't function well enough for a job. But the focus should not be on trying to get him to obey you at the age of 18...legally that is an adult for the most part.

I mean think back to when you were 18..

I don't have an older child so I am not where you are (yet), however, I just want to give you some encouraging words that it does get easier. My husband has 2 members in his family with ASD and they have both gotten better over time.

Also, since your son is legally an adult, I would insist that he find a job, any type. He needs to transition to adulthood, and part of adulthood comes with responsibility. He needs to work and he needs to contribute to the household, until he is able to move out. I have 3 children, and as much as I love them dearly, my mind is already thinking ahead on how to help them be independent adults.

I think that since he's 18, he's legally an adult so you should consider getting him SSI if he can't function well enough to get a job, and if he's capable of getting a job, you should get him set up with programs that help people with disabilities get jobs, and keep them with the help of a job coach. You're not going to be around forever to help him in life, so you really should think about getting him set up to where he can live independently, or as independent as he can.

Also, so that you know - the difference in outside behavior vs behavior in the home is not at all unusual and is a good sign. It means a couple of things: your son feels that home is a "safe" place, and that your son is capable of "holding it in" for a period of time. I am guessing that period of time is pretty limited, though (If DS is at school too long in one day it will come out there.) These are things you can build on as you develop skills.

Hang in there, having a kid you don't know how to help is tough. Keep in mind that autism is a developmental delay, so he may biologically be 18, but he's emotionally and socially somewhere less than that. If you figure out what "age" he really is, and set your expectations accordingly, all of you will have an easier time. 18 is a difficult time for many kids on the spectrum: they're suddenly thrown into a world with a lot of change and a lot of expectations, and they don't do well with either.

There are some stickies at the top of this board that may be helpful to you; suggested reading and the Parenting Index. Also, one of our members wrote an e-book at www.asdstuff.com that many of us found helpful. Autism Speaks has a 100-day kit for the recently or about to be diagnosed, it's geared more towards younger children, but it's still useful: http://www.autismspeaks.org/family-serv ... m-tool-kit

I'd do a LOT of reading if I were in your shoes; if it turns out to be autism, there is a shift in thinking you will need to make. We changed our approach in parenting almost entirely and it has really helped.

As you may have noticed, no one has given you the magic bullet for how to discipline a kid with ASD. Most of us have found (as I am guessing you have too) that discipline is not very effective. The troubles need to be addressed at the front end by overcoming communication barriers, addressing triggers, reducing frustrations, etc. instead of on the back end with consequences for undesired behavior. I have recently become a big fan of Dr. Ross Greene author of "The Explosive Child". He goes into detail about a means for communicating with kids (although at 18 your son is hardly a kid) who have challenging behaviors. You have a big learning curve ahead of you but you still have an opportunity to improve things for your son. Keep reading here, there is a whole lot of good info!

Part of the problem may be delayed maturity development. He may now be going through what he should have at 14. It's common for parents of AS kids to be excessively controlling for their age, and it doesn't work so well as an adult. He needs room to make his own mistakes (as long as they won't ruin him) like other 18y/os.

Well to start off let me say Thank you for all of your advice. I never knew I would get this much help. As far as my son goes he is 18 but we don't think his mental level matches his age. He does have a job. He has held this job since he was 16. In dec he will have been there for 2 years. So holding a job is not the problem. And we know he is 18 but he has not graduated high school yet. He will do that next may 2013 so as long as he lives in this house he will have rules to go by. We are not in anyway on a power trip or think he is a carbon copy of either me or his daddy. But regardless of age as long as he lives under our roof he will have rules and there will be discipline. We have a 7 yr old boy that we think may have Asperger's as well so for him to see his brother NOT get ANY discipline makes it harder on us.

When it comes to him not minding or disobeying here are some examples: He brought home an F on his report card. His phone was taking from him. It was giving back 1 week later with limitations that he had to ask permission before he used it. He never once followed what we asked of him. My husband has been asking him for 2 years to clean his room. He says he can't clean his room when we aren't home or it is boring and he can't stay focused. He does have ADHD and does at this time take medicine for it. I guess in our minds those are simply task and don't understand why he has such a hard time following them.

We do not tolerate disrespect our household. Me and my husband were raised on strong southern baptist beliefs. So when my son tells me he is tired of my attitude when all I have said is 'Why didn't you do the dishes like I asked you too?".....That to me is disrespectful. We don't understand why he has no trouble respecting anyone else but us. We have started trying to explain ourselves a little more now when we try to explain to him why you can't say certain things and stuff like that. He does take things very literal.

I will let my husband read what everyone has said and then as a joint effort we can help our son transition from a kid to an adult that will be able to live a full life. This is a BIG change for us. For our whole family. Especially if it turns out that both boys may have it. I will ask the doctor about those other testing that someone mentioned in an earlier post. I will be checking into those stickies and that website that someone else posted. My friend told me this website and that it has helped her and her boys and I am hoping that we can get that same help. And you are right no one gave me the magic receipe that I was hoping for. I figured that it would all be trial and error with the help of some parents and young adults that have been there done that kind of thing. We need to know what to do to get in his head so we will know how to talk to him and treat him so that we are not frustrating him. He has a hard time expressing his feelings in words and tends to write them to us in a letter. So that helps us. So we are willing to take advice to help us out but I am asking that no one talk down to us and tell us we are doing a bad job. We just found out about this maybe 4 months ago and we are still trying to learn. Thank you again for everyone's help and advice.

If he has a job and wants his phone he can pay his own phone bill (but then you should never feel entitled to ever take his phone away), if it's not just a Summer job and he is working year round that may be why his grades are poor. This may be hard to understand but he may need help cleaning his room, he probably feels overwhelmed and doesn't have the organizational skills to get it done and keep it that way. If he starts paying rent unless it's a health hazard, he's attracting bugs, it smells real bad or it extends into other areas of the house I'd let it go. He's old enough to be doing his own laundry and if he doesn't want to help with the family dishes he should at least wash the ones he's eaten off of.

"bored" is a word I hear all the time from Aspies (and from parents who say their aspies use it) It typically doesn't mean "bored" or "boring," it's a way of saying "I can't put into words what the real problem is."

I should also note that when I said your son is delayed, I didn't mean that he wasn't smart - people on the spectrum may or may not have a cognitive delay, but their social abilities are behind. He may well be more intelligent than he is able to express; the language skills may not have caught up to his thinking skills.

If your son has aspergers, he has what is primarily a communication disorder. He probably literally meant what he said when he said he was tired of your attitude and may not have meant it disrespectfully; this is common with people on the spectrum. While I think it's important to correct my son when he says something out of line (and often it takes many corrections,) I try not to take it any more personally than I would if he were a foreign traveler who didn't speak much English, because the issue is the same.

See http://www.asha.org/public/speech/devel ... matics.htm
and http://www.ncld.org/ld-basics/ld-aamp-e ... e-function

Here's an article on behavior that I think covers it pretty well: http://www.iidc.indiana.edu/?pageId=440

Nobody is suggesting that you let your kids run the house or that your plan be to ignore hurtful language - just that the traditional methods of managing behavior often just don't work well for people on the spectrum; I think this is what the adults on the spectrum who posted here are trying to tell you.