Need help with mouthy aspie

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I would like to interject yet again about the dangers of talk therapy for aspie kids, especially for pre-teens. Most therapists out there are blithering idiots with rods shoved up their butts (crass way of saying "uptight"). And there's nothing more frustrating than talking to a shrink you can easily outsmart, and who, at the same time, keeps ramming their personal agenda down your throat. The only thing such therapy did is push me into (ab)using alcohol. I wanted "happy drugs" (antidepressants). But she tried to teach me "natural happiness techniques", which I knew were BS.

In the end, one shot of whiskey I stole from my parents' liquor cabinet gave me more happiness than a whole month of inane talk therapy. Yes, you read that correctly: a therapist made a 12-year-old child turn to drinking! I'm partially glad alcohol was hard to come by; otherwise, I'd start coming to every therapy session drunk .

I also want to reiterate that I'm fine with psychiatrists, who are a type of medical doctors that can get an aspie child the antidepressants he needs. I'm also cool with physical therapists, such as occupational; because they can teach life skills in concrete, practical ways, as opposed to dumb crap like "talking about your feelings" .

Hello

I do see that you are trying to do your best for your child, to prepare him realistically for adulthood.

However, the most valuable thing a parent can give is a sense of self-worth, it's the most effective defense against a hard world. If you don't accept the Asperger's, your not accepting your son, and if you don't accept him, as he is, he won't grow up to accept himself. The biggest problems for adult Aspies are anxiety and depression.

You want your son to fit in because you think it would make his life easier, it would, for a very short time, but he will give himself away, just like we all do, and then what? People he works with, friends, family, relationships, they will all know (and become frustrated, while he will be exhausted), so who will he fool? a stranger on the bus, someone serving him in a shop. Will that really benefit him more than being accepted for the person that he is by his dad?

How do you get an Aspie to do what they don't want to do? Terror works on me and always has, but understanding what the problem is and being allowed to work out how to solve it in a way I can manage works a lot better, and is the way it tends to work in adulthood. Have you explained what all the different jobs in the house are, and that they all need doing, preferably not all by the same person, in a positive way, could you make it a project. Being Aspie doesn't mean you should let him get away with doing as little as possible, he's twelve, lots of twelve-year-olds try that.

Do the other kids in class empathise with the bully or do they know enough to pretend. As an adult I do feel sympathy for him, but that is because I know some children act out because they have had horrible experiences. I wouldn't have felt that way at twelve and I am a nice caring person. I just need to have other peoples problems pointed out to me

Good luck and I'm sorry if this sounded judgmentle.

He likely already knows he is different and doesn't understand why....that is how I felt as a child. I didn't get a diagnoses till adulthood. I myself don't like constant isolation and like to socially interact, but that doesn't mean I don't acknowledge that having aspergers does make me 'different' from neurotypicals who don't have a neurological condition. Also how he feels about the diagnoses would actually be kind of important...makes no sense to disassociate a diagnoses from how you feel about it and how it effects your experience of the world, its kind of a pretty significant thing.

Well perhaps the bully was especially mean to him, any kid would probably have a hard time showing sympathy to a person who's relentlessly bullied and picked on them.

I learned fine motor skills by building model kits. First plastic models and flying rockets. Then flying airplanes. The most challenging ones were Peck Polymers stick and tissue model airplanes. Those are still available today despite several changes in ownership over 40 years. I was lucky enough to buy some of their very first kits.

I'd suggest cultivating Special Interests--maybe one will help with fine motor skills.

Thanks all for the great inputs/ advise

One of those who responded was saying that aspie quirks don't need fixing, the focus should be on nurturing/improving the strengths that your aspie has.

This is more complex, as your aspie grows up, he is aware that he is different, he is not necessarily aware that his quirks are listed in the DSM. My aspie thinks of himself as "science boy", though I think his approach to things fit a legal career more. He loves to talk politics, public policy etc. his positions are based on rules and order, so his opinions skew right, which is fine with me, even though I am more left leaning.

I don't think talking about a diagnosis/ label is helpful at this point, since he thinks of himself as different, and labels classify people into "good" different vs "bad" different. I point out areas that need work, so that it helps him in his goal of being "science man" . We talk of Tesla vs Edison, and how soft skills sometimes trumps raw genius, to further my point regarding team work, empathy, social skills, manners etc.

My big failing is maintaining my cool. He does not assess risk well. that means jumping around playing Thor/optimus inside the house, where he could potentially hurt himself/ others. this leads me to call him names. We do have a lot of talks regarding safety/ consequences etc. He is also getting mouthy, like other pre teen NTs, but he obviously has no sense of hierarchy, which triggers a response from me, after a while of him yelling at me.

My observation is that it takes consistency over a long period of time, 6 months to a year, before you see a change in 1 unwanted behavior. Maintaining patience over such a long period is tough..

So, if anyone has a shortcut/trick to making an aspie GET your point of view , that would be great to know..

You don't seem to be listening. Several autistic adults have already told you that their lives would have been greatly improved with a diagnosis, because we already knew we were different. You don't have the right to keep that information from him about his own neurology. You say you don't think it's helpful, but we are telling you, from years of experience, it would be helpful to him. It's not about labels, it's about understanding himself. If he knew he was autistic, he could learn about autism and therefore himself and how his mind works compared to other people, which is crucial information to have for an autistic person. I learned so much about myself when I was diagnosed several years ago, and I can only imagine how much that information could have helped me decades ago.

Don't be selfish because you are afraid of labels, give your son the information about himself that he deserves to have.

Have you thought about getting help to deal with your anger issues? You sound like you don't understand that the name calling is actually abuse, it's verbal abuse and it's just as damaging as physical abuse. You may think your words are not hurting him but they will be and that pain is going to come right back at you as anger because that is the role model you are presenting him with.

Last edited by bunnyb on 25 Nov 2017, 2:22 am, edited 1 time in total.

I missed that the first time around. You absolutely need anger management if you are losing control and verbally abusing your son. There is no excuse for that, he is a child and you are the adult and responsible for your own behaviour.

Please get some help.

Perhaps you need to accept that there are no shortcuts.
Your son is looking for them because you are looking for them.
Your son is angry because you are angry.
Life is a long slow evolution. Start now letting your anger go. See what difference that makes in your son's behavior. It may surprise you.
There are no shortcuts.

Haha, reminds me.....
when son started to walk around, the hubby had the habit of sighing, loudly, when picking something up from the ground, the little boy did the same, it was so ridiculous and a good lesson not to do that!

I like your insight. You can notice quite a lot. That's great!

On the other hand - think of Einstein or Dirac who were strange and quirky but successful. If your boy likes science, it is great because the world of physicists is the most aspie-friendly society I know! Yes, I know a handful of quite obviously Aspie professors here who are accepted and respected because of what they can do in science, not their soft skills which they often lack.
And, honestly, science is better than law if your thinking is rules-driven. Law has this tricky human factor in it.
But this is something you can use: rules. He seems to like rules, to understand them. You can play on this. No Thor playing inside the house, only outside. One simple chore to do every day. Simple and clear. Clear, just and applicable consequencess of breaking them. No exceptions based on good mood or other unpredictable, hard-to-define circumstances. Try to make it as pronounced and objective as possible.

You named it yourself. This is your failing to adress in yourself. I know it sounds harsh but this is what needs to be done. Not necessarily being cool all the time, maybe maintaining your anger in a less eruptive and more constructive way. Look for help with this and it will help your son, too!
No sense of hierarchy - that's it. I have it, too. I am aware of existance of hierarchies but they are something other people live in, not me. I can only pretend I follow them.
I see it is hard to accept for you. Probably hard to imagine how one can live like that.
It has an upside: independent thinking. You make your own decisions instead of following leaders. Great in science, really.


Sorry, it probably can't be speeded up. As one of my friend said - you can't grow a tree in one year. Do you have other kids? They need their time to learn, too.
You are a great, insightful parent!

Well your response showed quite a lot of patience with us, so you must have some.

If your son is taking a long time to get each point it is possible it takes him that long to work out how the thing that needs doing connects to him. When I asked for anything my parents couldn't afford, they made very clear connections between buying the thing, not having enough money to buy food, not having anything to eat for several days, getting into dept, the house being taken away, having to live in a cardboard box on the street.

Parents often (not mine) don't like to put real concerns onto their children, but that leeds the child to work out why a thing that you say needs doing, needs doing. I never really saw the way that things joined up without it being pointed out. If he doesn't recognise the chain of command then he's not going to do it for that reason either.

You would need to judge how far to go by how anxious your child gets, for a fearful child the above would be far too much. My point was that you need to spell out enough to make the WHY he needs to do something clear. eg- if Daddy does ALL the housework, Daddy may get exhausted and be unable to do ANY housework, then the house will be such a mess that big rats will come and live here. Of course for all I know he might love rats but you get the point.

I thought you had to be able to read people for most jobs in the law.

This didn't work on me. I somehow believed that adults had a huge money stash hidden "somewhere". (Similar to how Occupy Wall Street believes 1%-ers have hidden money stashes.) I got that idea from the times when my parents would refuse to buy me a box of fruit snacks for $1.79, but would buy themselves a big coffee tin for $5.99. I didn't believe that "you can't always get what you want", either, because time and again, I constantly saw adults getting what they want (e.g. the coffee). And the few times they didn't get what they want, I knew they had alcohol and tobacco to numb the emotional pain with, while I did not. So it was unfairness up the wazoo.

This didn't work on me, either. I sincerely believed that my parents enjoyed doing housework, same way I enjoyed playing with my stuffed animals or watching cartoons. So I never understood why they made me do housework. The "pig sty" analogies didn't faze me, either. In fact, I imaged it might be fun to live in a barn with a bunch of friendly pigs, free of all the usual childhood responsibilities. Plus, I figured I could drink from unfinished bottles of whiskey that farmers left behind. (I overlooked the fact that those pigs would eventually be turned into bacon.) As opposed to in a home with overbearing adults where my every move is monitored, controlled, and criticized.

Aspies can be totally brilliant in one area and totally stupid in something very similar. This is a killer in the law profession. Not as much in science and math as breakthroughs are so hard to come by, that the scientific community may overlook the fact that you have severe deficiencies if you make a big contribution. John Nash was clearly mentally ill, but he was able to control it well enough so that not was he able to teach again, but he was awarded and received a Nobel Prize.

I'm an autistic mom. So I grew up aspie and undiagnosed, and I understand the pressures of parenthood. It's no walk in the park here either.

That said, I think you are approaching this from the wrong angle. Not only does it not work very well with your kid, but it's driving you bonkers as well.

I understand Eikonabridge a lot: it's frustration over years speaking.

You can't make your aspie kid NT; all you can aim for is a happy aspie.

Making him pretend sympathy for a bully can easily backfire to the point where he gets socked in the mouth. Try to step back and realize you can't fix everything. He needs to come up with his own strategies. You can ask him questions about what he thinks about it, though.

Your posts says 'need help with mouthy aspie'. You're pretty much admitting to being mouthy yourself. Kids mirror the parents' behavior, and aspie kids have a wonderful knack for taking things out of context. If you call your kid 'idiotic' at home, sit back and watch him tell it to kids at school, or even the teacher, because he doesn't understand social hierarchies.

I'm not trying to be harsh here. I actually think that going for therapy yourself is a good idea. I want therapy myself; I'm going nuts trying to deal with conflicts between kids, and I could really use some talk therapy to make sense of it all. Am not understanding social hierarchies either