Someone please help me help my son!

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good luck at the ppt !
you pointed out that you are not sure if he's taking advantage of his diagnosis.....only time will tell...My son, in some cases, cannot help the way he acts ( partially because he is still learning socially appropriate behaviors)...other times I'm certain that he knows what to do, but is refusing to act appropriately. we try very hard to make sure that his consequences are consistent. hopefully, the positive attention we give him for appropriate behaviors will sink in some day.

Mine is 12 years old but not yet sophocated enough to use PDD as an excuse. This is probably something I will have to address soon.

BeeBee

Well, I had the IEP with the school today, and I must say that I was very PLEASANTLY suprised! He is doing wonderful! He's passing all his grades, even though in most of his classes he seems like he is in his own little world, he still participates in his classes. He raises his hand to try and answer questions, even if they are wrong, and is doing excellent in Spanish class! I guess Spanish is his favorite class, because they reported that he comes to class prepared and enjoys it, but then it's fun for him and he feels challenged, so it's stimulating for him, whereas his other classes, English, Math, etc., is hard for him to try and stay focused and on task.

I came home and let him know how very proud I am of him! We called his dad at work and told him, and he is very proud of him, and they have made plans for this weekend to spend time together doing what my son loves best, video games! I really hope this is a step in the right direction, and that he continues to do well!

I have to give the teachers alot of credit also. They have made acommodations for him and given him more time to turn in his homework and classwork, so they are working with him too. I didn't know this until today, because I know he's been forgetting to bring home his homework, so I thought he wasn't getting credit for it, and he's been grounded for everyday that he does not bring his homework home. It's looking like 8th grade is not going to be as bad as we thought it was!

I printed out this thread and all the replies that everyone of you have made, and highlighted the wonderful ideas that some of you came up with, and showed it to his IEP teacher, and she asked it she could keep it and go over it later, so hopefully she will agree with some of the ideas that I thought were good.

I know that with the more I learn about AS, the more I will be able to help and support others also, but as I've said, I'm new to this, but I'll help and give ideas and support when I can!

Rowan ~

I'm glad everything is working out for him. Encourage him to continue taking Spanish, especially if he enjoys it and/or is good at it. Being bilingual is a very good skill to have. Does he have the same teacher for Spanish as he does for English and Math? If so, it could be the subject matter. If he is advanced in either of those areas (especially math), maybe he could do an independent study course, like have a fun workbook of math-related puzzles to work on when he is finished with the normal classwork. If it is not the same teacher, it may be the teaching style isn't stimulating and challenging enough for him.

Hi I am an aspie now 30, and i had some of the problems your son had. One thing I might suggest is maybe for now home schooling. If you have the time....but this way you can help him learn how to be organized, and keep track of the homework. It would give him a break from the peers and socializing enough to keep him for now focused on learning how to organise and doing his homework. I think he is to overloaded.....and canot focus on anything.

If you cannot do home schooling then i would meet with the teachers and make sure they get him his homework, and make sure they inital it and then you after it is finished. For organization for his locker I would suggest helping him by cleaning it out every week or every friday. For example you go to his school with him after the other children have left....and help show him how to organise, and have him show you how he has arranged things. Also if he has a favorite interest he may way to hang things up in his locker, so if you get him things he's interesed in it might help him arrange things in his locker in a way that would be organised as to how he wantsto show off his favorite items.

we thought about homeschooling our son, but as most of his problems are social and not academic, we felt that he needed to be in a school with other peers to work on the social bit..........we tried the large middle school for 2 years, but what a disaster!! !! !!
we finally got the district to agree to outplacement for our son. he's just started in his new school, and i'm happy to report that the smaller class size and having only one main teacher to deal with has made things run much smoother. he feels much more comfortable, and is actually able to focus.

Hello All!!

Sorry I have not posted lately, as I have been crazy busy!! I also have a younger daughter in second grade, and she now has more homework than she did last year, though it's a walk in the park compared to her brother's homework! Then there's the TSS and the BT, along with the numerous Dr.'s appts that I have had on top of it all.

Wow. I must say, I've been doing some catching up on the postings here, and continue to be amazed at how much I have in common with so many people here. The thread about the messy handwriting, yup, and I think making him type all his assignments is a good idea. He wants to know where to get the Dragon Software, so if anyone has advice on this or knows where to get it, it would really be appreciated. On one side note though, when he was in 3rd grade, his handwriting was immaculate. I mean when he learned cursive, he wrote it EXACTLY the way the book taught how to write it. At the end of his 3rd grade year, he had all B's in his class. Then 4th grade was a complete suprise. His handwriting got bad (and gradually worse to what it is today), he was taking longer and longer to do his homework, and just all in all a totally different child. He had the same teacher for 3rd and 4th grade, and he (his teacher) wanted to know if anything had happened over that summer, as my son did a 180 degree turnaround, from good to bad. I just don't know how to explain that one.

The brushing teeth thing, yup, I deal with that on a daily basis. He does not brush his teeth unless he is told to do so. I never thought about the taste of toothpaste bothering him. He has never said anything about it before. Though now that I think about it, he did complain a couple of times about it being too hot. Maybe I'll try some of that toothpaste that was recommended, and see if that makes a difference. Also, he does not shower or bathe unless told to do so. He never has done things like that for himself on his own. He has always had to be prompted to do it.

On a brighter note, he is doing very well in school this year. I am very pleased and proud of him! I think with the diagnosis finally being correct, his teachers are more willing to work with him, and make exceptions for him. He is doing very, very well! YaY!!

Also, we went walking together last night, and I noticed how "heavy" he walks. He sounds like an elephant coming down the road. I don't know how he manages to do that. I asked him why he walked so heavy, and he said it was just the way he has always walked. It's a wonder his feet don't hurt all the time. Sometimes it sounds like he slams his feet down as he walks, and he does walk very slowly. Even when he tries to hurry, he does it in a slow way, if that makes any sense!

And the lying part, wow, I never even really thought much about it until I started reading that thread, and I can see where he does lie, and believes what he is saying. I can watch him do something with my own eyes, and he'll lie about it, and he is so good and so convincing, that I find myself doubting what I saw. He will also not admit to doing any wrong doing. It is always someone else's fault, or something else's fault, but never anything he does. And trying to get him to admit it, you may as well just give up before you even get started. He doesn't see that he does things wrong, it is always right to him, no matter what the situation may be. Try to confront him or some of the more serious issues, he gets really angry and defensive. One night he came home two minutes late, and for every minute he comes in is ten minutes early he has to be in the next night, and we go by the time on the cable box, and he KNOWS we do, but he had his watch on and his watch was a minute slow, so he argued with us over one frigging minute! That his watch was right (even looking at the cable box and knowing it wasn't) and we were wrong, and nothing we could say would make him understand. Even showing him didn't work. He got very angry and it got to the point to where I just sent him to his room, because I was losing my patience with him fast. And mouthy!! Oh don't even get me started on that. I know kids tend to be mouthy, but he just does not know when to stop. It goes above and beyond being mouthy. Anyone else experience this?

Again, this place is so wonderful, as are the people here! It's nice having a place to come to and have at least one person understand where your at in life.

Rowan ~

Okay, I have to vent here.............

My son has this friend, if you even want to call him that, that is a control freak. He's the gang leader (there are four of them, my son included) and whenever one of the others doesn't want to do what the leader does, he makes fun of them and humilates the other three. Why they let this boy do that to them, I don't know, but I've had it. My son got it from him tonight, but it was even worse tonight. He (my son) was playing XboX, and the three boys came over. Well the leader wanted to hang outside and not play video games, but my son didn't want to. So, the leader goes and turns off the XboX that my son is playing, and my son gets mad at him and screams at him to get out. I happened to be outside taking the garbage out, and I heard the leader talking about Josh and making fun of him, and I was furious. I called him back and told him that just because Josh didn't want to do what he wanted to do, that did not give him the right to make fun of Josh or humilate him, and if that was the kind of friend he was going to be to my son, then not to come around here anymore. Now, this past Friday night, Josh went to the mall with the three of them, and I gave him $40.00 of his allowance to spend. Well, he spent 20 on himself, and this ring leader talked Josh into letting him "borrow" the other 20, so my son did. Well, he didn't give my son back the change, (Josh said the lady gave the ring leader the change, and he pocketed it) and tried to tell him that he gave him back 10 dollars of it but that he lost it somewhere. Well, I confronted the ring leader about it, and he said that he gave Josh back the 10 but that Josh lost it, so he goes and gives Josh the money he has left over (which is my son's change from the 20) and it was only 7 dollars and 22 cents. So he scammed my son, and now my son is out 13 dollars. Oh, and I forgot to add that when he gave the change back to my son, he did it in a way that my son felt guilty and tried to give it back to him.

Now, my son still wants to be friends with this boy, because he says if he's not then the other two won't be friends with him, and is upset with me for telling the boy off. What do I do? I'm not going to stand by and let some kid take advantage of him like that. Am I wrong? Should I handle this a different way?

Your son is in grade 8? I'm surprised he's not mortified that you'll jump in and tell off his friends like that. Knowing teenage boys, he's probably getting all kinds of crap from them (while not in your presence) about being a weenie who needs his mother to stand up for him. And why he puts up with it? - how good is he at making friends? If he loses these three, maybe he has no idea how to find any others. Even if he could make other friends, inertia can be a big factor when you've got these established groups.

I know it sucks to be taken advantage of - I've had people do it to me plenty. But instead of trying to overcontrol his friendships, you'd probably be far better off to teach your son how to stand up for himself - and that he has the right to do so. That's got to be done indirectly - like helping him improve his people skills so that he sees more options in group dynamics. Or modeling assertiveness in situations unrelated to him so he can learn the pattern by watching you. Or rewarding him for even small acts of assertiveness.

Okay, I'm going to be a bit blunt, because I've got a personal stake in this kind of situation. How in the world is he supposed to learn assertive behavior to use with his friends, when even a tiny assertive act at home (one minute over curfew) causes a yelling match and the parents laying down the law, with him expected to keep quiet and conform? Home is a testing ground for behavior that will then be repeated among friends. If the only position he learns how to hold in a social heirarchy is the impotently rebellious child chafing against authority, how will he know that he's supposed to hold a different role among people his age?

Speaking as an aspie voted most disorganized in her graduating class - I am still "differently organized" and quite sucessful.

My brain works differently from most NTs. I think in pictures and could be perfectly happy doing work or research in my mind. Had no idea that writing it down was important or useful. Just held me down from going on to other stuff.

Had much better luck dictating my work into a tape recorder (today dragon speak on a pc). Also trained teachers to grade my pictures. For example I prefer to do calculus in colors with crayons. For thermodynamics I pictured myself swimming through tubes. For control theory classes I'd walk the control curve and imagine what heat or reactor mix might do to me.

By the way if your son is slow in timed activities --- accomodations under ADA include increased time.

To sum things up - find out how your son's brain works and go with the flow. Who cares about organization? - If his brain works for him - it is organized.

Okay, I can accept some critizism here. First off, there is more to this story than I have typed here. This kid has been hanging around since last May, and this is the first time I have gone off on him. I have tried to teach my son to stand up for himself, and not let people take advantage of him, but he's so happy to have friends that he's not going to do anything to "rock the boat" and this other kid knows this and has a tendancy to take advantage of it. When that kid calls here to talk to my son during the week, and my son is doing homework, he will call my son retarted, stupid, an idiot, and make fun of him because it takes him so long to do his homework. My son's TSS even told me I had to put my foot down, or this was going to get worse. So this has been building for months, and today when I heard him laughing and making fun of my son, it just got to me and I exploded.

Secondly, we don't go off on him over "tiny assertive acts at home". He has alot of freedom. The problem we had with the time thing was he was coming in 30 to 45 mins late, and being beligerent about it. He was taking off out of the neighborhood without letting me or his father know (we have very busy interstections leading out of our development) so when we had to go somewhere or do something, we couldn't find him, not to mention the panic of not knowing where he was and if he was hurt, so we had to do something. We thought that by making him have to come home ten minutes early for every minute he was late would work. We tried to explain to him that it was better to come in one minute early instead of being one minute late. We were trying to teach him that he has priveledges, and he has to earn those priveledges, so that he wouldn't start trying to take advantage of those priveledges. It got to the point of us giving him an inch and him taking a mile. He doesn't really have any chores. Every now and then he has to do dishes, clean his room, and take the garbage out to the road once a week for garbage pickup. (Which most of the time he doesn't because he forgets.) During the summertime he has to mow the lawn, but that's about it. During the summer he is allowed to stay out until 10 p.m., and during the school year he has to be in at 8:30 p.m., but we do have rules and boundaries, and we do expect them to be followed. I'm not an expert at this, and I can only do the best that I know how to do, which is what I am trying to do.

It is just very hard to stand by and watch him be treated the way he has been. He has a heart of gold, and it's very big and very giving, and I just don't want anyone trampling over it. He's so fragile emotionally and mentally, as far as how he feels about himself, and how others feel about him, and it kills me to see another child bring his self esteem down even further than what it already is.

Hi,

Here is what my mom and dad did. They assumed everthing I did was correct and had a logical explaination in my mind.

They kept asking why did you do that or what were you thinking in a non confrontational way. According to mom the request to tell her what I see in my head also worked.

The book Martian in the playgroung by Claire St James may also help you do this as it explains interactions from an Aspie child's view point.

Here are my mom's favorite stories of different why questions that produced interesting results:

Why did I bite my teacher? Answer she kept trying to touch me and so far my parents had ruled out other means I'd used to deal with her (like kicking, and hitting, and throwing things -- but they did not say no biting). My parents solved the problem of my biting by dealing with the problem which was teacher getting too close.

Why did I keep throwing things out the window at school. Answer If I threw a glass out the first floor window it did not break usually. If I threw it out the second story window it always broke. THerefore there was a critical heigth at which point the glas would break half the time and I wanted to find it by climbing on chairs, etc and throwing glasses out the window.

Why did I not bring home homework. The teacher told me to keep my books in my locker between classes. THerefore they were in my locker at night where they belonged.

Mom and das started with an asumption that I was doing a rational thing and were completly non judgemental

Wow! That is great advice on how to find out! Your parents sound like very wonderful people! I'll have to try that with my son and see if I get any results, especially in the nonconfrontational way!

i totally understand about your son having a friend that you don't like, and being stuck because you want them to figure things out. ( my son is in 8th grade also).....i let this awful relationship blossom for a year...pointing out to my son things the other boy did that were not kind . my son, too, did not want to lose the friendship........my son, also, became quite ill-mannered when he hung out with this boy..he'd mouth off, and be quite nasty. now that he's not hanging out with this boy, his attitude has changed drastically! i was amazed about the difference !
so, i know you're asking how did we "get rid of the nasty boy"?
the "nasty boy" mouthed off to me and my husband. i said that was IT. the "nasty boy" is no longer allowed in my home because we don't wish to be treated like that...mind you, this boy had mouthed off to my son repeatedly in front of me...so this was not just a one-time incident...at any rate, with the "nasty boy" not allowed in the house anymore, son's contact with him has been quite limited. son doesnt like to leave the house, but will........son has interacted with " nasty boy" in the neighborhood, and decided on his own that he didn't want to hang out with him. ..............................it's very hard to see your son being taken advantage of. mom can't always step in to solve the problem....he's working on social skills in school, and at home we help him process through arguments with his brother ...but helping him process through an argument with an unreasonable NT at the moment that it's happening is quite difficult to do without pointing out the fact that your son is an aspie....good luck !

Yes you are right. I guess it's time to retract the mama claws as far as he is concerned.