Parents on the spectrum

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India does have resources, though - the internet is a huge help to everyone. My own interest is food and cooking, I've "met" many people from your country through that interest on blogs and message boards, which is one way to find someone to socialize with.

I don't know where you are in India and I'm aware many places are remote, but do some searching and see what's available for you. If you can't connect with parents directly, you can use the internet to do so indirectly. For instance, I found this via a quick google: http://www.autism-india.org/ but I'm guessing you will find more specialized resources if you search via India's google site, in whatever language is most commonly used wherever you are.

I think the best bet is for you to make friends, even though that is difficult, it is your responsibility as a parent to find support wherever you can. I wasn't telling you to find the same kind of support I have, I was giving you examples of kinds of suport that I have made use of. Making friends is difficult. Yes. But there have been several responses of those of us who are very introverted and have managed it in order to better our own lives and the lives of our children. The problem is nothing will change if nothing changes. So something in your situation has to change, and since you are the adult, with more opportunities to influence your lives than your child, it falls on you to do it. That's the hard truth if you want a better life for your child.

My apologies for contradicting you, I am not trying to be rude. There ARE meetup groups in India, here is the portal:

http://www.meetup.com/cities/in/

The variety of groups does appear limited.

i checked out the site its for parents with autistic children and children who are totally handicapped and need serious treatment
they are not a meetup kind of group they are more into treatment of such children.
But im more of a normal person just having asperger and unable to socialise.

they have limited groups mostly salsa dance and friendship club where guys add up girls and then they start
sending lewd messages.
i had added my name there but when lewd messages started coming in i removed my name.

I can't believe I haven't noticed this thread until now. I'm kind of glad it is slow moving because I'd really like to take the time to read as much of it as I can manage before joining in. Before I get too far though, I do have one observation to share, if only to offer a little bit of my own perspective about parenting as an Autistic.

More often than not when I hear either of NT parents of Autistics, or Autistic parents of either NT or Autistics kids, is that there usually seems to be a mix in the family of NT and Autistics. Apparently most who have more than one kid have (at least) one who is Autistic and others who are NT, and/or an NT mate.

My situation is different in that I am positive (though we are not all diagnosed), that ALL five of us are on the spectrum. All three of our sons definitely are, and I have been diagnosed PDD-NOS but childhood history demonstrates it is actually Asperger Syndrome (my psychologist agrees).

My wife has never been diagnosed, but I have always considered here far from NT in just about every respect. The fact that she is so different from anyone I ever had a relationship with before is THE biggest reason I was attracted to her in the first place, and probably the biggest reason we've been able to make it work for sixteen plus years now. Her brother was diagnosed with AS many years ago, and she scores well within AS ranges on screening tests.

That said, we're an entirely on spectrum family. Though we are all most definitely on the Autistic spectrum, we are each unique in our brands of Autism. Each of us as pairs share similarities and differences. No two of us are Autisticly the same.

This makes for interesting and sometimes frustrating dynamics when dealing with each other as a couple, and as parents to each of our kids.

I have seen some comments about "consistency" with rules and expectations. I have seen comments about being honest with our kids about our imperfections.

Those two things, we have found, play into each other. As parents, we have found ourselves out of necessity, changing the rules, as it were. We've done this several times, not just because of the kids getting older, but also and quite often because what we WERE doing was not working well. Some of why this happened was because we didn't at first know that Autism was playing a role. Once we learned it was, there was a steep learning curve in understanding how Autism affects people in general, then in understanding how it affects each one of us as individuals, then in understanding how the dynamics of how each of us is works between any two of us, and as a family in general.

What an adventure, and sometimes a nightmare, it has been!

One thing we did learn over the years is that when it comes to "rules," blanket rules for everyone, all the same, don't work in our family. Identical requirements and identical consequences for not meeting the requirements never worked well in our family because of how different each of us is.

A great deal of our kid's lives has been subject to my and my wife's experimentations with rules. Rules have change over time. Rules have been different for one than for another. Some experiments failed miserably. Some worked for a while, but had to be changed over time because they stopped working.

Throughout all of this, we have been totally honest with our sons about our own imperfection. They know we sometimes change rules because we make mistakes and sometimes set rules that don't work. We've never allowed them to expect perfection from us, or look up to us as if we are the "end-all and be-all" of parental authority. I've NEVER wanted my kids to view me as some kids view their fathers, as "Superman." I've known since they were born that one day they would see through that fallacy, so I've never wanted them to develop that perception of me to begin with.

"Respect me, but do not worship me." is what I've always told them.

I've already said more than I intended so I'll leave it here for now. This looks like a really interesting discussion. I hope to be back for more.

Cheers!

And thanks to whomever for starting this and getting it stickied!

Let me start with giving you the family lay out . Me a aspie undiagnosed wont spend the money but taken all the on line test, wife nt, three sons one aspie 12 year old, two nt 10and 16. Having huge issues with comunicating with my oldest. I moved out of my parents house when I was 16, my paternal grand father passed away befor my father was a teen. This leaves me with very little to go on when dealing with a teenage boy. Lately we have been butting heads when it comes to chores reponsibilitys and punishment. Just recently he got in to a argument with his brother and threw a play station portable against the wall destroying it. In responce two items of his were tosed in the trash. He reponded to this by grabing my hair and dropping his weight into it to pull me to the floor "he out weighs me by 100lbs" I reponded out of reaction by elbowing him. He is now staying at his aunts but wont talk to his mom or me other than using ultimatum type statements like choise him or me to his mother or why do you always take his side refering to me or his brothers. I havent got the slightest clue how to deal with a teenage nt boy. How do I get him to realize that because he is older the expected house hold responsibilitys, punishments as well a privilges will reflect his age. The other question is how to open the lines of comunication when we "speak diferent languages" ie I dont show emotions like hime or mom and I think at times he thinks that I dont care because of this.
P.S. for him punishment refers to lossing some thing for a day or two the two yonger no tv or early bed time still works on them.
Just fealing lost and confused.

Deleted because I was linking to the thread now merged in.

Johnny, I'll try to come back later and talk about dealing with teen boys. I've got one!

Last edited by DW_a_mom on 02 Feb 2012, 8:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

"parenting is a tough job" thread combined into "Parents on the spectrum" thread

I tried the privacy pop. It's awesome. Anybody else tried it? It's a tent that goes on the beds. Mine can stay in bed and have privacy. The website's privacy pop dot com.

I recommend moving away from the concept of punishments, now that he is a teen, and into the concept of responsibility. For example, after throwing the Playstation, you could have simply asked him, "when do you think you will have a replacement for your brother?" He breaks it, his job to replace it. He can do extra chores to earn the money, or find a job.

Kids will argue with each other, but they have to take responsibility for the damage they inflict. If they are abusive in their words or actions, grounding them from social activities is a logical consequence, as people who can't interact appropriately with other people need to take a break and think how to do better. If they break property, they should replace the property.

Throwing things of his away sounds like retaliation to me, and not a consequence that teaches accepting responsibility.

Life is hard for older siblings, because younger ones can and do take advantage of the fact that older siblings are expected to take on responsibilities. I paid a lot of attention to my kid's arguments for a while after my son accused us of favoring his sister, and I discovered he had a point: she would intentionally bait him, and he would be the one getting in trouble for taking the bait. We had a lot of long conversations after that, and one thing I have had to promise to do is NOT ask them to work things out for themselves when he asks for my help. If he's asking for my help, it really is because his sister is not listening to his attempts to set boundaries and calm things down.

Make sure that your son is aware of the privileges he gets for being older, instead of just the extra responsibilities. They can't always see that balance, because older kids also get held back from certain things their friends are doing, solely because of the younger sibling. Certain movies, for example, aren't going to be allowed because they are inappropriate for the younger one, and as far as your son can tell he's getting all the burdens of being older without any of the benefits. Make sure he does get benefits, and that he can see them.

Communication with ALL teen boys is difficult, the average teen boy isn't one to speak to his parents much. You have to make a real effort, find a shared activity you might both enjoy, and get out of your comfort zone telling him that you want to talk to him and cross the bridges, and admit that it is hard for you because of your AS. You have to let him in to your thought process if you want him to let you into his.

Good luck. Teens are a trial!

I have tried to talk to him but he thinks that every one should think like him and know how he feels with out it being said and empathy is a real weekness of mine. But Im trying to get threw to him. Ive been trying to get threw using hordicalture as it one area we both have a intrest but out of that we have nothing in common and planting season is still months away.

I never get responded to but am asking the question anyway. How do you deal with your offspring criticizing you. I always mess it up and end up in meltdown.

That is a really, really tough one; we struggle with it all the time. One question - do you have NT kids or AS kids? I ask, because the technique is the same, but the way you apply it might be a bit different.

The technique I use most with my son (AS, and I'm undiagnosed) is re-framing. Generally, when my son is disrespectful or criticizes me, it is due more to his difficulty with communicating than it is to anything else. This means he isn't trying to hurt my feelings, and it also generally means that I'm not actually screwing up whatever he's criticizing.

So, I try to respond as though the issue was a difficulty in communication, much as I would with someone who was learning English for the first time and said something hurtful: I ask if he knew the way he spoke was disrespectful, and then I offer him a more polite way to say the same thing, and ask him to use that language instead. If I have this idea in my head, instead of the idea that my child is being disrespectful and intends to hurt my feelings, I am less likely to fly off the handle. It can take a few tries for a "re-framing" to actually take hold in my head, so being patient with the process is important.

This came out sounding awfully pedantic; sorry, I'm not having a good communication day, myself - at any rate, I hope it helps.

Thanks for answering; yes it helps & it doesn't seem pedantic to me. I don't know about it for sure because we don't have insurance hence not officially diagnosed: but I am AS w/o a doubt, kid #2 nt with serious speech issues, kid #1 AS mild. Both are good people and more intelligent than I am. I am visual thinker.

The time it takes me to "re-frame" is so long. Do you have a way of reminding yourself to stop and re-frame or has it become automatic? I automatically assume I have screwed up whatever it is and get stuck on that "track". This seems to fuel the reality of the criticism from both my view and theirs, if that makes sense.

Unfortunately, some things take time. I suppose you can try the sorts of things that work for you when you're trying to memorize something: writing it down, drawing it, visualizing it, etc.

My husband and I try a tag-team approach to these situations (if you're parenting on your own, you might see if there's someone to reach out to for help.) If one of us doesn't feel up to addressing the situation calmly, we leave the room and have the other parent handle it.