Aspergers and the Onset of Adolescence - need advice.

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I am having a very difficult time with my son (12) right now. I was informed that he has been making sexual overtures to younger boys for the second time now. The first time it was with his 8 year old "step" brother (my live-in partner's youngest son, who is here half of the week). Both my SO and I counseled him on appropriate behavior, and in our conversations, we determined it to be innocent "experimentation". Or so we thought.

A week later the SO's middle child (10) told SO that my son had chased him around the house, then asked him to lie down on the bed with him, and kept saying "let's do it". Again, we both counseled him on appropriate behavior.

My son has issues with personal space, that I have to constantly counsel him about. When he is around other kids, he cycles up and gets very excited and fractious, and seems to forget himself and the things he knows are inappropriate. He and the SO's boys have always gotten along very well, although my son tends to gravitate to the two younger ones. He has always gravitated to younger children.

I have, unfortunately, exposed him to too much television (not adult stuff, just the awful Cartoon Network stuff that seems to have no boundaries these days), and he tends to imitate what he has seen. He has a high level of fantasy play and also does not filter his conversations.

Since the age of 11 or so, he has also been much more secretive. I have often caught him lying to me about small things and major things. I have told him that the more that he lies to me, the less inclined I am to believe him, blah blah...

I am looking for a therapist for him and also supervising him much more closely. I don't know how to deal with this whole thing - is this truly a part of his Aspergers, or a symptom of adolescence? Both? I feel like this is the repercussions of my past permissiveness and that makes me feel terrible - like my bad parenting has caused this.

Usually when an Aspie lies - I think - it's in self defense, not in manipulation. I dont know what context you are catching your son's lies in, but if it's manipulation then it's likely something outside of the ASD diagnosis that's leading him there.

If he continues to "approach" younger boys, at 12, then it may be time to see the therapist or shrink again, because from the sounds of it, this is a topic that he's not going to listen to his parents about - he's getting 'mature' faster than most 12 year olds, and it's time for an outside 'authority' to have that talk with him.

You may also wish to talk to some folks at his school and find out who he's been hanging around with. I would think it more likely that his peers are leading him "up", rather than the television.

I agree that it's likely that someone at school could be setting him up, but be very careful about how you approach this conversation at school. DO NOT tell them any specifics about your concern - just that you are concerned that he might be being "inappropriately" influenced. If you give them details, they could view themselves as required to report him under mandated reporting laws! This could become a nightmare for everyone involved. You need to approach all inquiries with mandated reporters very carefully, because even when you're trying to get help, you can wind up in a problematic situation.

I'll comment on a few specific notes I picked up on:

1) You haven't been too permissive. Aspie kids don't respond to authoritarian parenting, so it isn't like you would have gotten a better result by going that route.

2) Your son may well be confused. He is likely to be behind his peers in understanding all the nuances of sexual undertones, and the jokes he is hearing, but trying to act like they do or repeat phrases he has heard. I suggest addressing it the same way you would if you heard a 5 year old saying a sexual term: asking, "do you know that means?" and if they say yes, asking them to explain what it means. Odds are you will discover he is fairly clueless. And, if he is using terms about which he is clueless, he is quite likely to be utterly confused by how people react when he uses them. Which leads to item ...

3) Aspie kids are quite literal, and the loose way the world around them uses terminology can lead them to believe it is OK to lie, that everyone actually does it all the time, and it is pure hypocrisy that they are being asked not to. If your son is confused by the terminology and reactions of the kids around him, and also by how he sees the world applying the concept of lying, he is much more likely to be evasive with you out of fear of being misunderstood. He may also have learned that there is no reward in telling the truth, and that trust is something he does not know how to earn, telling the truth or not.

I would actually run opposite what the rest of the world may be telling you right now and make it clear to him that he can and should tell you everything without fear of consequence. Engage in a period of frank discussion to (a) better understand where he is developmentally and (b) rebuild trust.

Are the sexual overtures actually sexual in nature or are they just him repeating things he sees on TV? E.g. there's a difference between a five year old saying "let's get it on" and a 12 year old saying it - but depending on your son's maturity level, he may be saying it like a five year old would, although he is 12. I think that is an important aspect of this conversation.

I would also be very concerned and I think you are doing the right thing. I don't think this has anything to do with how lenient you were or weren't.

Because he is 12, whether it is sexual to him or not, it could really get him in trouble. I am sorry you are going through this.

I will second what most people said about him just repeating things. I didn't pick up references to sex, cursing, etc. at all from my peers. He's probably heard things of that sort from other people and doesn't realize when it's appropriate, or even what it means. I wouldn't worry about the television.

This is not part of AS.

I don't mean to upset you, I'm not a therapist or anything, but based on what you have told us, I'd worry that your son might have been a victim of sexual abuse. It's not unusual for such children to act out in the manner you have described.

People with AS generally don't like to get too close to other people, and generally don't lie frequently.

Should he actually molest another child, he will likely be prosecuted for it. You need to take this issue to a good therapist.

While it does need to be ruled out, I don't find it unusual for as AS child this age to be acting inappropriately.

My AS son loves to get close to people - he is highly sensory seeking in that area - but we seem to have lucked out for now in his early puberty by his being asexual. We don't know if that is suppression, late development, or the way he is, but I confess it's been a big sigh of relief given his complete inability to understand boundaries, and how he has violated them in the past. He had heard me for years expressing my fear of what would happen when he got old enough to date, so that may be part of it, too; we don't know (even he doesn't know, but his ability to control his subconscious at times astounds me). Seriously, this is a child who hugs and won't let go no matter how loudly you tell him you don't like it. Add sexual urges to the mix, complete naivete like my son has when it comes to pre-teen relations, and it is easy to see how trouble happens.

While lying isn't natural to anyone with AS, I have read enough from adults on these forums to know that some did go through periods of extreme lying, and they did it for the reasons I stated in my earlier post: they came to believe the world was full of hypocrites, and that lying was essential to the social order, no matter what mom and dad kept telling them. While that has not happened with my AS son, he IS extremely artful with evasion, and using the precision of language to avoid telling the truth. Any parent to an AS child needs to learn how that game is played, because as a literal matter the child is not lying, and will be upset if you claim they are (example, "did you wash your hands?" "yes! <sure, I washed them yesterday, I can honestly answer yes>" so one learns to phrase the question, "did you wash you hands within the last two minutes?").

Your son is likely not as naive as you think he is. People with AS can be quite sharp. The problem of naivety comes about only in a few situations such as...

1. Concrete thinking. A person with AS may not realize that other people do not think like they do.

3. Short sighted/misinterpretation of non-verbal social interactions.

And last, literalness. If you tell a person with AS to do something or not to do something, they will interpret that exactly how you stated it. Any other way as to how it should be interpreted would be some wild random guess, and frequently, if the person is ambiguous, they will have to make the best wild random guess they can.

Here is an example. I have a safety guidebook that states of being in the chemical lab, "Safety chart must be on hand at all times."

Do I tape the chart to my hand?
What else could it mean? "On hand" is pretty straight forward, but it's hard to balance things on one's hand.
Do I hold the chart in my hand?
Well this isn't what manual says to do. It doesn't say "safety chart must be held IN hand at all times"

Maybe, based on my experience with NT's, they actually mean something ENTIRELY DIFFERENT.

Maybe they mean to have the chart near you in an easy to access place at all times.
It doesn't say that at all, but maybe that's what it means anyway.

Actually, it doesn't mean any of these things. I asked. It means the chart must be in the entry office. This is not "on hand" at all.

Who could have guessed that is what they meant? People with AS face these types of situations every day, where people say things and mean and do entirely different, and then they get in trouble for doing what they were told, when the problem is the other person for communicating poorly.

He may not want to answer your questions but if you phrase them properly, as you have learned, he will have no choice but to answer or he may just flat out lie.[/quote]