Merry Nightmare

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And its beginning the Christmas nightmare that is my fourteen year old brother. I know I'm not exactly a parent, but I've been taking care of my two younger brothers for all my life. I might as well count as part of the legal guardian. My middle brother who's 19 I suspect he has Aspergers, I was diagnosed with Aspergers, and my fourteen year old brother is severally autistic. We're talking Rain Man style, just maybe not as bad. And he doesn't talk as often.
Spends most of his time staring at walls.

Well I'm trying to make Christmas pleasant this year. Our Christmas's usually end up with a big blow out from my 19 year old brother and a complete shutdown of my 14 year old brother. Shows you how disorganized my family is.

Lately J [14 year old] has been doing good, he's slowly sorta started helping around the house. Though that's mostly partly due to my help. Anyway Christmas times always brings the worse out when it comes to J. He doesn't like carolers, to much noise in one little group. He has a hard time sleeping and he gets extremely frustrated when the carolers come to our house. Mom and dad somehow just open the door and let them sing their hearts out, which severely frustrates J to an extreme. He starts having a fit.

He won't decorate the Christmas tree this year. He absolutely refuses. And he keeps picking leaves off of the Christmas tree and creating a bread crumb trail with them. If mom and dad do try to get him to pick it up or try to punish him for doing it, he has a fit, then shuts down and won't talk to anyone for a day.

If I'm not the one handing him instructions he literally refuses to listen to other people, if mom tells him its time to eat dinner he literally won't eat dinner unless I tell him its time to eat dinner. I think mom and dad want to kick me out for the holidays. I only came to visit and stay over for winter break, but its starting to become a bit of a hassle with J misbehaving almost all day long.

What can I do to deaden the Christmas strain?

What can I do to keep everyone's stress level to a minimum?

and why does my brother have a thing for the Christmas tree?

And why does he want revenge on the Christmas ornaments? [he keeps taking them off and hording them somewhere or worse breaks them]

Hmmm. Maybe it's too much. Maybe your family's ideal Christmas involves a tiny fake tree, a couple of songs, and a gift for everyone and that's all.

You seem to understand what J needs more than anyone else does. Would it be possible for you to take your parents to court and get legal custody of him? You don't have to; it's just a suggestion.

Send her to WrongPlanet?

Use indestructible plastic ornaments?

Don't do anything to involve CPS. Just don't open that can of worms.

Have you already tried explaining, calmly and respectfully, what you've noticed about your brother?

This is the first Christmas we've done a tree. I bought a 4ft tree...some pipe cleaners,crayons, string, stickers, glitter pip squeaks, and popsicle sticks, also some glittery craft stuff. We made most of the ornaments....daughter(AS) is picking the ornaments off and stuffing them in a tool box(currently sitting under the tree) and son(HFA) is picking at the tree leaves. I don't care Christmas is about spreading joy love and happiness and that is what we are going to do. We are going to adapt it to what we can handle so everyone enjoys it.

Tell your mother you'd like to try some new plans for this holiday. As for the carolers play some Christmas music and give J some ear plugs or take him someplace he would enjoy. Suggest to your mother that she and her husband make Christmas cookies and sit outside with warm drinks and cookies for the carolers to enjoy outside. The carolers will love this, she will look good, and they can sing all they like. I like Melatonin it helps so much with holiday jitters at our house. Holidays are about family and she should adapt some things for him. Perhaps give him a small table tree to pick at that can be ALL HIS and
why should he be forced to help decorate? Don't make cleaning up a punishment, take a picture of his creation and then both of you clean it up. Let him do something he enjoys instead of decorating the tree and somehow tie it in. Having a holiday at someone in your family's expense is hardly the Christian thing to do. Nor is it in the right spirit of the season.

If the carolers cause him so much distress, you should ask them to leave. If they don't, threaten to call the police. Luckily, carolers have never shown up at my place but if they did, I wouldn't be able to take it either.

What does your brother do to relax, regroup or come back from a meltdown? (Computer games? TV?) You might want to suggest that over the holidays, maybe the best gift for him is to have extra of whatever that is.