Seeking Some Help

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I don't know how to parent my child.

I'm new here, so here is a snippet of background on our family situation:
J is my five year old son. He has recently been diagnosed with Asperger's. We have witnessed unusual, irritating, frightening, amazing, and unique behavior from him starting at a very young age. The past few years have become increasingly challenging parenting him, will get more on that as I go.
I have two other children, A is 2 years, N is 9 months old. These children are from the same father, but J has a different father. J really does not know his father and I don't expect he ever will. I left A and N's father when J was about 3 1/2, big messy long story, but we stayed for a while in a domestic violence shelter.
S is my boyfriend. He has done wonderful things for myself and my children. I do expect that S is the person I am meant to spend my life with, but J is making things very difficult. S cares a great deal for J and goes far out of his way to do things for him, but the stress of parenting J is really straining our relationship, more on that also as I go on.

I think our largest accomplishment with J is coming to the realizations that:
My child's brain works very differently from mine, and I don't understand him.
We cannot apply the same parenting measures with him as one does other children, because his brain works differently than other children.
I have no idea what I can do for him any longer. I need help.
I need to understand and I need to find a way to reach him.

J is most often a miserable person to be around. He is the most infuriating, irritating, nasty, self-absorbed person I have ever met. He could make Buddha slap him. No lie.
On a daily basis we deal with a never ending run of back talking, swearing, name calling, sibling and pet torturing, destruction of everything he touches, stealing, screaming, kicking/biting/hitting/spitting/urinating, extreme tantrums and more.
J is conniving, manipulative, selfish, defiant. We have had behavior health specialists tell us "he is an extreme" just by observing him for ten minutes.
J goes from 100% happy to a full fledged safety risk tantrum in like .2 seconds. Usually, there is no rational reason why.
Now that I sound like a terrible parent, please know that J is also a very bright child.
This child can learn things he is interested in learning within minutes. Since he could walk he has learned to defeat every type of child lock invented. He hit every milestone at a very early age. He has a passion for video games. Since the age of four he has been playing select video games. I was good at them myself, but this child can figure out things in hours what would take me months or years to get. He seems to retain information (as long as he is interested in picking it up) for things I would expect to be far above his age (like rainbows. He was four when he told me how rainbows are created, he had seen it explained on TV at some point.) At 2 1/2 J could complete 36 piece floor puzzles in fifteen minutes.

When we can get J to be happy, he is such a fun child. However, more and more often he is anything but a happy child.
Most of the time we just dread dealing with him. He cannot be bribed or reasoned with. No form of punishment is effective for him. He enjoys and looks forward to such a narrow list of things in life now that it can be hard to please him with anything. If he doesn't get his way or his wants exactly when he wants it, he is out of control. If he is bored, he is out of control. If we are not paying attention to him, he is out of control.

I am no perfect parent. I have made my share of mistakes with him. But, for five years I have tried to love and bond with a being that simply resists every effort made towards a nurturing environment and relationship. I do not know how to continue raising this boy and most days I just wish I could let someone else do it. I wonder if he would be happier with different parents, and I wonder if I just don't have it in me to raise this child as a being fit for society.
Please, share your insight. Tell me what I can do here.

First of all, know that you are about the umteenth person I have seen make virtually the same post on first arriving on the WrongPlanet. So welcome, you are among those who have been EXACTLY where you are right now. You are not a bad parent, and as hard as this is to believe, he is not manipulative or selfish. You are on the bottom end of a steep learning curve and I urge you to start reading. Read posts from other members here, search this forum, there are years of posts here from parents struggling with the same issues you have. Check out the suggested reading stickie at the top of the page, on one of the last pages of that lengthy thread, one of our members condensed all the titles into a great list (thanks for that btw!). You can learn a new way to parent. It is hard because it is not intuitive at first for many of us but I can tell you it is possible. You can learn to communicate with your son in terms he understands and he will learn to communicate back to you. I'll steal an analogy one of our members has posted before. For a kid with high functioning autism or Asperger's, life is like living in a foreign country where you speak little to none of the language but everyone around you thinks that you speak the language FLUENTLY. Others get angry with you because you don't respond appropriately and they don't understand when you try to communicate that you just don't get most of what is going on around you. Imagine this for a moment if you will and think about how you might feel if you were in such a situation. Would you be irritable? Would you be stressed out by people's expectations? Would you do things that looked irrational to those around you? Most of us would.

There are several different philosophies about how to raise ASD kids. My current personal favorite is from Dr Ross Greene ("The Explosive Child" and "Lost at School"). His approach is that kids will do well IF THEY CAN. If they aren't doing well its because they haven't yet developed the skills they need to do well. They can learn the skills they need but it is going to take these kids longer to learn them and it may take different methods to teach them.

I am sure that your son loves you and he needs you more than anything in the world.

I mean this gently, so please take it gently.

There are huge contradictions in your post, and I think it would be worthwhile for you to sort your way through them. On the one hand, you acknowledge that your son is different from other kids because his brain works differently, which is an awesome thing to realize. Then just a few sentences down you use words like "conniving" "nasty" and "self-absorbed." Words like this make me wonder if you truly have come to understand what having different wiring is all about.

My son was not an easy kid up to about the age of 8. He had me in tears of despair more than once. His teachers, too. Did he do irritating things? Most definitely and sometimes it seemed like it was almost constant. Did I think he was an irritating kid? No. I didn't. His behavior was driven by his neurology and he was too young to learn any compensatory skills. For as difficult and challenging as he was, I couldn't even begin to fathom how difficult and challenging it was for him. By the age of 7 he was able to start putting words to it and it was horrific. Heartbreaking. "Mommy, I know I am not supposed to do it, but I can't help it. I know I will get in trouble, but I have to do it. I am a bad person." "Why can't I be like the other boys?" "Why doesn't anyone like me?" "I hate myself!" "I hate my stupid brain!" "What am I doing wrong?" "Why am I so naughty?" "I'm bad." I know he had these feelings before the age of 7. He just didn't know how to express them. It still breaks my heart nearly 4 years later just to think of it. The agony he experienced. And he was just a little boy.

I understand you think you have it rough. And you do. But so does your son. And he never gets to take a break from it.

My advice to you would be to listen with open ears, to be willing to take the risk of doing some serious soul searching, and to find a way to love your son, even the parts of him that drive you nuts. Because as he grows, he will change and I do think his relationship with you will influence some of those changes. For better or for worse, and it is up to you to ensure it is for the better.

Stick around and read. But please do put your thick skin on. Some adult autistics will take offense to quite a bit of what you wrote and sometimes you can get some really harsh-feeling feedback. I have always found it helpful to remember that it is not coming from a bad place. It is because they are on your son's side. When you listen fully, you can gain some very valuable insight.

I should add that I was not here when my journey started, but I was on another mostly-adult-ASD forum and I listened, even when it hurt. Even when I didn't really want to. But sticking it out was probably the best choice I ever made on behalf of my kids.

Good luck.

Possibly true that I have not grasped the full meaning yet.
Up until a few weeks ago, to us and everyone who has observed him, he *was* those things. Only now do we have a diagnoses and are beginning to realize that his brain simply functions way differently than ours.
So I guess it is more correct to say that, J "comes across as" rather than is.

That all still leaves us with the "where do we go from here".
He cannot be taught, re-directed, or disciplined in the same manner as most children. His brain literally does not comprehend those methods, as I now see.
I am trying to parent a child that doesn't make friends and can't play well with most children. In fact, he doesn't even play well with most adults. He doesn't form bonds in the same manner one would expect from a child, nor does he have the tools right now to keep bonds alive. He has developed some terrible, nasty habits (tantrums, hitting, screaming, swearing, name-calling, and so much more) that often make him undesirable for company, and because I don't know what tools to use to change those habits, we live with a child often undesirable for company! My child cannot even express his daily emotions and feelings, let alone any deeper ones, which children of his age are typically learning by now.
How can I help my child find peace with himself and at home so that we ALWAYS desire his company? What tools can I give him to be successful in school, relationships, and life?
How can I understand his brain better?

You are asking some HUGE questions, which is good but you probably want to start smaller. Think, "how can I make THIS DAY go better". Even that is a huge task at first. While I understand the problems you have expressed "tantrums, hitting, screaming, swearing, name-calling, and so much more" because we have been there, you are going to need to be more specific.

Many people here start off with a visual schedule. I know many links have been posted to websites where you can download good pictures to use, hopefully someone will follow me up with a link as I can't find one right now. Ideally the schedule will have cards on it for each activity that can be removed/moved around. Ours just uses velcro attached to a strip. A schedule helps with many aspects but for us it reduces anxiety because DS knows what to expect and that makes him more comfortable. For others it helps the child with organization which allows them to get through the day better.

Many ASD kids have difficulty with transitions. Give him warnings before a transition is going to occur, like a 5 minute warning followed by a 2 minute warning. Timers help some kids with transitions but others just get more freaked out by the timer. We like our Time Timer http://www.timetimer.com/

For meltdowns (what we typically call them instead of tantrums), you have to find the trigger. Actually, for most negative behaviors, you will find a trigger if you look hard enough. The successful way to reduce meltdowns is to identify triggers, eg loud noises, crowds, fluorescent lights, sock seams, being asked to do something he doesn't know how to do, people who smell "funny", (I don't know triggers are different for everyone). Then you have to figure out how to avoid or mitigate the triggers. Some people use a system called ABC, antecedent, behavior consequence, as a way to document occurrences and try to determine what triggers negative behaviors. Again eg, you are at the grocery store and DS starts having a meltdown, you end up basically dragging a screaming kid through the store the rest of the way because you "have" to get the grocery shopping done. OK, so you know the behavior, screaming and yelling in the grocery store, and you know the consequence, you endure the screaming and yelling until you can get him in the car and back home. Well think back, what happened BEFORE the meltdown started. Keep thinking back until you can think of something that seemed to be uncomfortable for him or at a point where his attitude or behavior seemed to change. Don't expect him to be able to tell you what is was. If he could communicate it to you he wouldn't be having a meltdown in the store about it. Sometimes it takes several of the same experiences before you say "aha, now I understand that he hates the smell of the meat department" or "the flickering lights drive him nuts" or "he really hates being in a crowd". I could go on but I am totally just throwing out hypotheticals because I don't know any specifics about your troubles.

There are several methods that have been developed for teaching kids how to identify their own emotions and verbalize them. "How Does Your Engine Run?" is a popular one and people often make their own version of this. In a nutshell, you use a scale, it could be from Cold to Hot, Low to High, or a number scale, for us its 1 to 5, where each step on the scale represents an emotional state. You have to keep it pretty basic to start with as many ASD kids have a pretty limited vocab when it comes to their own emotions. Happy and Angry may be the only ones he can identify to start with.

There is SO MUCH out there, way more than I can put in a single post. If I were to give you one book to read to start with I would say Tony Attwood's "The Complete Guide To Asperger's Syndrome". Also download "Congratulations, you're child is strange" http://www.asdstuff.com/works.html

There ain't no magic wand, settle yourself in for the long haul.

Besides the free e-book recommended upthread, an author who really helped me is Kathy Hoopmann (who wrote All Cats Have Asperger's Syndrome) but the book I recommend - even though it's a kids' book - is the Blue Bottle Mystery. It's told from the perspective of a mildly autistic boy and it really shows WHY the world is so confusing and frustrating to them. Another good collection of books to read to get inside his head a bit are the ones by John Elder Robison (Look Me In The Eye, Be Different)

What part of the world are you in (country, state?) There are lots of services, but they differ widely from place to place and getting help kind of depends on where you are and how healthcare works there. Autism responds best to specialists : a developmental pediatrician or pediatric neurologist are your best bets for accurate diagnosis (and an accurate diagnosis should include telling you specifically what's different about him and what therapies each difference responds to.) You may also want your child to see a speech therapist (even if he can say words perfectly - there's a therapy called pragmatic speech therapy that focuses on social speech) an occupational therapist for sensory and body awareness issues as well as the issues Bombaloo discussed, and to attend a social skills class run by a therapist or social worker familiar with autism.

In the interim, some advice I learned here that I think is solid: it may help you to think of your child as being about 1/3 less than his current chronological age - in other words, a 20-month-old in a five-year-old body with five-year-old articulation and speech; more like a gifted toddler than an average preschooler. If you frame it this way (and ignore his obvious gifts and capacities) does his behavior seem reasonable? At it's heart, all spectrum disorders are a developmental delay but it is so easy to overestimate their abilities because of their sometimes incredible capacities and gifts in particular areas. Sometimes just readjusting your expectations can make a big difference.

That is not to say he can't learn, or shouldn't be asked to learn, just that his learning trajectory, especially for social niceties, is not going to be the same as it is for other kids. It will require more patience, more repetition, and more consistency. It will require careful monitoring that he is not pushed beyond his limits - meltdowns (those seizure-like tantrums) can be a sign that things have gone too far.

Does he have somewhere where he can safely be alone for a few minutes (like his room?) For the physically abusive actions, maybe try calmly stating "The rule in our house is _________________________" and then removing him to his room for a few minutes without saying anything else. When he's calm, say the rule again, and ask him to repeat it. (Our house rule is "No angry touching," but if your son's actions are caused by curiosity or amusement, you may need to adapt the rule to your specific needs) It needs to be specific (not "be nice" or "be respectful.")

I forgot to add my favorite point -Behavior is communication. For ASD kids this communication can be fairly ineffective until they have been very specifically and very methodically taught how to communicate effectively. Just because your son can talk doesn't mean he knows how to communicate in ways that you and others can understand easily.

Let me try something...a helpful strategy for me is to consciously choose the words and phrases I use to think about and describe my kids. It takes conscious effort at first, but eventually it becomes more natural...

I am trying to parent a child that doesn't make friends and can't play well with most children. In fact, he doesn't even play well with most adults.

becomes "I am trying to parent a child that hasn't yet learned how to make friends and has difficulty figuring out how to play well with most children. In fact, he hasn't learned how to play well with most adults yet. I am sure he will learn these things in time, but for now it is hard for him."

He has developed some terrible, nasty habits (tantrums, hitting, screaming, swearing, name-calling, and so much more) that often make him undesirable for company, and because I don't know what tools to use to change those habits, we live with a child often undesirable for company!

becomes "because his brain works differently and he has problems expressing his needs and wants effectively, he gets frustrated and has behaviors that make it difficult for others to appreciate him because they cannot see past why he is behaving the way he does. I haven't yet learned how to teach him better ways of coping with his frustration and anger, and it leaves us both feeling unhappy."

You know, I'd caution you against calling these things "habits." If his "tantrums" are truly meltdowns, there is little he can do once the onset begins and the only thing you should be doing is be present with him, comfort him, and support him. It is tricky sometimes to tell the difference between tantrums and meltdowns in auties who do both (my daughter does), but when she is in meltdown mode, the only thing to do is soften, comfort and support. At that point she is a bundle of firing neurons and I can only imagine the experience is worse for her than it is for me.

My child cannot even express his daily emotions and feelings, let alone any deeper ones, which children of his age are typically learning by now.

Not his fault. And one day he will get there. In his own time. We discuss emotions and feelings here on a regular basis. Ours and other people's. Often times, at least for my kids, the route to development and understanding is first through a rote, cognitive one. It is only after we have "walked through" emotions in a non-emotional way that they are able to start to figure out how it applies to their own experience. One thing that helps me is to remember that my kids simply will not develop like other kids. Ain't gonna happen. I try to focus on where they are now and what the next developmental stage is and work toward moving to that, even when there is a 2 year discrepancy to their real ages.

How can I help my child find peace with himself and at home so that we ALWAYS desire his company?

I have yet to find a child who's parents ALWAYS desire their company. I think you are searching for a mythical beast LOL! Your son is still very, very young. And emotionally he is younger still. Give him patience and time. It is hard, but really, it is the only thing you can do.

I think realistic expectations are a major key to adjustment when dealing with an atypical kid.

What tools can I give him to be successful in school, relationships, and life?
How can I understand his brain better?

I would go out and just read some of the posts in the general forum. Don't feel like you have to participate. Just read. Learn about sensory issues. Read books and blogs by people on the spectrum.

It took me at least 2 years of intensive "study" to really feel like I "got it." Have patience with yourself, as well. You have a lot to learn and it isn't going to happen over night. You will make mistakes. The only failure in those mistakes is to fail to learn from them. Love your son. Unconditionally. A friend of mine once told me "The true mark of a mother's love is in her ability to love her kids the most when they deserve it the least."

She was talking about me. She said that to me when my son was 3. Difficult kids can grow into amazing kids. Keep the faith.

3RingCircus, welcome. I have felt (and still do at times) exactly how you are feeling and we are 3 years post diagnosis. Things gradually get easier (or maybe we learn to deal or maybe we grow accustomed). Vent here when you need it. You know your son best! Trial and error is what it takes. And a lot of patience and giving yourself breaks. Try very hard at every moment to remember that his brain is wired differently so things that don't seem bothersome or offensive to you can drive him mad-and the only way he knows how to deal with that (right now) is to react. Let him know he is safe and that you love him but try to keep your communication clear and concise and have clear rules and boundaries. Continuity helps keep anxiety these kids feel at a minimum.

One other thing: one of the most important things they said to me when my daughter was diagnosed was to work on "behavior issues" one at a time. So they told me to prioritize them and work on one target behavior at a time. This worked well for us. Then when you see improvement in one little thing you begin to realize things will get better.