Aspie lady care taker of High Functioning 11 y/ boy

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Hi all. I am a 30 year old Aspie lady (no children of my own) who has recently been tapped to take care of a high functioning autistic boy, aged 11. I take care of him 3 days a week, for 8-9 hour shifts. He is home schooled, but visiting his mother right now in my state and is not doing any kind of schooling for the duration of his stay with Mom. I am not a licensed therapist or nurse or teacher by any means.

This boy is naturally sweet and is respectful, polite, and I can really see him trying when I ask him to do something. He is interested in vacuum cleaners, the concept of time, the mathematical concept of infinity, and elevators.

I see a lot of myself in him, especially when I was that age, but his intensity level for his subjects is something that is foreign to me. He will repeatedly ask me how long something (an activity, or driving somewhere) will take, how many hours, then minutes and seconds. I am not sure if it is a short term memory problem, but he will ask these questions to me over and over (the same question) throughout the day. For example, he will ask how many minutes 8 hours has in it, then how many seconds 8 minutes has (480, btw). When I tell him that he already knows the answer, he tells me that he wants me to know the correct answer. I remember having intense interests, but not asking the same questions about the subject (how long activities take, how many hours, etc it takes to get somewhere) over and over. and. over. I was more the type to do research on the subject until I exhausted all there was to know about it, then wax philosophic on the subject until someone got tired about hearing about it. Is this something I can nip in the bud? By the end of the day, I am exhausted from repeating myself.

Also, he starts almost all of his sentences with "Why" even if he is not asking a question, but making a statement, or an observation. I am unsure of how to explain to him how to form better sentences. I have tried asking him each time if he is asking me a question or if he is just telling me something but he is getting a bit confused at that, and I am at a loss myself on how to explain what I am trying to get across.

I do not really have an ansver, but I have seen several questions like the first part (repetitive questioning) in the parents forum. My children do not do it, and i didn´t but it is not uncommon.

When my son asks the same question over and over again, it is usually because he wants reassurance - that the initial answer hasn't changed. It's to do with anxiety in his case. His memory is a little up and down too, can either be phenomenal or pretty poor..

If my son says something that is incorrect - I simply correct him and tell him to repeat the sentence, it could merely be expressive language issues

I'm sure he does this to his other caretakers as well. I would ask the mom if there is a strategy his therapists and other caregivers are following that she would like you to be consistent with.

It's also possible that he is trying to find a way to have a conversation, and this is the only script he is comfortable with. His answer to you indicates to me that he finds it reassuring to know he has communicated something to you and you understood it. It may be a way to practice Theory of Mind skills for him.

Maybe when you see him, set up a schedule of how many times he can ask a given question over the course of your time for him. Answer it the number of times you've agreed upon, and then say "We agreed I'd answer it three times, and now we're done with that question for the day." Be prepared that he might try to find ways around this and you may need to adjust the rule periodically.

My son does a lot of the repetitive questioning of things he knows the answer to. Sometimes he wants to see if we know something and if we have retained the information. Sometimes it is a way of talking about his special interest. Sometimes I think it is soothing to him like a stim.

Maybe try engaging him in his special interest by asking him questions that throw him off script and see how well he adapts to it. I he is trying to start a conversation you might get a brain dump on the subject instead of him pulling you back on script. I think this helps with flexibility and reciprocity to some degree (even if you get a brain dump response instead of a "conversation."

When I started talking, most of the things that came out of my mouth were random things with no communication intent to them, even though they sounded like communications. I would say things like, "Do you like bunnies?" This same question, I would ask often. It was just enjoyable to do this for some reason. I still do it now. A significant percentage of the things that I say to my mother are "Do you like bunnies?" and "Do you like cats?" For this kid, I would just let him talk whatever way he wants, nothing special that you have to do to channel his communications in a certain way. He is just being his natural normal self with these repetitive questions.

Last edited by btbnnyr on 02 Dec 2012, 11:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thanks all with the replies. I never did the repetitive asking of questions or the verbal stimming that he does, so these are completely new things for me. I have told him before that we are not going to talk about a subject anymore and he seems to understand that. I think I will try to have him repeat the sentence he is trying to say when he starts something with a "Why".

So, when he asks me these things over and over, should I ignore it? Or should I answer him every time? Do you think that he would get the concept if I told him that the answer to his 'time' questions is always going to be the same?

I think you have to decide what YOU can tolerate, and find a way to communicate that. It's the piece that this child is missing - that his communication may have an effect on another person unrelated to the content of the communication.

At this point, I can tolerate very little of it because it is the same few questions, every day, for sometimes 9-10 hours a day every five minutes or so. I am thinking of putting up some sheets of paper with subjects he isn't allowed to talk to me about written in bold black letters and I will direct him to those sheets and remind him that WhiskeryBeast doesn't want to talk about these subjects. I am planning a special outing to a vacuum store later next week, would it be okay to tell him that if he can't obey some simple rules that this privilege would be taken away? I am thinking of giving him a 'three strikes your out' policy on asking or talking about the subjects. I wasn't diagnosed until I was grown, but I do remember my Mom using a reward based chart system that really motivated me to act in the ways laid out to me by the rules.

I know that repeating things can be self soothing and a stim sometimes, but I am of the mind that repetitive and obsessive behavior should not be encouraged because it doesn't help a higher functioning person succeed, whether it is making friends, participating in school, etc. I am the way I am (married, living on own with NT husband, driving, two college degrees and able to hold down typical corporate job) specifically because my Mom and Dad didn't allow me to churn within myself with repetitive talk or interests.

I am never sure about how the obsessing works; whether it is something to be avoided or something to foster or what - and I would guess the answer to that question is different for every kid on the spectrum.

However, the learning that other people have boundaries that need to be respected is something every individual needs to learn. Therefore, you establishing boundaries - whether or not the obsessive behavior is an issue - is important.

I think the other questions you ask aren't something anyone can answer here - with my own son, having a reward often backfires, as he will convince himself it is impossible and just give up and increase instead of decreasing the behavior. Same with punishment, unless it he is extremely prepared for it, knows its coming, and believes it to be fair.

For him, what works is for us to sit together, outline the problem (I usually do this at the computer so I can write things down while they are happening) and come up with a solution together. You have to do this when the problem isn't happening, so the next time it happens, say "I want to talk about this" and make an appointment for a later time when you're calm.

Sometimes the solution will involve punishment - but that is agreed on by all of us, including DS. Sometimes the solution involves making changes so he is capable of stopping whatever it is. Sometimes it involves earning a reward (though we have found that both small rewards and small punishments are more successful than big ones.) It can take a long time to communicate why the particular behavior is important to us (on our end) or why he's having trouble stopping it (on his end.) However, with this method, we're getting there.

Thanks so much for your input. My idea about putting subjects up which were not being discussed that day worked very well and I only had to remind him a few times. He understood that we wouldn't go to the vacuum repair store if he couldn't follow the rules and did not seem upset about that. I might do a chart system later on if we need to have more structure. He has been signed up for a special autism school here and will be starting that soon which will be great too for learning things.