Because no one else will understand...

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"Mom, does everyone have brain problems?"
"No. Not everyone has brain problems."
"But everyone has problems?"
"Yes. Everyone."
"Then why does it seem like I am the only one who has problems? Why does it seem like I try so hard and I still fail? I have no agility. No attention. No matter what I do it never seems to work and everyone else can do all these things so easily."

Really....what does one say to an 11 year old boy who says this with his voice all choked up? Then:

"Why do I have no maturity?"
"What do you mean?"
"Other kids my age are interested in things like privacy or shooting BB guns. I am interested in stuffed animals. I hear everyone talking about things that don't interest me at all. The things I like are for little kids."

Honestly, I don't even know what to say to him because nothing I say will change any of it and he is exactly right about all of it.

It truly breaks my heart.

And it breaks it even more when people say things like "It's just his age. He'll get over it!" I feel like screaming "WHAT DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND? MY KID IS IN PAIN AND IT IS NOT 'JUST HIS AGE.' IT IS NOT LIKE YOUR 11 YEAR OLD WHO IS GOING THROUGH 'NORMAL' MIDDLE SCHOOL THINGS."

I feel so bad for him. I can't make it better.

It is truly upsetting.

I wish I had words of encouragement for you right now, but none come to mind. I do think you are a good mom and I hope the words that need to be said will come to you. It is so sad to see a young person feel this way, to feel bad for simply being who they are.

sounds like a smart, insightful kid. you could acknowledge what he said, then point out good things about him to balance.

As someone diagnosed w/ AS relatively early, I can speak from firsthand knowledge that many aspies, myself included, had odd, seemingly impersonal or self-repressive ways of forcing themselves to conform. However vaguely, I remember the same impasse, and many greater dilemmas like it. What's key is to try and align yourself with your son's patterns of reasoning and avoid getting in the way of difficult, self imposed decisions which will benefit him in the long run. You'll be surprised to see the discipline intrinsically associated with the condition.

Where is he getting this he has no agility, no attention, no maturity stuff? This sounds like the kind of thing an adult would say to a kid, and the kid would copy and believe what the adult said about him. Are his teachers or therapists telling him this stuff? I guess it's possible that he came up with these statements about himself himself, but they sound more like stuff that adults would say. No way I would have come up with these things when I was his age.

Sad but sweet! I could see my guy saying such things, if he didn't happen to be in a good place right now. I don't keep my son from hearing words such as these for several reasons. For one, he's the kind of kid who wants and needs to know what is going on with him and he hates surprises. It makes things go smoother when he knows what he is dealing with. Another reason is, it opens communication with him. He can help me understand him if I let him know how he appears. It helps both of us for him to know who he is and how he thinks. He would be very upset if he learned that we knew of a characteristic and didn't tell him.

My son, 11, likes stuffed animals and all things cute as well as BB guns. I used stuffed animals to teach him (homeschooling) when he was younger. I had the idea, but keep forgetting, to have him use the stuffed animals to play with his younger cousins. It would be seen as heroic, not immature. He also has memorized quite a load of poems that would interest a young audience. I should get him on this some day.

Every so often, my son will ask me questions similar to this. (Not this with this level of self-awareness, though.) It makes me sad, too. I try to answer that everyone had different abilities and weaknesses and tell him what he is good at, too.

I do not know what else to do. You maybe could ask him if he wants to go outside and work on his agility, but that might make him feel more sad as opposed to empowered if his progress is slow.

Can you explain what you mean a little more here? I don't know what you mean by "avoid getting in the way of difficult, self-imposed decisions that will benefit him in the long run." The sad reality is that his ADHD is pretty severe, so he has extreme difficulty with self-discipline. Like his Mommy, he is always well aware of what steps to take to get to where he wants to be, he just has a really difficult time sticking to it.

You would think this doesn't sound very 11-year-oldish, right? But it is 100% my kid. "Agility" is a power used in many of the games he plays, so he uses it regularly, along with "stamina." He has a lot of motor planning issues and is clumsy and awkward physically unless he gets a lot of practice so he can over-learn the movements and rely on muscle memory. He can't ride a bike, only learned to tie his shoes this year, is the slowest runner, etc. He sees the other kids playing sports and would love to join in, but if there are any competitive kids involved, they always end up yelling at him and he is so sensitive to this.

I would be the adult who has discussed attention with him. He has the same misconception I had about myself until 5 years ago or so. If you ask him if he has a hard time paying attention, he will say no. Because he thinks of the periods of hyperfocus he has and he thinks "I actually have really GOOD attention." His problem is that he cannot control what he pays attention to (like me). So he gets distracted. This is affecting his grades and he is starting to think he is "stupid." I have tried my best to help him understand that it isn't due to his intelligence. It is due to his problems with focusing his attention on the right thing.

I am not sure where he got the maturity piece from, but I think he realized it on his own. He actually prefers to play with his 7 year old sister. I think he is becoming increasingly aware that he is simply not interested in the things most kids his age are interested in.

It is so hard to see your kid hurt.

At the risk of sounding sentimental, let me say this. Your little man sounds very mature and I would just continue to establish in him that our identity is not defined by what others say or do. Most importantly it’s never defined by comparing ourselves with others. Please continue to encourage him to find his own unique way of finding out whom he really is. That is a discovery that can take a life time and can lead to many wonderful things.

Awe, big hugs to you and your son.

I've tended to say things like "some problems are more obvious than others" and "problems come and go, so what you see in this group of years may not be what you see later." And so on. And I point out the gifts, the things he is good at and proud to be good at.

But, really, there is no sugar coating that on many things your son will always have to try harder or know he is impaired. I've been upfront about that with my son, too. We all get the life we get, and it always can have been worse.

Thats quite a mature thing to say though. I agree with other posts, there must be something he is better at than the others that you could turn him round to. We cant choose the skills we have, Im NT and I wasnt sporty at school, I was average at everything, wasnt the prettiest girl etc. The only thing I was good at was Art which is hardly a career! Are there examples of how it was for you at school? With the marvelous invention of facebook we can now find out how friends got on years after school, turns out all the cool, attractive, sporty ones didnt do as well in careers as the geeky ones afterall

Thanks, everyone, for your support.

You know, one thing that I think makes it harder is his sister is clearly a gifted artist. She is known for it. He doesn't have obvious gifts. I think that his gifts are that he is truly a kind person through and through (I don't know that I have ever met a person who is as genuinely kind as he is. The problem is, this is not a particularly enviable thing among 11 year old boys and he knows it) and he also always does what he feels is the right thing. But again, this doesn't make you popular around 11 year old boys when all they want to do is test the limits and he steps in with "Actually, while this might sound fun, it really isn't a good idea to do it because X,Y,Z."

Another thing I was thinking of earlier today...I have always fostered self-awareness and awareness of others. Moreso than any other parent I have ever known IRL. I mean, it is a very regular discussion in our house. It is how I try to teach compassion and empathy. And how to figure out what the heck other people are up to. But right now I think he would be happier if he was unaware. Unaware of himself and unaware of others. I realize that in the long run, the development of self- and other-awareness will serve him better, but for now I wish he could just be blissfully oblivious.

I disagree.

We all have our own set of challenges to face and overcome.
We all have lessons to learn from.
We all wish we were better at some things and it's normal to feel this way.
We all fail at things that are sometimes oblivious to others.
We are all insecure with ourselves at different times in our life.
It's normal to compare ourselves and it's easy to assume others have it better.
Real life, isn't it?

"Why do I have no maturity?"
Maturity is not defined by a number. Your son has learned he is a "problem" and "doesn't measure up".


I think what can change is your own point of view. He's mimicking what you believe. He will never develop a sense of self-worth as long as he believes he's a problem.

That was an interesting point. My initial reaction to your post was that my AS daughter had no idea what other kids were interested in. And no curiosity why they were interested in it. She was pleased when other people were drawn to her interests like origami and 24 game and rubiks cube. but she couldn't have cared less about bieber and whatever.

Childhood is precious. Some people have made hugely successful careers out of preserving a child's perspective in art and literature.

My "normal" 10-year old still believes in Santa and the tooth fairy - I don't encourage it, but I don't discourage it because I hope there's a place in world for sweet people who believe in magic.

Well, I would define a "challenge" as a problem that just has a prettier name attached to it. Relabeling things to make them sound more acceptable doesn't really change the nature of the issue.

He was asking if everyone has things that are hard for them.

Yes. Everyone has things that are hard for them.
Everyone has challenges.
Everyone has issues.
Everyone has problems.

He is no different than anyone else on the face of the planet in that regard.

And I do not believe that acknowledging that means he will never have a sense of self-worth. In fact, I don't think any of this has to do with his sense of self-worth at all. I think it has to do with a kid who looks around and sees everyone else trying half as hard as he does and having twice as much success. I think it has to do with a kid who is becoming more aware of his impairments and trying to make sense of it. The things that he is talking about are 100% accurate. He has motor planning issues. He has attention issues. He has very immature interests compared to kids his age. I, personally, see no problem with acknowledging these things head-on. He is a smart kid. If I try to repackage it into some softer sounding language, I am only minimizing his struggle. And denying his level of insight.

Plus, I don't think he believes any of these things make him a bad person. I know he doesn't. But I do think he is starting to realize at a different level that they are things that make him different from most of the kids his age.