It's not a parenting contest, or is it? Help please?

Post Reply New Topic

My son with Aspergers is 17 1/2. I have been the primary parent after the separation 14 years ago as my child's father is very AS too and dependent on his mother. My sons father also has hygiene problems, does not like exercise and see's no reason to restrict internet even where porn is concerned. He is aggressively angry towards me and was somewhat abusive when we were together. He bad mouths me to my son and has tried to attack me in front of him (luckily my car window was up). Still scary. But I am peaceful because I want the kids to see their dad.

My son has melt downs. Recently he hit me hard over an argument about getting up for school (the private AS High School I fought to get him into). This temporarily had him with his father. My son returned home and informed me that he no longer was going to live with me. After a therapy session he decided he was going to be with me 'week on/week off'.

I want my son to be happy and healthy. His father does not see the benefit of providing healthy food, or getting my son out of the house. My son stays in bed all weekend. He does not ask my son to brush his teeth, or bathe. He does not require a bed time or limit internet. My son has learned to manipulate the situation. He comes here demanding internet and wants to stay in bed all day. My worry now is that he may decide to stay with dad all the time because he can do whatever he wants there. His dad absolutely refuses to limit my son or talk to me about consistency between homes. My son is nearly 18 and losing skills and gaining weight. I just found out that his father put a giant HD TV in his bedroom for unlimited gaming.

I have been told it's not a parenting contest, but what if it is and the prize is your child's mental health and independent living skills? What in the world should I do?

I don't have any advice, but I wanted to say my heart goes out to you as a mom. What a hard place to be. Many children are not ready to make the adult decisions at 18, and with the developmental delays, our children with AS may take even longer. I don't know what I will do when I am put in the passenger seat as my children grow up and I have no idea how to deal or cope with that or how hard to fight or rather to sit back and just be there if they need me.

Your son needs to stay out of a confusing battleground. It is important for him to know you love him and he is welcome, but the way you choose to live is the way he will live at your house. You need to refrain, no matter how hard, to say anything bad about the way he lives at his father's house. That is the best way to lose him. Show him a better way and the consequences of making certain choices with out being negative about his father.

Continue to hold your hands and your heart out to your son...

...but understand that he is almost 18 and, however hard it is to watch him make all the wrong choices and wallow in failure, let go.

I don't know how you've raised him-- whether you tried everything in your power to "make him normal" and put a crushing amount of pressure on him or whether you were smarter than that-- but it doesn't matter much now. If you did that, maybe some down time will let you learn from your mistakes-- and cut yourself some slack, because I'm sure you had the best of intentions. If you didn't, all I can say is that I'm sorry being smart does not appear to be paying off.

He's 18-going-on-13, if one applies the 30% rule. OF COURSE he is going to wallow in getting his own way, doing whatever he wants, and avoiding anything that's difficult for him.

Given the constraints of your parenting situation, you basically can't stop him. It's sad, it's scary, it's upsetting, it in no uncertain terms isn't good or right or fair...

...but you basically can't stop him.

What you CAN do is not fight tooth and nail. Not drag him by the hair back to what is good for him. Not kick and spit and scream and make him even more resistant. You can tell him that you love him, and tell him that no matter how good this feels, it isn't good for him...

...and then you can step back, and allow him to thoroughly burn his ass and have to sit on the blisters. THAT might get him to understand, and come back, and ask for real help that he'll be willing to accept, because older and wiser and with a few miserable experiences under his belt, he might understand what you've been talking about all these years.

Sorry. That advice hurts. I'm not going to have an easy time taking it if someone has to give that advice to me someday. If it helps any, I had to learn some things the same way...

...and I really don't know how my Dad kept from choking me when I was 17-going-on-13.

As someone who absolutely loves to be lazy and do everything that is bad for me, my input is this:

There is a time and a place for everything. What your son needs to figure out and see, for himself, is that while that lifestyle is pleasant for a while, it isn't nourishing enough to be a way of life. It won't make him happy, or provide him with the type of future he most likely desires. But he has to see and feel these differences to believe in them, and then he has to seek a reasonable balance. That isn't something that can be imposed on him; he has to find it himself.

So, I suggest being a fantastic sales person. Get him to see how nourishing and soul sustaining moving outside of his immediate comfort zone can be, and how exhilarating accomplishing things in real life can be. Help him achieve successes and to recognize the internal rewards.

I consider myself a spurt person. I push out a lot of energy into a project, and I love it, but then I need a break, often a long one, and I nest. If I was in your son's situation, I would appreciate that every other week I'm pushed to go outside of myself a little, and then every other week I rest and give in to my nature. I physically am not capable of doing A all the time and I've learned that it doesn't make me happy if I do B all the time.

Show your son that you understand his need to nest and hole up for sustained periods of time, but also help him learn that he will thrive best with more balance in his life, and that nesting / holing up aren't going to make him feel good about, well, anything, long term.

No contest. Just balance.

He is almost 18, so I agree with DW_a_Mom that you are going to have to market your position to him. Does he have any goals or dreams you can tap into? My son is 10 years younger than yours and he is more socially emotionally delayed then the 30% rule, so at 18 my son is going to be more like 10-11. Yikes!

I would try to focus on the important things and let the other things go for now. Talk about natural consequences regarding hygiene and so forth. If your son were NT, I would say to not worry about the pr0n so much, but depending on how young he really is I do not know how damaging that would be. That said, he already has access to it at his dad's, so keeping it from him at your house is not going to undo anything. Unless the stuff is really bad from a psychological point of view, maybe have a "don't ask, don't tell" policy where as long as you don't have to look at it, you won't police it. What might help in that instance is have some nice, long, talks about what your feelings about it are. Even if that doesn't mean he will look at it from your perspective, he might do a better job of hiding it, if that is what you want, so you do not have to look at it. If your objections are more moral as opposed to practical, then it is going to be your house your rules, but yes, it could encourage him to stay at dad's, at least when he wants to look at pr0rn.

Do take pains to emphasize the Kiddie Porn Problem.

That looking at kiddie porn is bad, and that it does direct and immediate harm to the kids involved.

And also that there are people out there who pose as kids but aren't, for the purpose of catching people who are looking at kiddie porn. And that those people aren't going to care what kinds of struggles or issues he has-- that if they catch him, they are going to take away all his freedoms and all his happiness and flat-out ruin his life, no second chances, no understandings.

If he knows and acknowledges and understands that, and acts upon that understanding, he should be able to not completely and permanently ruin his life while he's learning why, however much he might want to live in a pit of sloth and self-indulgence, he doesn't want to pay the price of doing so.

And yes, you have every right to and are right to enforce "My house, my rules."

That's a fact of life he's going to have to get used to at some point (if he follows my trajectory, somewhere around his early to mid-20s).

And, when he does, it will do him a world of good to have a decent example to fall back on.

Speaking of decent examples. "Son, look at my life. Now look at your father's life. Which of those two things do you think you'd rather end up??" would be something I'd ask myself. It would be something I'd probably say to one of my kids. I don't know how it would work out (haven't had to go there yet, as my oldest is only 12 and NT), but it would probably have worked on me (insofar as at least planting a seed in my brain) and it's probably something I'd try.