Well I screwed up tonight

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Ugh. So, my son age 13 does this thing where he deliberately pretends he misunderstands something so that he can demand that we use different words to explain it or help him further beyond once he's got it figured out. So if he asks where are my shoes, I'll say by the couch, and he'll start screaming, and I'll say do you want me to come help, and he'll maybe scream yes or no or whichever but will scream that he can't find them, and then when I get close enough he'll look right at his shoes, see them, and almost say OK or almost reach for them but then get a little smirk on his face and instead say where by the couch, you need to explain to me what you mean by "by the couch", beside it or in front of it or what, YOU'RE NOT HELPING ME, YOU NEED TO EXPLAIN IT TO ME BETTER etc. Along with why are you always so mean to me, why do you always want me to feel like I'm stupid, etc.

If I say look, you just looked right at them, then of course it's no I didn't and he's super mad, telling me I'm accusing him of being a liar, etc. So I don't do much of that anymore, a testament to the fact that I'm not an entire imbecile... But even if I say look honey, right here, he'll still scream his head off at me that he could have found them himself if I'd have given him better directions, and sometimes by this point in the scene he'll even say I didn't tell him they were by the couch, although of course I had. If I say well I see them, do you want me to show you or do you want to keep looking, he'll still get mad and say things like why would I want to keep looking if you've already found them, that would be really dumb, are you trying to say I'm dumb. He's just obviously very stressed out as he's doing this sort of thing many times per day now when it was previously a once per day or less thing.

So tonight. Every night I put out his vitamins and whatever meds he's on inside a plastic bracelet that my daughter left here when she moved out on the bathroom counter. Every night. Months ago I just put them on the counter but they would roll around and such so I started putting them in the bracelet. He thinks it's pretty cool. Some nights he'll say are my meds in the bracelet, some nights I'll tell him and he'll take them as we go that way. Maybe one night per week he'll just go to bed and I'll bring them in to him because he's so tired he couldn't stop off in the bathroom.

Anyway tonight he was having some computer time and I said when you get off, let's not forget your meds in the bracelet. OK, he said. Then he was off, and sitting on the couch with me, and I said let's not let you get too tired to stop off in the bathroom and take the meds. He asked are they in the bracelet and I said yes. Then he wound up in bed without taking them. I said oh it's fine you can take them in the morning. He started to get mad saying that I should have reminded him again. Then he said "and you needed to tell me exactly where the bracelet is!"

Well, shoot, the bracelet is where it always is. And that's pretty much what I said, in a nice tone at least. He said I have no clue what you mean by bracelet. I said yes, you know, the thing it's in every night. No, you need to explain it to me. OK well it's in the bathroom. He's really yelling now and saying he has no clue, doesn't know what a bracelet is, doesn't know where in the bathroom it would be. I try humor: let's think, meds, in the bracelet, near where you get the water in the cup for them, but not the toilet water! Ugh, humor not working this time. He starts lecturing me and being really upset. When I ask you something you need to answer me right then in a way that I can understand! You are not allowed to not answer me!

OK, so, what should I have done? I should have said I'm sorry, I didn't realize you didn't know where the bracelet is, it's right by the sink. Do you want me to show you? Do you want me to bring you them since you're already laying down? Or you can wait for the morning.

But no, that's not what I said. I said I think this is like other times you feel the need to be in control or you feel anxious and you aren't able to just ask for help or tell me so instead you get mad and get controlling. Because of course you know where the bracelet is, you go to it pretty much every night. And I'm super tired, so can we talk more about this tomorrow, if you want. And of course then he had a huge meltdown. I'm a terrible person, I lie to him on purpose, I need to do what he says, finger and spit flying in my face, I go to my room and say please stop yelling at me or I'm going to lock myself in until you are calmer, and he breaks my door coming in after me.

So two points at which I made mistakes - I should have just told him where the bracelet is even though I know he knows. For whatever reason he needed to hear it in that moment. But I get so resentful of his need to control what I say (and where I sit, and when I get up to leave a room, and who turns off the light, and who leaves first.) It happens so many times per day. And it's not like when I spell things out the way he wants me to that things go swimmingly. If so, I'd be super inclined to do it. They don't - there is always something wrong with what I'm saying, how I'm saying it, what facial expression I have at the time. So sometimes I don't. Is there ever a time that I explain to him that he's being too loud, too mean, too aggressive, and irrational, and it actually makes a difference? NO. So why do I even try? Dumb. We all know at that point all I should be doing is whatever it takes to calm him down.

Second point, trying to lock myself in my room. I should have said hey, I'm sorry you're upset, what can I do? I've done that before and after a ten minute lecture he'll calm down. I guess that's part of why I wanted to just lock my door, so I didn't have to sit thru that lecture. But I made it worse.

When he was on the meds (atypical anti-psychotics and anti-depressant he was on for the last 8 years but just had to stop due to developing akathisia) he would do the same things but usually not get so upset and it wouldn't happen so often. He'd try to tell me he didn't know where the bracelet was but if I rolled my eyes at him he'd laugh and say just kidding. And if I said you're being too mean and yelling some really not nice things at me really loudly, he'd still say no I'm not, but he'd stop right then. Now that he's off the meds he's more intense in all those respects. It's hard for me to start treating him like he needs something other than a straight up answer and a seriously? But I have to try harder.

It seems obvious he is trying to get attention from you or engage you, but is doing it in a really maladaptive way. A lot of teenagers will pick pointless verbal fights with their parents over nothing, it seems to be part of being a teen and separating yourself from your parents mentally and becoming your own person.

Maybe you could try in the future if you see this interaction coming just asking him what is really wrong or what he really wants? If he is upset at you or needs to talk, or just wants to let off steam or something.

The only other thing I can think is to make a standard place where shoes, meds, etc are always put and will always be to avoid him asking. Tell him his shoes are to go in this specific place when he removes them and if he doesn't put them there he is the one responsible for that and you will not help him find them any more.
But he might just find something else pointless to argue over.

Sorry you're going through this.

Dumb question but have you ever tried to talk to him, when he is calm, about why he does this. My son will ask questions he knows the answers to, but it is b/c he wants to hear the script. Even if I follow the script, he will most often repeats himself to hear the script again. Often over and over again. It is soothing to him. it is upsetting to him when I do not play along.

I was wondering if this may be part of it with your son, as opposed to him seeking a gotcha moment.

My son does this, but not to nearly the same extent. Usually I say something like, "Well, if you can't find your shoes you'll have to go in your socks. Come on, we're leaving." He's a little younger than your son, so he panics and suddenly he can find them after all.
My gut feeling is that your son just gets embarrassed easily and doesn't like to admit when he's made a mistake or forgotten something. So, he's using you as a scapegoat. You didn't explain it correctly, you should have reminded him again, etc. I don't think you should play along at all, as it only encourages him to see you as a doormat. And he needs serious consequences for being aggressive with you. Autism isn't an excuse to attack people. It isn't your fault. He is responsible for his own actions.

Please don't be so hard on yourself - you are only human and you have needs too. You can't be the perfectly calm and patient parent 24/7. My aspie daughter is 14 and I want to run and hide in my room at times too. I can't do it either because she has smashed my door open a few times too - the frame is all split; we have had to get new doorknobs for her door and mine and one time she ended up jamming the door and I was trapped in my room until my girls called my boyfriend to come and rescue me.

She becomes more controlling as she gets more anxious and it is very difficult to deal with. We are expected to be saints when being abused by our aspie children. My daughter calls me the worst names and has seemed like the exorcist, so it is hard at times to realize she is not doing this on purpose and is just looking to me to help her with her extreme anxiety.

Her twin sister says she hates her sister for her autism because she gets a lot of the worst of it too. It would be easier to feel sorry for her and help her if her behaviours didn't didn't make us feel so defensive.

Sometimes I realize that I could have prevented things from escalating by doing A, B or C, but really sometimes you are allowed to get frustrated too. Raising an aspergers child is not easy!

Amazing! What you do and putting yourself out of your way to do what he wants, but you're a person too and allowed to be not perfect ! What kind of an adult he shall become when he never learn to respect a (loved and loving) person, put slowly but firmly some limits anyway, soon he'll be grown up ! Sometimes love is doing the difficult (also for you) thing.

Maybe, if he's looking for your attention, you might scedule some quality-time. You could do something together between dinner and bedtime, like a boardgame or cardgame, if it's just the two of you ,scrabble, rummicub, stratego, etc is fine too!

(((HUG))) I just hope tomorrow is better for you and your son.

I don't think you did anything wrong in these situations.
If anything, you are too lenient with him.

We can't be perfect all the time, and your needs matter, too. It really has to be trying and exhausting to deal with what you have to deal with on items like this; sending empathy.

Do you think it could be effective to have a conversation with him, when he is calm, about setting more reasonable parameters and boundaries? Note that you understand his needs and want to meet them, but they have reached a level that is humanely impossible, and he needs to figure out a way to handle some of his own needs and issues to make all this easier on you. You have needs, too. And they matter. He needs to understand that.

They say misery loves company...so I'll just sit right down and join you.

The situation with my daughter today was not the same, but the gist of it is.

Most of the time I bend to her. I accommodate. I adjust. I remain patient when I know many people wouldn't. In fact, half the time I sit and think to myself "if I would have done this as a kid, I wouldn't have been able to sit for a week." Not that I condone beating your kid. And not that I would lay a hand on her. But I am sure there is more than one household out there in which the patience would have run out long ago.

Sometimes, I know she really can't help a lot of her behavior. When I know she can't help it, it really isn't hard to accommodate. But there are other times when I know she is playing me. She didn't have to behave the way she did tonight, but she chose to. Is it "rooted" in autism? Sure. Yeah. I think it is. But does that mean it should always go unchallenged? No. She is living in a house with a brother who is also on the spectrum, and me...and while I don't have both feet firmly on the spectrum, I've got one foot and sometimes what I really need is for someone to adjust for me.

So, tonight I drew a line. As I was drawing it, I knew it wasn't going to go well. But I have been working with her on the same stuff for so long and sometimes I think she banks on me "going easy" on her. And so I gave her options and I drew the line. Long story short, I now "hate" her (she knows this isn't true, but she says it because she knows it upsets me a great deal and in the past I have made the mistake of backing down to reassure her that I do not hate her. )and she is nonverbal (I think willfully so), and she has ended up in her room alone. She did not eat supper. I am a bad mother.

Yada yada.

Listen, we are all human. Everyone has their "wits end." Sometimes we reach it. The work we do as parents is hard work, and often times it is without any thanks or gratitude. That is the plight of all parents, I think. But for us, it is "that" times 10.

Tomorrow will be a new day. I'm 90% sure my daughter will still be mad at me and still tell me I "hate" her. But it will be a new day and eventually she will get past it, and at some point we will have a breakthrough and this kind of thing will happen less and less. It's just that when you are in the thick of it, it is hard to remember that this phase, too, will pass.

I think as parents of kids on the spectrum, we become conditioned to analyze and reanalyze every situation that goes poorly to identify and mediate the root cause. When they are little, I think it is natural to see the "mistakes" as belonging to us, because they really have so little control over their environment and it is up to us to modify it. But as they get older, I think we need to be less "automatic" in assigning blame to ourselves alone. I'm sure this is not true for all kids on the spectrum, and I don't know if it is true for your son, but my daughter is capable of taking responsibility for her own actions. When I look at tonight's situation from an outsiders view, what I see is that she needs to learn that she can't always control me. She doesn't always get to have everything exactly as she wants it. Sometimes she needs to adjust. So in that respect, maybe I didn't make any mistakes, after all...

Thanks everybody. Great to hear your perspectives and to read from others about things going on.

I do talk to him when he's calm, quite a bit, when he's in the mood to handle it. He says he does these things because he's mad and he just wants to say mean things and cause me trouble. We rehearse or role play - or I do, he won't really join in but sometimes he'll listen. I'll him look, it makes me feel like you are way less competent than you maybe are when you do and say things that are irrational. When things happen to you outside the house and you try to explain them to me and it seems from your explanation that you were victimized, it's sometimes hard for me to believe you because of some of the things you say to me (like in this example, or he'll say things like he's in charge of me, I have to obey him, just really irrational stuff.) So if you want people to take you seriously when something happens and not just think that you're making things up just because you're mad, then you have to stop doing it. It's OK to be mad at me and it's ok to from ime to time raise your voice a bit and show me how mad you are, but if you could say "it really makes me mad mom when you do x y and z!" instead of "I'm going to call the police on you mom because I'm in charge of you and you are not allowed to tell me to pick up my underwear!" then you would build character instead of making me think you sometimes aren't thinking straight.

And he says he knows what I mean and that he'll try. But then 5 minutes later when he's mad about something, he's still screaming the same irrational stuff. He says as he's doing it it's like he's shoved into a closet in his mind where he's forced to watch a bad person who's taken over his body, and he can't get him to stop. Or sometimes he'll say it's just that he's mad and he wants to say mean and crazy things to show how mad he is.

You have probably tried this but I am going to suggest the following reactions to see what he will do; or alternately if you have tried this, I would like to ask for what the response was from him to try to troubleshoot.

1) Fake calm and serenity, but remain firm: Sometimes this has worked for us and other times it has not. The times it has not, I suspect it is b/c he was additionally upset b/c he thinks I do not understand he is upset. Until fairly recently, he has thought if I only understood him, I could fix anything. While adorable and sweet, I am not omnipotent and even when I do have power sometimes bending is not the right thing to do. That took a long time to sink in, and even now it is not 100% clear to my son all the time.

2) Add to number one, a statement of empathy: "I understand that you are very upset, but ..." This helped a lot in terms of the long road of getting him to understand that fixing the communication issue was not going to guarantee he gets what he wants.

3)Get emotional with him and say it is not fair in with hyperbolic (humorous) expression! This I use sparingly, only when I think the humor of mommy using hyperbole and agreeing with him (and I do have to agree with him) will bring him off the edge of an emotional cliff. This is a diffusion technique that confirms that he does want empathy but has trouble angling for it in expected ways.

I have a few major issues with this...

Are you in his head? Do you think like he does? Has he told you he's deliberately pretends to misunderstand? Is it at all possible that you're constructing that concept and he sees it VERY differently?



Yeah, that's what I often say, even as a grown adult. The couch is a large object. It has three dimensions. Under the couch is "by the couch". Between the couch and the wall is "by the couch". What your son is telling you is he needs you to LISTEN TO HIM and be more precise. If you need a lesson in how ASDers thrive on precision and get frustrated by people's inaccuracies and vagueness then let this be that moment.

As for the ENTIRE part about the meds in the bracelet ... your 13yo isn't yet accustomed to a routine, and there's likely a good reason for that - he's 13 and you're not helping him with his rigid productive routines. While many people can argue that "aspies aren't puppies", one can also argue that much like a puppy ALL HUMANS do very well with routines, and moreso with someone on the spectrum. His shoes should always end up in the same place at the same time and after the same activities, every day. A new pair of shoes is a completely different equation for him, so it will require re-training, every time. If he's to take his pills every night, do it at a set time - not "before bed" - placing one activity before another is FAR less effective than placing the same activity at a set time. Think of your 13yo as an "If This Then That" machine. If 6pm then meds. It's freakishly simple, it's just not how you yourself think. Thing is, he's less capable of adjusting than you are, and the adjustment needed is one that's in no way detrimental to you.

I can't possibly stress this next bit enough--


How about you learn to make this not about you, but about him communicating by saying things like "you're not helping me, you need to explain it better" and you realising my kid doesn't understand, maybe I should explain it in a very simple and precise way, not frosting it with humor and other signals that will confuse him and further obscure my meaning? Further sign you're just not understanding the very simple realities of ASD:



What makes you think he understood your TONE? Do you understand that in mentioning TONE you're speaking a language your son likely does not understand even exists, and hasn't had enough conditioning/training to comprehend? I'm 36 and still have issues with that. Talking about your "nice tone" is really great, but you NEED to understand that it's a foreign language to him, and one likely happening without his even knowing it's there.

The name of this website is "Wrong Planet". Have you tried to understand that your 13yo feels like an alien? Like everyone around him is using the same words as him but with completely different meanings? That when you say "near the couch" he gets confused because you just told him where a small object is relative to a very large one? It's not much different than you being in a rush and asking someone else "where are the keys?" and them saying "in the house". How would YOU react to that specific scenario?

Excuse me for sounding bitchy here, but you need to read some books, and likely meet with a professional that can train you to be a parent of someone with an ASD.

Why do pets misbehave? Owners that don't know how to handle the pet. Imagine how much more complex a 13yo is than a dog or cat.


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(Please note I am saying this with a gentle tone of voice)

While I have been known to enjoy a good rant every once in a while, I think that each person who posts here, whether they are a parent or not, deserves a modicum of respect in being able to share their perspectives. As parents, helping our spectrum kids can be exceptionally challenging, and throughout the years, the one thing that I can say has never helped me solve a problem is to be berated by someone who thinks they understand what I am facing when perhaps they do not.

Livnah, you have presented potentially valid points, but they are a bit hidden in your attack. But the one thing I think should be kept in mind is that this kid may very well know exactly where his meds are, but he is trying ineffectively to get his parent to interact with him in the way he wants to interact. I see this with my daughter more often than I would like. It is frustrating. And it is also disheartening, because I know that the vast majority of people she meets are not going to "play that game." It impairs her relationships with her friends.

Lastly, yes...sometimes I am in my kids' heads. I know them more intimately than anyone on the face of this planet. I have survived by learning to read their nuances and learning to think like they do. Does that mean I never make a mistake? No, of course not. But does that mean that I am often the most reliable interpreter of their behaviors? Absolutely. I appreciate the insights that those on the spectrum have given me. I am still in contact with some of the people I first "met" 7 years ago online. I still ask for feedback and input. I ask for it here. I am not infallible. But, I must say that I am pretty damn good at sorting out what is going on with my kids.

Forgive me, because I realize that I am actually posting in response to something that was not directed at me. I know that there are many adults on the spectrum who were treated deplorably as a kid and throughout their lives, and I think that it causes them to identify with some of what they read, because they see themselves in that kid. The one thing I would like to ask you to consider is that the parents who post here are "not those parents." We dedicate our lives to making things better for our kids. Not everyone here, of course, but I can tell you from traveling the web that this particular group of parents is probably the most "autie-friendly" of them all. We are really trying. And most of us are doing a surprisingly good job despite the odds.

I welcome feedback, but it is harder for me to hear if you are attacking me while giving it.

I wish I could say something other than, "If you see those points as an attack, then you're taking input personally, and not constructively", but that's the only thing I can think.

So I'll do what I was taught to do: I'll pat your shoulder and say "there there, it'll get better, don't you worry, we all know you're trying your best". Even though that's really just skirts your issues, and I don't know why you'd post on here if you just wanted to be told something you already knew.

I'm removing myself from the conversation since I'm attempting to be constructive and your response makes it clear that that's not your goal.