Adult son's Asperger's has gotten much worse, how to help?

Post Reply New Topic

Our 23 year old son has been in and out of our house since he was 17. He had been doing ok in school until his junior year when the district wanted to end his IEP. He has had substance abuse problems, been in jail for stupid behavior and drug offenses. Has gotten his act together and fallen on his face so many times I can't even count.

So this most recent time he calls me. His girlfriend has been angry at him and he doesn't understand why. This ended it a fight and her telling him to leave. Making it worse they have a newborn at home. So he has been here part of a week. I have noticed his behavior is really gone downhill. I don't think it is substance abuse issues this time. I have seen that enough times to know what that looks like in him. He literally can't function. Trying to arrange his thoughts to say something has become extremely difficult and frustrating for him. Trying to hold a very simple conversation was really hard. I could tell he was scrambling to make his brain work to give me a response fast enough and that ended in a disjointed response. Basic executive functioning tasks are a challenge. Just trying to gather his things was confusing and he would have to check multiple times if he had picked up everything.

He had gathered some of his things from his girlfriends house but ended up leaving his phone (minus the battery) at his girlfriends and left with her phone. They have the same model so that may be understandable. But trying to make the logical steps of how to solve the problem was not happening. Instead he was trying to hard boot her phone and put his phone number on it. I know he knows that won't work but it was like he couldn't process the obvious step of meeting up with her and exchanging phones.

He has always been a bit scatterbrained and had some of these challenges but nothing like this. He had been clean for months and it is obvious when he isn't. But he seems to have really gone downhill bad recently. Like his Asperger's issues are way way worse. I am not sure how to help him and I know he will probably be a bit resistant to accepting help. He wants to prove he can do things all on his own just like everyone else with limited success. Right now I have concerns about his basic ability to function.

Am I off base that this is his Asperger's but way worse? Thoughts on what kind of help we could get him? He had a therapist in high school for about a year but that was mostly to help him work though dealing with life challenges rather than Asperger's specific therapy.

If he is depressed/stressed about the break-up, I would think that could do it. It happens to NTs also, but the effect can be more extreme in people on the spectrum.

Just a guess on my part.

Stressful, emotional and life changing events that cause even neurotypical people negative effects such as depression, inability to function, etc, are especially paralyzing to people on the autism spectrum, and yes, can seem to make Asperger/autism traits seem worse or less easy to manage. When I'm most relaxed and nothing bad's been happening, I cope better with my traits/they seem milder, than when I've been stressed out or bad things have upset me, then I seem like I'm more severely affected by my spectrum issues. In short they can "seem worse" under stress because we are already using up everything we've got.

The emotional trauma of what's been going on in your son's life will be overwhelming to him right now. If you can try to find a good therapist who is oriented toward ASD that would be good, but also, plain old rest and avoidance of additional stress factors can help too, although achieving this is obviously easier said than done. For myself in past traumatic times, in an ideal world I've wished for six months complete break from the world, with rest and quiet and solitude if I need it, plus a break from worries. We can't all have that but if you can come as close as possible to letting your son have some kind of peaceful break or downtime while he's in your home for a while; personally I see that as probably helpful. Although having said that, I don't know your son and maybe he's not like me and would not need as much of a break from life as I would after these upheavals.

He probably does need to see a good, sympathetic counselor of some kind though and then take it from there.

Who's baby is this?

Is he the father?

My husband shut down right after our child was born. The grim reality of 18 years of you having to support/deal/nuture just tanked him. Babies are sensory overloads. Screaming, stinky and sticky. Add on a girlfriend who is pissed off, yeah...that doesn't help.

If he is legally the father, my state would already be hammering him for child support. I know you didn't ask about that, but go to legal aid and see what his rights and obligations are. He does not want to be $10K behind in payments and then find out about it. Then thrown into jail for lack of payment.

He also has the right to see his child.

Your son made some crappy decisions, and if girlfriend is a drama queen, this will get much worse before it gets better. The Aspergers doesn't help, but friend of the court doesn't care about "his issues".

On the other hand... she kinda has the right to be pissed off. I know the game my husband talked about inclusive fatherhood wasn't what actually happened. He couldn't handle it. I was very unwell after my son was born and I needed the help and support physically and emotionally. He wasn't able to provide that. At first I was bewildered and hurt and then I was pissed.

The new parenthood, the break-up, etc. means he's probably overwhelmed and in need of some kind of productive intervention. I don't know what's available, but I suspect not much.

In terms of parental rights... right now he's needs to be helped to focus on his responsibilities rather than his rights. A newborn is an overwhelming thing - if he's the father he needs to be helped to fulfil those responsibilities rather than being overly focused on rights. He can worry about that later - and my experience (though this is not true in every case) is that dads who focus on their responsibilities, including being a supportive co-parent, have more of their rights respected.

There are other conversations on this forum about high functioning aspies and breakdowns in the 20's-50's age range due to stress of trying to function normally. I had a breakdown a few yrs ago at age 34 and his difficulty with gathering his thoughts and speech sound very similar to what i experienced. I would try to do simple household tasks like dishes and i could not look at the entire sink of dishes at once. I could wash one dish, put it in the dish drainer, and pick up the next one. Had to break anything in life down to the minute stuff and even then it was so, so hard to do evene the simplest things. Mine was due to an accumulation of stress factors.

With what you are describing of his life circumstances, especially the stress of a newborn, a breakdown seems like a believable scenario to me. The symptoms sound very familiar.

I have improved a lot. Anti-anxiety meds and anti-depressants were helpful to calm the racing of my mind at first. The dr i first saw was not knowledgeable about aspergers though, and tried to push higher doses of meds on me than I needed or wanted when i was seeing good improvement with the original doses. (Aspies tend to be more sensitive to meds which is a whole other discussion but something a lot of drs are not familiar with.) After about 8 months, i was able to go off the anti-depressants and change anti-anxiety meds to one with fewer side effects. I also did some behavioral therapy which was not extremely helpful since the psychologist also did not recognize aspergers in me. I am self-diagnosed but the puzzle pieces fit now, which they did not at the time when i was going to different drs trying to figure out why i had a breakdown and how to keep it from happening again.

The other thing that helped was decreasing my responsibilities for a time. I was gradually able to take on more as i recovered. I still have trouble with some executive tasks but am pretty functional. I do have a lower threshold for sensory overload since the breakdown.

Anyway, this is long so i must close. Hope you can find a way to help him, all the best to you. You sound like good, supportive parents.

Men get postpartum depression too, they are now saying.

I don't know how to help because as an "adult" and a "father," he may feel he has no business taking assistance from his own parents. I would talk to him about what you see but it should be handled very, very delicately.

Do you have any relationship at all with the girlfriend? If this is not a complete break-up, maybe there's hope for an alliance. If nothing else, she's the mother of your grandchild. (Cancel this if it's not his child, I was assuming that it is.)

Before agreeing to anything, he should have a paternity test done. Even if he's sure the baby's his. I knew a guy who only agreed to one because his lawyer insisted, and it turned out the baby wasn't his after all.