Hello everyone,
Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but figured I'd start in the parents forum.
Six years ago, my son was half way through his freshman year at highschool when we got a call from his school psychiatrist. This day ended up by far being the worst day of my entire life. My son had always been a little "Quirky" (Im sure that most of you have heard that), gotten straight A's in school, was extremely outgoing, knowingly had a photographic memory, and laughed like there was no tomorrow! It all stopped in one day! The call we got from the psychiatrist was that he had told some of his friends that his life was not worth living and he wanted to end it. After calling him into the office the psychiatrist found out that this was all true and he had a plan.
Trust me, as a parent, this feeling of worthlessness, guilt, helplessness, ...….. is something that words cannot describe. It can be completely earth shattering if you let it be!
The next three or four years were filled with more pain, love, work and enlightenment than I ever thought we could handle.
Ill make this next part as short as possible, but want to try to hit on the things that Ive learned along the way that several people with Autistic Kids deal with. I will tell you this, the very last thing we found out was that our son had Aspergers. My God I wish we knew this early on!
The first thing we found out was that our sons amazing photographic memory came with psychosis. Something that he was ashamed of and didn't tell us. Quite simply his imaginary friend when he was young never went away. Instead, in his beautiful mind he knew it wasn't "normal" and put him in what he explained was a "library in his head". This friend now was in charge of the file cabinets and when our son was asked a question, this friend would quickly go the file cabinet and pull the info on that topic and he could see everything he had ever learned about it. According to what I've read, and other friends with Autistic children have revealed, psychosis and imaginary friends are common.
All of this hiding, stress and information all came to a head when he hit puberty. This part is something that the Dr's and I don't totally agree on, but Ill tell you this. The First mustache hair, zit, awful teen body odor, (and the list goes on), happened just weeks or months before he broke down. Just like they tell you with PDD or Asperger's, everything is black and white and this was no different. He came unraveled with the load and couldn't handle it.
During these three years he went into the psychiatric hospital three times. The first was that day we were called, the second was a year later because his meds (trial and error) were completely wrong, and the third was because of what clued us and the Drs into his Asperger's. Follow the trail on this third visit. Girlfriend didn't work out (thank God) - boys were nicer and hurt less - I think I must like boys - boys don't date boys - I must have been born into the wrong sex! At 16 my son demanded a sex change! As unthinkable as this was, this ended up being the best revelation ever! Our son didn't understand social norms, misunderstood people in general, saw everything as logical and black and white, and in the end our team of Drs diagnosed him as a fully functioning spectrum kid. This gave us all an entire new outlook on his life looking back and a ton of material to help moving forward!
Thank God that during all of this we had stuck with him, and had done mostly the right things. Instead of getting so upset with the video games (something that gets him away from the buzzing in his mind), we joined him every now and then which allowed us to reduce it "being done" after an hour or so. We got him into comic books and the comic store scene (those stores are filled with like minded kids btw), joined a Magic the Gathering club and tournaments (with him at first then let him and his new friends go it alone), worked with the school on getting his day a little more structured, and was completely open to his choices and then protective when that gut feeling knew something wasn't right (the gay-sex change thing was filled with Quack specialty therapists that looked to support and agenda and not our son!). We also closely watched the meds and his reaction to them and worked closely with his Drs. to adjust or change.
The Great News and Success!. Our amazing, quirky, brilliant Son is doing better than I could have ever imagined! He is going to college for Computer Science (go figure), Got his drivers license at 19 and is fully mobile, has a ton of good college buddies, has what he calls an "Amazing" girlfriend (recently thanked me for making sure he kept his man parts during that "funny time" as he calls it), works part time for spending money, is completely off medication, and best of all has a fantastic relationship with his parents!
The only reason that I write this is because I remember searching the web for answers. It took forever to figure out that his issue was autism and once we did, this site and all of you were very helpful. My Son has come sooooo far and what was once complete despair, has turned into a child that has life stories, life experiences, love stories, a tough loving family and a more amazing life ahead of him than any of us could have imagined. He is a shining star and I could not be more proud of anyone ever!
16 Feb 2019, 8:54 am
