I need some pointers

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Glad to find this forum and I will need a few days of reading to cover the posts and learn something. However, I need someone give me pointers where to start.

I am a 50+ guy with a 15 year old AS son. He isnt officially diagnosed yet ( will visit a clinic soon ) but all indication say he is AS. He is clumsy, not social , doesnt take jokes well, sticks to same type of clothes or type of food. Often frowns at his brother and sisters for the simplest joke or comment. He is genious and lost minded ... so I read all over the net and now think he has Asperger.

Question :

Where do I start reading to learn more and be able to help him (off course we are seeing a doctor in a few weeks but I need to learn from experienced folks).

I want him to be more social, have more fun, be more capable of expressing himself to others. I want him to be able to focus for a longer time to learn things about life.

I know I know. It isnt what I want for him but what he wants for himself. I know that and agree, but I am older and know better and do not wish to see him suffer in a not-so-understanding world.

Hi. I found Tony Attwood's book, "Asperger's Syndrome: A Guide for Parents and Professionals", a really good starting point in working through what AS is and determining what traits of it my son had.

Regarding a diagnosis . . . make sure they do it thoroughly and observe the social environment. My son initially only had the hospital interview, after which they decided that he was so "good" that he couldn't possibly be autistic, so they didn't bother doing school observations. It was only after me pushing for it a few months later that they decided to go ahead with school observations and immediately diagnosed AS.

Regarding help for your son . . . from what I have managed to meander through in the last few years, I would say the biggest help would be teaching him social skills. You may be fortunate enough to have a social skills group in your area, or there are book and video resources out there.

Well, all the best and I hope you are able to get all the help you can for yourself and your son. It is all a bit of a process, but great when you can see results.

I think understanding where he is coming from is the place to start. What bothers him about social situations, and what changes would make him enjoy them more? What situations make him feel stressed, and which make him happy? Does he have an assessment on these for himself? What behaviors has he learned to stop doing to please the world, but really misses because they help him feel calm and focused?

He is old enough to help craft his own plan, but he may have already built many layers of defense, in the effort to deal with the world. It may take time to go through those, and re-discover the real him.

Once you know that, it is easier to help him channel and focus and adapt in the areas he most needs to in order to thrive.

I think one of the odd things I discovered when I first started talking with Aspies was that some of my son's annoying habits are actually necessary to keep him focused and calm. He needs to chew and he needs to pace. I saw a huge change in other areas of his life after simply giving him permission to do these things (commonly referred to as stims) at home. Not having to focus on restricting these behaviors freed him to focus on more important areas. Many Aspies enjoy trampolines or swings; some are chewers, some are into music. Mine paces from wall to wall in the living room, bounding on the furniture and turning (yeah, we've given up on EVER having nice furniture). It may sound counterproductive, but as parents we are always picking our battles, and once we gave up the furniture, we got a lot more happiness, and a lot fewer melt-downs.

pretty much any book by tony attwood is worth purchasing....all cats have aspergers, while rather a silly look at aspergers, might give you a new perspective on what your son's dealing with

Here's a great lecture by the world's most famous Autistic person, Dr Temple Grandin.

She covers heaps of information in this lecture.


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wt1IY3ffoU&feature=related[/youtube]

Helen

You just put in those few words the hope and desire of every parent for their child. As the mom of an 11 yr. old boy with AS I would definitely read everything you can until your brain hurts -Which is what I did- get professional help if needed (we did for awhile) and then just let your son be your son (I know I hate cliche sayings like that too).

He may never be as social as you hope him to be (he will have a certain level of interaction that meets his needs), he may have fun but just not the way you think "fun" manifests itself. I bet you can think of things he does enjoy or get pleasure from- they just may not be "typical" Many AS kids don't "get" jokes but they have a sense of humor - Aspies can be very literal. For awhile my son had "fun" reading encyclopedias - not the typical definition of fun.

He may be able to express himself to others but just not in the way you hope he does. He CAN learn how to focus if it is meaningful to him -my son can learn anything but if it has no relevance to his needs and the way he is he rejects it.

I went to a seminar about AS once and the best analogy I got was that most people (some don't) have a need for socialization and it can be represented by a glass. Some people have really big, tall glasses and need them filled all the time. Some people have medium sized glasses and it's OK if they're not always filled. Some people (like my son) have a small glass and it doesn't always need to be filled AND it gets filled quickly.

Good Luck and Take Care

Thank you so very much for your great posts.

I can understand the issue of having "fun" . He has a crush on Wikipedia and spends most of his time there. In his childhood, he spent the time spelling country names and drawing country flags…etc. His mom loved it at the time but realized (maybe too late) that her genius son is like a human calculator and dictionary but not much else.

One of the problems I am facing now is that his mother isn't really cooperative in understanding his situation. She knows that he is "lacking" in skills that kids in his age should have, but she only whines about it. His teen age isn't making things any smoother.

She is sometimes negative towards him, and dare I say.. she told me in an angry moment that she "hates" him. Off course she doesn’t mean it but this still shows the severity of the problem. I sometimes feel overwhelmed by trying to deal with this problem and at the same time having to handle other problems (family financials, second job, boosting morale of my DW ..etc.) ..


It is a depressing feeling that instead of having a teenage son to help you, you have got another heavy weight problem to deal with. That is not to say I am losing hope. Not at all. I tell him sometimes ( you know, I need a math geek like you to help me in the second job and balancing the spreadsheets). And I mean it … He is going to make a great accountant. That is .. if he is willing to concentrate long enough.

Pardon me for the long post, but I have a "strange" thought … that I myself had AS and have grown out of it a little. Or perhaps I may have had a very mild case. Is that possible ???

Why do I think that way ?
Because I seem to have some symptoms like :

* understand most of what my (Aspie) son means despite his clumsy statements
* prefer to work alone than in a team (when I am with others I can socialize very well ! Its work that I prefer to do alone and may freak out at the "stupidity" of others when we work together )
* never did well in sports. Throw a basketball towards me and I wont even attempt to catch it.
* have fun in a weird way ( while others may surf the net collecting pictures of beautiful nature or good looking people, I love to collect pictures of work benches , tool boxes , handy tools ..etc.)
* part of the conflicts between me and DW is that she acts on her emotions, while I act on my calculations (literally speaking, I use spreadsheets for most my decision making).

Why is this thought important to me ?

Well, I am not going to verify it and seek treatment. I am already married and held my current job for over 25 years. That means I have done OK for so long. The reason I need to know if I am AS is that it would help me trust my (Aspie) gut impressions in the ways I think to be useful to teach him. Who can help an Aspie better than another Aspie ? And also if I am right, then it means there is some hope he can improve himself over time and be a near-normal guy like his dad.

Any thoughts on that ?

Many thanks

I don't think you "grow out of" As - you've been able to adapt whatever you think may be AS tendencies and held a job for 25 years- quite an accomplishment for anyone. I think your inclination to think that your son will be OK is right on. He can be OK -he is Ok but right now he is trying to find his place in the world- the attitude you have will be one of the most crucial parts of helping him.

I can't speak to the situation with your wife. I hope and pray that she will take the time to learn about AS and realized that he son needs her non-stop patience and understanding not hostility. I have a husband who has never been openly hostile to my son just inexplicably insensitive and impatient with him even knowing that (like I always remind him) "This is the way his brain works"! I always think well he has one parent who cares- that's more than some kids have...

Fully possible - after all, they say AS is hereditary, so there could well be a family history.

Yes Rachel, your son is lucky to have a loving and understanding mom.

Regarding husbands or wives , I think sometimes we may be too focused on the son and forget the spouse. I mean we just assume or demand s/he be there with us to help the son. We can be sometimes too invloved with the son to notice that the spouse has a (similar?) problem.

I was angry at my wife sometime ago, but then after thinking I started feeling that she is acting that way because of what she sees as "life pressures" in addition to depression from whatever life had to throw at her.

After that, I started providing her with as much comfort as I can and I am feeling the difference. Not always but often enough. And mind you I had to have my brain "blindfolded" ; I stopped my brain from analyzing everything she does and understanding it as insensitivity or anything of that sort. I just thought ( she is my love), (she does not know any better) and things like that.

Give some more love to your DH, maybe he is depressed for some reasons and waiting for the chance to open up.

It is hard to be a parent of child with special needs. When we got the dx of asperger's for our son my husband and I both already had a pretty good idea what it was since we had done our research but we still felt awfull for a few days. Our son's therapist said that was normal, that we were mourning the loss of our "normal" son. After about a week we started looking at how this is actually a positive. Granted, that is not always easy but we really tried to focus on that so it would be easier for us to help our son. Our kiddo is in a social skills class at school, which has helped so much. One of the main problems for him, and a lot of aspies, is he doesn't understand social rules. Once the rules are learned it still takes a while to implement them. We have seen a psychologist and that has helped Bobby feel he has a safe place where he can say anything he wants and not be judged for saying inappropriate things. Medication didn't work for him. We are trying to learn who he is and help in the areas he specifically needs. I would recommend, the same as others here, to read as much as you can and really be a student of your son. He can be your best teacher if you let him . Be patient with your spouse, too. Just love your family and have faith. Hang in there!

I think I might have AS, but I went through a rather brutal childhood, was very bright, and was/am a fantastic actor and mimic. So I think I've just observed people like an anthropologist would do, and over time I've learned to generalize pretty well about what I should say/do in a given situation. But I still have some issues, most of which my friends/family don't even know about. Being a female, and "bright," I think a lot of my behaviors as a kid were dismissed as just "cheeky" or "precocious." I was constantly told I didn't smile enough, and I stared at people too much and made them uncomfortable (and nearly got myself beaten to a pulp many times in school). Since I thought I was so smart, I didn't realize how socially naive I was - I was taken advantage of a lot, from both girls and boys. So much cruelty - and I just was baffled by it all, and terrified, too.

Didn't mean to hijack this thread. I just wanted to say that it's entirely possible you have AS but have learned to cope with it so well that it would be very difficult to get a dx at this point. Bottom line - you know what you know about yourself. No one else knows you like you know yourself. You could see three or five different doctors and they might all say "No no, you don't have AS you silly woman." But if you really feel you do, that won't satisfy you.

Good luck!