i have a friend with aspergers syndrome, he is 17 years old and he has just moved to me from Norway. His parents are furious and want him to go home but he refuses. He was living in a childrens home for kids with severe mental and physical handicaps. The youngest there was just 13 and had severe epilepsy and up to 30 seizures per day, often in front of my friend. The other child was 15, and he had severe mental handicaps. When i was there in September last year to visit my friend, the 15 year old started stroking my hair and then took out scissors and tried to cut my hair off and was bodytackled by the staff and had to be restrained.
My friend didnt want to live there. He feels he is capable of much more than his parents think that he is capable of. He was diagnosed with Aspergers at the age of 14, and dumped by his parents at this residential care home. He says it was fine while he was still under 16, he didnt have to do a single thing, everything was done for him, but lately, he says he has been wanting more out of life. I went to his school, its a special needs school. There was 3 others in his classroom, all of them severely disabled. His teacher said there was absolutely no reason for him to be there, yes he has special needs but all he needed was a little extra time to complete regular work and there would be no problems, yet his parents thought that this special needs school was the best place for him. He was there for 5 hours per day, yet the work he was given that was of the standard the other kids needed, was for at most a 10 year old. So he was completing 5 hours work in less than 30 mins, and then had to just sit there not doing anything. When he asked for work more suitable for his age and intellect, he was told, sorry we dont have anything like that here for you.
Ive spoken to his mother, on numerous occasions, she wants me to send him home. But i just cant. I dont feel he was getting the kind of help he needed. His mum says that he will be in residential care for the rest of his life and wont amount to anything and will never do anything with his life. Yet i disagree totally. My friend is very very clever, he is so fluent in english that everyone thinks he is english, yet he is norwegian. In the 8 weeks he has been here, he has already learnt how to cook, how to clean, do laundry, and basically he has learnt how to take care of himself and i believe that in the next year or so he will be fully capable of moving into his own apartment and be able to take care of himself with no problems. I have 3 children of my own, ages 12, 11, 9 and they think the world of him. They agree with me, his Aspergers doesnt present any problems to him. They dont understand his mum and the way she thinks of him. Ive always brought my children up to believe in themselves, and to know how to do things for themselves as one day they will grow up and leave home and live by themselves and they need to know how to do that.
He doesnt want to go back to the life he had before, he wants the chance to grow up, to live independently, to go to a proper school. If he goes back to Norway he doesnt believe that will ever happen. His mum is making things as difficult as possible for him to stay here. She knows she cant force him to go back, but she refuses to help me get him registered in sweden so he can go to school here and be entitled to financial aid. He has managed to get almost all of the information needed to register himself here in Sweden. And he did that all by himself, as he did getting himself from Norway to Sweden. He is capable of so much, and i just wish his parents could see that instead of writing him off the way they have done.
I guess im asking, should i send him back to Norway to the life he had, or let him stay here in Sweden and grow up as part of my family and learn and grow and move into his own apartment when he is ready and go to school here etc.
29 Apr 2008, 2:14 pm
