High Functioning Autism and YouTube

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Oh, he is home - schooled? I was home - schooled for a year and a half, and I think I learned better that way. I agree that he's good at keeping the patter going. He could be a commentator on a sports channel when he grows up.

I watched the Tom and Jerry video! I don't know hardly anything about video games! But I think he might call it a one-off because it's a battle scene between two characters, and not part of the "adventure" part of the video game, where you solve puzzles, or look for trophies? I probably sound silly to someone who knows a lot about gaming! But my husband and son both play, and I've made them explain things to me sometimes!

I don't know how you see subscriptions, either. But I think comments just appear under the video, on youtube. If you scroll down from the video, you can see comments people leave, or leave a comment yourself.

It's so funny that you mention retro games, and Pokemon. I know someone who actually has a fondness for those things, also. It's my son! Ha ha. He is much older than your son. He's in his early twenties. But if you wanted, I could ask him if he would be interested in talking to your son a little bit about Pokemon, and retro games? I'm sure my son knows allllll the bestest secrets to at least some games, because he subscribed to Nintendo Power Magazine and stuff like that, many years ago. And he may know a thing or two about Pokemon. I know he had Pokemon Snap . . . but that's all I know!

I wish he were home schooled! At the moment he is not at school because he can't cope. he has only been inside the school for a couple of hours this school year, escorted. He is refusing to engage with school and prefers to stay in his room all day every day. That is why I am so worried as a Parent that if he stops doing his videos then he will have very little to inspire him during the day. As he is room bound he is suffering health wise and is spending more and more time just lying in bed. When he does his video he at least has to play the game, record the session, load into his Video package, record a Voice over then upload....and once uploaded wait for the signs of some views/likes.

We are hoping that whilst he is not engaging with school or anything academic, to a very small extent his Videos are a learning experience and he might think he needs to learn more about the techniques etc.

Bluemax

Thankyou all for reading this Subject. An update. my son has now managed to attract 17 subscribers to his channel (a small start) and this has put him in a more positive frame of mind and so he decided to post an update and promise to make some more Clips in 2016 - we thought he had got some demoralized that he would give up, hence the plea for help on this Forum.

This is really good news, for us as Parents, because he spends all his time in self imposed isolation in his room, will not go to school and very seldom agrees to leave the house. It seems that making Videos is the only way he can express himself verbally, as normally we get one of two word answers and he hides under his Duvet if a long conversation is attempted.

If you a reading this Topic from New then please take the time to visit his YouTube channel (links are provided earlier in the Topic) and Subscribe and Like his Videos, he gets a notification and it is this notification that seems to give him some sense of Purpose to his days. It is also almost the ONLY means of communication with the outside world.

Many thanks

BlueMax

Subscribed

I have a large collection, Mostly because before me my dad collected pokemon to. I collect everything Consoles, Games, Cards, Plushies, and even Movies. I'd love to be friends. I haven't had a friend since kindergarten (I'm in 7 grade).

His, accounts got closed WhiskersTheCat and WhiskersTheEvil. It's a shame I enjoyed his videos...

Yeah, Pieplup, I saw his accounts are closed also! I had not returned for many months, and when I finally got around to going back to see if he replied to my comments, the account had vanished.

BlueMax5000, is there a new account? My son is much older than your son, but I asked him if he would talk to your son about "retro" Pokemon things, since he grew up in the 90's, and that's what he knows. He said he would definitely like to do that, if you think it's okay. I explained to him that your son is still a child, so my son would have to watch his language and whatnot, just like with any other kid. My son has two half siblings who are around 10 and 12, so he knows how to behave around children. If you would be interested in something like that, please let us know if there's a new account! I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get back to this thread.

Sometimes I withdraw.

School can be stressful for NT children, as well! And I think it was my experience growing up that sometimes it took me a lot longer to acclimate to things that other people and children seemed naturally able to do. I wonder if the school district might be willing to set up something like a skype account for your son. If he feels more comfortable with computers, and being in his room, then he could at least keep a second computer screen with the skype on in his room and hear some of the lessons, and maybe even interact a little without really leaving his room? I don't know if the constant talking would bother him, though, and he would end up feeling like he had to hide under the duvet. Maybe you could make it clear to him that if he gets overwhelmed, he can turn down the volume, or turn off the screen.

Maybe that wouldn't work at all. Anyway, I just wanted you to know that I was thinking about your son! I hope all is well.

We're about the same age, I'm 12, he's fourteen. He sounds cool atleast from what I remember.

Welp, looks like I was too late. Tried looking him up before reading the rest of the thread.

Yeah...I was psyched to go look when reading about it. By the time I looked, it was gone. I hope something bad did not happen.

I liked him he had a well, Unique personality that in some ways reminded me of myself.

Hi, thanks for all the really positive comments.
We do not know what happened, one day he posted a short video of himself achieving something called my first 'Quad Feed', in Call of Duty, which he seemed proud of, and then two days later all of his accounts and channels had been removed and deleted. He will not speak to us about it, if we ask him why he simply grunts and avoids the question, maybe in time we will find out, but history is against us - once he had moved on then that's usually it. Maybe he got flamed or trolled, we may never know. I will try to encourage him to start a new channel at some point - even though he had very few followers, when he spent an hour recording a monologue to accompany the Video its the most he ever speaks, I guess recording a piece to camera avoids most of the issues about communicating in an 'live' conversation.

I suspect but can't be sure that one of the reasons why he never replied to comments, even nice ones like those left by this community, was that he was not really trying to communicate but needed to vocally express himself via a monologue rather than a dialogue, I may never know.

I tried to suggest he joined the Forum here but he won't, he does not really accept his diagnosis, even though he is 14, so if we mention this sort of thing he blocks us off by making noises/hiding under a duvet etc.

So I will update the post if anything changes, but it is a bit sad, I enjoyed seeing my son speak in a way I never see in the real world.

Thankyou

Bluemax

okay, thanks for the update, BlueMax5000. I totally understand abandoning a project, and never working on it again. That sounds just like something I would do. Where I live, there is a habit among those who help care for people with disabilities to help people set "goals" and strive to achieve them. And I don't think there's anything at all wrong with that. However, there also seems to be a distaste for allowing that same person to decide to quit a goal. I have no idea why, and I strongly advocate letting someone quit a goal/project/endeavor if they are adamant that they don't want to pursue it.

I quit my first marriage, and I'm better off for it!

Maybe he had a negative experience, or maybe it was actually stressful for him to suddenly be receiving more attention than he expected, even if it was positive. Maybe he has something better in mind, or maybe he already achieved what he set out to do. It's possible he had promised himself that he would continue with that project until he got a certain number of comments, or likes, or views. Or he might have just been practicing for some other project. There are lots of things that he could be thinking.

It sounds like maybe he has some anxiety both with carrying on a dialogue, and also in accepting his diagnosis, so maybe if he suspected that people were reaching out to him specifically to encourage communication because they knew he was struggling with it, it just made him feel a little anxious.

It might help to remind him that (I'm pretty sure) on youtube he can delete any comments at all that he wants to left on his account. Even if they're nice comments, he might just feel less pressure if they're not there. I'm only guessing, but maybe having people comment, left him feeling that he was somehow leaving something undone that he didn't really want to do . . . reply to the comment. Sometimes, knowing there is work left undone that you don't really want to do makes going back to the project un-fun, if you know what I mean. But if he knows that he can delete comments whenever he wants, then that pressure disappears.

Maybe he won't make a ton of friends that way, but maybe that's not the point. When I was a child, around your son's age, I practiced speaking a lot by recording on a tape recorder, rewinding, listening to myself, and then trying again. I would have been very embarrassed if twenty strangers suddenly came along telling me how great my recordings were. I would have felt like all of those people were missing the point. My recordings were not meant to open communication up between myself and other people. They were meant for me to listen to myself, and improve the way I actually vocalized words, nothing more.

I don't know if that's the case with your son, it's just one possibility!

I hope, whatever his reasons, he finds another endeavor he enjoys. With any luck, he'll communicate more freely as he gets older, just naturally.

Take it easy.

I'm sad that I could not hear one of his videos,I arrived late.