inappropriate talking to yourself

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I have a 13 year old son who has been very difficult for professionals to diagnosis. He is somewhere in the autistic spectrum but he is very high functioning. He has a very hard time making friends because he is uncomfortable carrying on a conversation. He drifts off into his own world where he role plays and carries on conversations with himself. It is his "biggest" problem because it wedges a gap between him and kids he could be friends with. I feel like it is getting worse. He has worked with speech therapists, occupational therapists, and child psychiatrists since he was 2. I realize that there are families with much bigger issues but I was hoping that there is a strategy or technique out there that would be effective in working my son out of this stage. As it stands now, we just try to stop this behavior when we see it and get him involved in whatever we are doing. Thank you for any help you can give us.

I know this is goning to sound really weird, but have you tried joining him in his world? Find out what is in his world and go there with him. Talk to yourself too. Show him that you are comfortable with him being him. Draw him out that way as opposed to making him join you. That is the way I tend to approach my kids that I mentor and it seems to work to a large degree. Once you have his trust and understand what he is doing, who he is talking to and why it will be easier to figure out the best approach.

Seems to me like you are looking to 'cure' him, that might be the wrong approach. I mean he is who he is...I know it sucks that he's having a hard time making freinds, I mean I never had friends in school so I know how that is. But I would say you should remain supportive of him and not try and force him to socialize if he does not always want to. Does he want more friends? But yeah that's just my opinion.

does he know that he's talking to himself? My aunt once told me that she thinks it's funny when i talk to myself, but i didn't even know i was doing it. Now that i know about it, i try to not do it so much.

Awesome advice!

If he really is on the spectrum, "self" is very important to him, and any attempts to "train" him into behaving differently are most likely going to be perceived by him to be an assault on his core being. As if everyone is trying to "fix" or change who he is.

I've dealt with AS long enough now to have come to realize that changing behaviors doesn't necessarily mean changing who I am as a person, but as a kid, that's is how I perceived any and all attempts to get me to change behaviors.

One almost has to "become" the Autistic for the Autistic to believe that those helping him/her understand and accept who they are. Trust is a major issue. Attempts to teach Autistics to behave differently feel to the Autistic like outside influences invading and insisting, or "forcing" change in them.

The Autistic believes, "I am what I am. I am what I do. I am how I behave. This is who I am, and attempts to change who I am is rejection of who I am."

The Autistic has great difficulty in viewing things from anything BUT their own perspective. For some, it's impossible. WE have to be the ones to try as hard as we can to "see" things as they see them. And for each Autistic, HOW they see things is different. (Spectrum ~ get it?)

I think it is always better to get down into HIS world, and do your best to see it the way he sees it FIRST. That will build trust. The hardest thing though, is helping them understand that changing behaviors doesn't mean changing who they are, and only means changing how they interact with others. This is because it requires the child to step outside his own mind, and attempt to see things from OTHER people's perspectives, which is the one thing we aren't very good at.

If YOU start by getting into HIS world, he will be far more likely to do the same for you, eventually. It may take a long time. BE PATIENT! Make it a game if you can. You go first! Explain to him what you want to do. ASK for an invitation into his world. Do it a lot for a while, then, at some point, ask HIM to come visit YOURS.

It's a LONG process, and could take months or years, but it's critical.

I don't know if "cure him" is the right term but I do want him to be as happy and comfortable with himself as he can be. I love all 4 of my sons but if one of them needed help with math I would get him help with math. I just know that a life without friends is not a happy life and I need to find a way to get him to socialize with others more and with himself less.

Thank you all for taking the time to reply to my question. It means a lot to me.

I think MrXXX is right on. My son does this, and I mostly go into his world (mostly shooting storm troopers, so at least I'm familiar) and play with him. I do tell him that not everyone knows star wars and they may not know what to say or do, so I try to play star wars, but then try to change it a little so he can learn to improvise, including totally changing subjects if it's a good day. Then we take turns. When in his world, I try to remind him, gently, that other kids may not want to play like that. I don't make it about him, it's about others and how they play, not how he plays. This way he may be more willing to work harder, and it helps give language he may need to fit in better in a more novel, verbal situation. I try to tell him that it's not him that has an issue, it's that kids are different and most kids don't play in that manner and they don't know what to do, just like he doesn't know what to do when they play games he doesn't know. I think sometimes my son will go into his world because he doesn't fit in with what they are doing, so I try to give him as many tools as I can to take with him (especially language since that is his primary difficulty). I also promote board games, and other structured activities with his friends, and this seems to be the only way he can really play in a reciprical way where he feels more like a peer. There are clear defined rules that he and everyone else can follow, and he feels more connected with these type of activities and this helps a lot.

I also never leave him alone to play. I am always there to facilitate any problem solutions and play if I need to.

I do want to note that my son however, as much as he LOVES to play with other kids, is happy in his own little star wars, role playing world with himself. If your son isn't unhappy, trying to encourage something that is uncomfortable for you but not necessarily for him may be more difficult to work through. I don't know your son, but I thought I'd mention that. That may be a factor in how challenging this issue is. He has to want it.

Well its your kid, however if it was mine i wouldnt try stoping his very inappropriate talking to himself because well talking to yourself rules!

Also, i have a pretend brother that stops by everyonce inawile. looking good and uh we talk

i love the screename. "needhelp" who doesnt?

Well it could be that he is not all that interested in making friends at school. But if not, middle school is usually the most difficult time in a child's age to make friends anyways. I'm sure he'll be able to find better people to relate to in high school or just through social networking (internet forums, etc). Perhaps he would be better and more comfortable being home-schooled...at least it would prevent any likelihood of him getting bullied for his awkwardness.

I talk to myself incessently and I don't care what people say anymore, it's what I do and it relieves stress for me. My autistic son even commented that I do it all the time.

Given the number of 'experts' who claim that autistic children are incapable of play or creativity of any kind, I would think you'd be thrilled that he's displaying such imagination. And I've been talking to myself for many, many years. I have learned to turn it off when others are around, though. But when I'm alone , its nonstop.

I'm in complete agreement that you cannot forcibly rewire the autistic brain, and any attempt to do so is a direct attack on the individual's identity. You won't change them, but you will convince them that you find who they are to be unacceptable.

Its perfectly normal for someone with AS not to have friends. We rarely meet anyone whose interests line up with ours well enough that we have any interest in getting to know them better or spending time with them. People in general are so tediously common. And when they realize that we are not like them, they often get abusive towards us, so we're often better off alone.

I was in that same stage throughout my entire childhood. I used self discipline to get out of that phase. I told myself, one day, I was going to put a halt to the self talk. If I caught myself talking, I would immediately stop. I convinced myself it was up to me to not do it anymore and I had to work and to really want to stop the behavior. It took a little while to completely cease it but I was able to finally do it and am no longer in the habit.

It was a lot like a habit, for me, and I had to wean myself off it with determination and inward reminders of why I had to stop. I had to be the one to decide on my own. Family members told me to hush when younger and I would ask them "why?" Then, I would talk about my first amendment freedom to talk and that I had just as much right to speak as anyone else. I had a tough time motivating myself to not talk when younger. They tried to get me to be quieter without much success, so finally they decided to just let me continue talking to myself.

I was already twenty when I made the realization I had outgrown this period in my life and should work on being quieter.

This is me through out school. I am glad as a parent you are taking the time to help your kid instead of giving them the advice my parents did which was try harder.

To try and force an autistic person to change is a rejection to them. I felt rejected when my mum was still trying to change me in October when I spent that week at her place, two years ago. She learned her lesson the hard way, the day that she got me ot of the hospital, the following week after I came home. I told the counselor at the hospital, that I'm a Kinks Fan and that I should be able to dress the way they did in the 60s, all I wanted. Mick Avory in particular. I also told the woman that I look up to Mick, because of our similar childhoods and the strong posability of him having AS or HFA, due to his body language and poor eye-contact and how he talks to himself on stage, sometimes.

My mum treated me with a lot more respect after that. I'll leave it at that. I'll leave June 2010 out of it.

MommyJones, I admire you for your ability to get into your son's world. As simple as it may be to offer that advice, I have to admit it's not easy to live by it. I have AS too, and my middle son, who is deeply AS, is enamored with computer games. It's all he ever seems to talk about most of the time. But because of my own AS, and my deep interest in music, I find it nearly impossible to follow my own advice on this, and "get into his world."

But he has the same problem when I talk about music. We both tend to just nod and say, "Uh-huh," but I do at least accept that he's into what he's into. That's fine with me, and at least he does know that.