Helping my future wife raise her autistic son? Need help!

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Ok, so I will be returning to Beijing to work and live with my long time gf and her autistic boy. I want to first mention that China just learned about what autism was as early as 3 years ago. Due to this fact, I am skeptical if her son really is autistic because the doctor might not know as much as say an autism specialist in say the US. Regardless, I have met the boy on a few occasions and his behavior does hint that he may be autistic. She has a great job in Beijing and I have a good paying job lined up as well there, so we don't want to have to leave and come live in the US...at least not for a few years or so. Another issue is that right now, her son is in preschool, which offers special education, but he will be turning 7 years old later this year and this is his last year in this school. She told me that there is nowhere else in Beijing where he can go to continue his education and this is something that has been stressing us out. I have recently been researching like crazy for schools that offer special needs services or classes and only found a few. One has a shady looking website and is probably a fake school and the other charges fees that only filthy rich people can afford. It is discouraging. She told me that recently in Beijing, autistic parents have been arguing with public schools at the treatment their children receive in school. I guess they are in a pickle because they can't afford private schools and public schools don't provide any special needs services. I thought about just home schooling the boy every night when me and her get home from work. She really doesn't want to leave her job because she has been working for this company for 10 years, so she is protected from being laid off or fired for life. She told me if her company relocated her to the US or anywhere else in the world, this protection would no longer be there. With the economy being the way it is in the US and the fact that her English isn't fluent, would almost guarantee her to be a prime candidate for being laid off. Her company branch in the US has been laying on hundreds of workers, but all the branches in China haven't been laying off anyone. Anyway, so does anyone on here have some advice for homeschooling a boy with autism? I plan to teach him English and my gf will teach him Chinese. I can teach him how to say the ABC's, read and write in English and my gf can teach him the same in Chinese. I might teach him how to play guitar or piano, because he seems to love music. Not to sound completely ignorant...but do autistic people usually enjoy video games? I might be a high functioning person with a touch of asperger's, but this boy seems to be much less functional than me. I plan to bring a lot of my old video games with me to China for the boy. Mostly N64 games and I might bring along another console like my Super NES. I have a Playstation, but the games are way too advanced for him. My gf tells me that she showed him Angry Birds and he seems to really enjoy the upbeat music and sounds in the game, but doesn't really follow the rules of the game. She told me that he even flings the birds off in the opposite direction of where they need to go. I worry that he might not understand even simple games like Mario Kart. I have a lot of different style games, but I fear that he might not understand or like them at all. Do even 6 year old children without autism struggle with understanding games as simple as Angry Birds? Could he have be having trouble understanding the game due to him being autistic? My autistic cousin loves video games, but I can't really compare them because my cousin is a teenager now. I really hope some people on here can help me out with this.

My son loves video games. They are easier to play "typically" because most video games push you that way. That does not necessarily preclude an autistic child from playing differently, though, and it is not necessarily the end of the world. When my son was younger he used to do things wrong on purpose to get the funny noises. It was a sensory exploration thing for him, that served a purpose at the time. I do not think it hurts to try them, to see what he will do. My son has gotten better at playing by the rules at non-video games over time too. He will make up his own rules sometimes, and that is OK, too. Playing atypically does not necessarily mean not understanding, it sometimes means the child found something fun to do with the game in another way.

I see. Yeah, I have thought about this as well. I want to try the games with him. It will honestly be exciting to see a young boy enjoy and get excited about video games that I also enjoyed and got excited over when I was a young boy myself. I guess that is a natural feeling that comes with parenting. I just have anxiety over the possibility that the boy will not be interested in any of the games at all and just not engage. If he does like the games, then that will be great. I will also be buying some board games as another way to socialize and play with him. By the way, what games does your son play? At what age did he start playing the games "by the rules" I guess I could ask? An example would be like not driving the opposite direction in a racing game. I'm guilty of doing that myself once in a while. I just find that video games are much more fun when you play and progress through the story and levels with the goal of finishing the game.

I'm going to have trouble remembering the timeline, exactly, but I will try. My son is 7, now. He loves Fruit Ninja and plays that game correctly. The object is to slice fruit. It is very straight forward. He likes Red Remover that is kind of Angry Birds like without the cartoon characters, and there is some other game I can't think of where you have to split squares into smaller squares that he likes, too.

He also likes the Zork series, which he plays on a DOS emulator I installed. He is more free range for Zork, although he has Googled the map to solve some of the puzzles. He is scared of the Troll Room so he avoids that room, because he does not want to kill the troll. He did it before but it scares him, so he avoids that room, now. That is OK. Most of the other games he plays are educational. He does those correctly.

He started sporadically playing games correctly around 3 or 4 or so. He will still make up his own rules to board games and such. We usually take turns playing the "regular" way and alternate creative ways. I want him to learn to follow rules and take turns etc. but I don't want to kill his creativity, either.

His motor skills are very poor so we don't do Pac Man or any of those kind of games because of issues we have with frustration. He is scared of violence in games so we don't play anything harder core than Zork (minus the Troll Room)

I haven't heard of the Zork series, but I watched some videos of the newest one "The Grand Inquisitor" on youtube. I looks alright. Has your son played any console games like games for Nintendo, Super Nintendo, N64, Gameboy, Game Gear, Playstation, Wii, etc? I dug up my N64 and here are the games I found along with it:

Diddy Kong Racing
Donkey Kong 64
Starfox 64
Goldeneye 007
Perfect Dark
South Park
Wrestlemania 2000
Killer Instinct Gold

I used to have more games, but I either lost them or sold them. I want to try to find a place where I can repurchase Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Zelda: The Ocarina of Time and possibly Majora's Mask, Kirby 64 and my all time favorite Super Smash Bros. which I think he would maybe enjoy as well.

Has your son played any of these games before? If so, does he like them?

I really, really respect what you are willing to do for this child, and hope that it all goes well.

On the homeschooling part of your question, I recommend going to the Parenting Index stickie, scrolling down a bit, and finding references to some of our past threads on homeschooling. There are all sorts of existing educational programs designed for home use that you can try.

You can also look up information on ABA and sensory intergration therapies to do some modified versions of those at home.

A lot of it is going to be about spending time with the child and getting to known him from his unique level. Everyone he is with - including whoever he will be with while you and your gf are at work - should be trying to understand him and his unique needs, and responding to that instead of thinking "all kids need" or "no child is bothered by" or "all kids like" or "he must understand what I mean." Let the child be everyone's guide. Make sure everyone, down the line, has that instruction.

Best of luck! Sounds like quite the adventure.

My son does not have experience with console games yet. My husband is the console gamer these days and he has mainly sports games. My son does not get into sports. I have an old PS2 with Finale Fantasy 7, but I think he would find that boring, and the theme is too dark.

I think you should give your games a try.

@DW mom - Yes thank you so much for pointing that out. I will definitely be checking out the parenting index. Me and my gf will be in a situation in Beijing where we will need to home school the boy. I can already see now that this site will come in handy all the time. I have done some research on ABA and will continue to research more on that as well. Lastly, I will also talk with my gf about explaining what you told me to her mother and make it clear to her. She is the one who takes him to and from school and watches him while she is at work. After he finishes this last year, she will be watching over him all day while me and my gf are out working to provide for the family. So the more the mother learns about autism and about the boy, the better things will be.

@ASDMommyASDKid - Do you or your husband plan to introduce console games to him when he gets a little older? I never really liked sports much growing up as well. Playing sports was fun, but I never liked watching sports and especially playing sports games. I played countless video games growing up, mainly RPG's, strategy, first person shooters and fighting games. I love Final Fantasy VII! Would he really find it boring? Would that be because the story about be too complicated or because the game is too long and it would most likely lose his attention? I am almost positive I have asperger's and that game pulled me in big time. As soon as I started playing it for the first time, you couldn't get me off it. I would even pretend to go to sleep on week nights and sneak out of bed to play it. I did this with any game I was obsessed with (countless games). When you mention the theme being too dark...do you mean that you don't want him to play it because you feel it is too dark or did your child feel that it was too dark and wasn't interested in it? I'm curious to know more.

At some point, yes, I expect we will. My son does not have the attention span for all the dialogue in Final Fantasy VII. My son, while very smart, has severe social deficits and the character dialogue would drive him bonkers. Also the theme is so dark, and because of his current emotional maturity, we are not ready to go there, yet. He is not even interested in Spiderman or Batman or anything like that.

He is emotionally a preschooler and so we just have to wait for the maturity to come. He prefers things that have an element of silliness to them. If his fine motor skills were better or his frustration tolerance higher, he could handle things like Donkey Kong, to give you an idea of where we are.

I would suggest reading Parenting Your Asperger Child by Alan Sohn for insight and tips. For homeschooling, www.secularhomeschool.com has a good forum, with several parents of AS kids on the board.