New, please help me!! !

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Hello,

I am new and came here for some extra support as well as information - and, maybe just maybe I can help somebody down the road, too.

So... I'm a single mom with two awesome kids - my older son (gradeschooler) has been diagnosed with aspergers and spd, my younger son (toddler) has been showing similar symptoms/behaviors at times - and I have always had a hard time socially and long-lasting self-esteem issues that stemmed from it.

At this point, I'm trying to learn as much as I can so that I can help them both avoid self-esteem problems; since starting school, my older son has had a very hard time socially and it has begun to affect his self-esteem; he has begun to seek out negative attention from his peers, doing things that make them react/laugh (like falling down or using swear words or hurting himself) and their reactions are not in his best interest - they are making fun of him and then they reject him... it is evident that he can see this at times - but he keeps doing it, it is almost as if he craves their reactions and it hurts to see him behaving this way; he has meltdowns, too (sometimes violent ones) and there are kids that know just how to trigger him; he tends to wind up as a toady to the most chaotic kid he can find... That being said, he is creative in a multitude of ways, very intelligent, genuinely funny and empathic (especially for his age, especially around younger children/toddlers/babies) and has a good heart as well as a conscience - and I desperately want for him to show THESE aspects of his personality; the chaos often overshadows these things... We have had several conversations about the difference between positive and negative attention - he seems to comprehend this.

So... I'm coming here asking for insight and information so that I can better help him (and potentially his brother, too) and thank you.

hiya Smash welcome to our club your older son sounds a lot like me at his age. this may seem all too obvious but love 'em to pieces.

Hi auntblabby and thank you - y'know, in a lot of ways, both he and his brother remind me of myself as a child... the thing is, it took me into adulthood/motherhood to begin to even grasp certain aspects of social dynamics... and it's been a bumpy, painful road... if there's a way I can help them get it more quickly, that'd be wonderful!

What has it been like for you and how are you doing now?

for 5 decades I was a loner. one [3 hour drive away from me now] friend in all that time. no GFs until very recently, met her on wrongplanet as a matter of fact. I was forced to join the army as a young man, it was a crash course [some would say crashingly coarse] in social dynamics that definitely aged me but matured me as well. if it were not for that experience I might be a chronically homeless person now. it gave me discipline [somewhat] and anger, both of which gave me the energy to do what needed to be done, eventually at least. before then I was even more ineffectual than I am now, almost totally inert. this is the cliff notes version of me.