Now solo dad

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MudandStars - thanks for the suggestions; I need to start thinking outside of my normal expectations for kids.

DW_a_mom - yeah he was originally diagnosed ADD-inattention and I think he has that. He is not infrequently restless and gets up and runs up and down the hall or outside the house and then back. (I've been getting him to run a mile or two down to the local park to help with this). He does get cross at being nagged, but rather strangely seems to think that because he has heard a request that is enough (ie does not act on it!) Maybe I can try and think up some funny remarks, because he loves humor. As regards cake decorating as a starter job, there is a new bakery in our suburb, but it's only small and don't bakeries start at 4am in the morning or something! Our son is not yet capable of a very basic external job however (like shelf stacking at the local supermarket).

Basagu - he should be reviewing and completing school projects and studying for his exams (especially Media Studies, Classics and English. He is making a bit of progress but mainly in completing Graphics and Art assignments, which he wants to do despite him having failed one and virtually certainly failed the other.

btw his mom had to reschedule her meeting with us, so we haven't seen her since she left. Our son did remember to make a card for her and has been going fairly well (although he's spending too much time on his animation; it might be he could find some form of career with that, but lower level as the higher level animations they use like Maya are beyond him).

Am now strongly suspecting that my wife/our son's mother is at the local woman's refuge (which is a trifle amusing as for all her good points she is the one who sometimes dishes out abuse in the family not the other way round!) At least that is a safe place to stay I presume. She has indicated to others that she is pushing for the sale of our home, which as I previously mentioned would I think be disastrous for our ASD son. There is some risk that there is an understandable anti-men and confrontational approach in that environment.

Our son besides the issues of increasing difficulty with schoolwork this past year has had to cope with issues like being taken away from home by his mother twice in the past year without warning (to him or anyone) and all the uncertainty that created. (I regrettably think his mom was possibly to some extent using him the last time she went up to the different city where her parents live as she would have been able to access benefits if she was looking after him, although I don't doubt that she was also trying to look after him).

He is an easygoing child generally but know some of this has upset him and I don't really know if it has all upset him a lot underneath. As I mentioned previously he did claim that it has led to his failing his art courses, although I think the real problems are bigger.

Despite everything I am going to make one last ditch effort to reconcile with my wife, ascertain exactly what her problems are and try to take note of those, as I think it is in our children's interest to have stability while they are completing their education. She seems to have the bit between her teeth though so am not optimistic. As I said to our son, if there is a separation he can perhaps meet his mom once a week for an enjoyable outing. He is close to his mom although surprisingly was not sure if he wanted to meet her the other day.

It's almost weekend here and we are going to go to the arthouse dvd/video place in town over the weekend (a treat he enjoys in the holidays) as he loves film.

Hallo hoegaandit! I'm sorry that I only gotmtime now to post! have been so busy the last few days! but I've been thinking of you and your family so much after I read your post yesterday! I take my hat of for your courage and trying to stay optimistic! Well done! your son needs this!
I must say....the way you describe your son often brings a little smile to my lips, because this sounds so familiiar! I so know exactly what you mean by the unorganized, forgetfullness and poor planning skills! Can't you maybe contact another parent to find out what is expected from school?
Regarding the meeting with your wife: Please let us know how things are going, I will pray that you get the insight to handle this situation as best you can and work out some plan of action.....
I am definately not in a position to give advice, but the one thing I did wonder about: I know you want to prepair your son for possible seperation from his mom, but if he has any anxiety I would go slow on talking about what would be or might be after seperation....first maybe see how it goes with the meeting?
(((((hugs))))))

Hi Lovelyboy - trust you and your family are all well.


Well, we had the meeting with my wife today. It went quite well. I feel our son was pleased to see his mom again, as he has not seen her for a couple of weeks. Also we were in a mall and there were these silly squeeze faces and my wife bought my son one of those and he liked that. (Something I wouldn't have thought of doing, so his mom who has more looked after him can have a good idea sometimes of what he likes).

My wife was looking pretty well. Obviously not having to cope with the family and our business has helped her. Although she is still not saying much about it, I think she is staying in a mental health facility. She has gone on the sickness benefit but is also apparently working five days a week doing caregiving, but seems to be free afternoons and possibly weekends.

I told our son especially now he is over sixteen it is his choice what he wants to do. He is going to be picked up by his mom on Monday and stay overnight with her. She said there is another seventeen year old there and he might like to go to a movie with our son. While I have certain reservations about this we'll see how it goes. It might work well over the next holiday week for our son as it gives him a chance to do some fun things in the evenings.

If my wife does not come back she has suggested that our son could spend a couple of evenings per week with her over termtime, so that I can do my work. This might help a bit from my perspective but only a bit, as the dog needs a half hour walk in the evenings and our son is not good at letting him outside or giving him a proper walk - part of his executive function difficulties.

I have incidentally found "Smart but Scattered" the book dealing with the topic of executive function difficulties and am reading that when I have a chance but as previously mentioned am not sure how "smart" our son is. I note that both my wife and son appear to have difficulties with certain concepts. For example with my wife I am not allowed to mention her mental illness (even though in my view it is the 800lb gorilla in the room), and even today when I talked about having a signal to indicate when she was not well (without mentioning it) she rolled her eyes, simply because I had mentioned the forbidden topic, seemingly not understanding what I am trying to say (viz that I am trying to avoid mentioning the issue as she wants but do need some signal to her to say that she should take a rest as she seems unwell to me). With our son on the way to meeting his mom eg I mentioned that what in my view his mom had done wrong in taking him to another city a few months ago was not discussing it first; I said if we'd discussed it and it had seemed on balance worth a try, then he could have gone to the other city. Our son responded by saying that he didn't want to go to the other city, completely missing the point I was trying to make. In other words our son does not seem to do abstract concepts too well. Still, Smart but Scattered will doubtless have useful ideas although I am coming late to dealing with all this.

I suppose if my wife does not return (her continuing view and probable at this point) but allows us to keep our home for at least the next year or two, then it may be workable for our son, as he will have the stability of our home, I will be able to have the appropriate input for our son and he can keep contact with his mom. Not saying it will be easy, but it would be workable. However we'll have to see!

Hi Hoegaandit, glad to hear it went 'reasonably' well with the meeting. I can identify with your wife not talking about the issue...I also have a close family member that does that....it's very frustrating, because the problem can' be solved...but sometimes the lack of insight or the emotional pain or guilt just is to much for that persons psyche to deal with....
I was thinking, maybe if she wants your son to stay with her some evenings, it might be a good idea to decide on spesific days before hand and then try and stick with it to give some structure....also plan exactly what and how that day will be....like, where will they eat, does he finish his homework at home, ect.
I think it must be difficult for you, because you are almost stuck in between, taking full control and then again you need to give some to your wife, not knowing when she is going to be able to handle her part of the responsibilities....But I'm glad for your children sake that their mom can somehow be a part of it all.....

Hi Lovelyboy

Yeah it is quite a tricky time. When my wife unexpectedly went to the other city with my son a few months ago it would have been better in my view if she'd stayed there for a month or so after our son came back, so I could establish routines and so on at home. Effectively that is starting to happen at home now, given she has been away for a couple of weeks. (eg I have put little notices around the home, our son is keeping his room and the DVD/video/TV area quite tidy etc).

Also over the termtime I can keep track of what is going on and what is needed from the teachers. My wife made a lot of effort with the teachers, but I think because of her illness her coping capacity is limited and she is not able to cope with more difficult issues eg our son's complete lack of executive function and understanding of what he needs to do at school.

Also my wife had difficulty in coping with our son eg every morning she would ask him around five or ten times to get up, take less time in the shower, get dressed, get his breakfast, discuss with her the day's requirements etc. I think our son will listen better to me - although as he has been on holiday that is still to be tested.

On the other hand, it is undoubtedly harder being a sole parent, who is working more than full time hours. My time is limited and it would be easier if someone was sharing the load (particularly as my wife did half the housework, nearly all of the chasing up work with my son's teachers and all the admin work in my business. That means there is a lot more work that I have to do in the time available.

I also need to emphasise that my wife is a high functioning schizophrenic. Were my work to be more remunerative and our son's difficulties less, she would probably have coped fine. She has done a lot over the years for the family (although she has at times acted abusively to all of us, and some of her actions have been crazy). I need to understand that her illness is making things just too hard for her. The point is though, with less stress she seems to be coping better and she could do proper monitoring of our son on the evenings she is there, provided we have proper communication. Of course it will depend on our son agreeing to go over to her. I don't know what her current living situation is and know eg there is not internet there etc. But I repeat that our son is close to his mother.

I do agree though about having routines in place, and will ensure that if my wife won't come back and our son is agreeable to go over to her a couple of nights a week (both of which are probable), then we will need to have set nights and set arrangements.

Anyway our son is quite enjoying himself at present; he got out some interesting DVDs from the arthouse DVD place in town and we are now watching a big sports event here on the TV with some beer and chips!

Thanks for your comments zette

I think in hindsight I did not realise the extent of our son's problems and did not take proactive measures which are necessary. But better late than never. I will work through the exercises one at a time.

Sort of incidentally with your reference to video games, our son has had a lot of trouble in completing them, although he did complete one or two. When the kids were little I got them tons of edutainment cd roms and our NT daughter went through nearly all of them. But I would notice eg when our son played a math program like "math blaster" (if anyone remembers those old programs - you completed simple math puzzles by blasting up asteroids with numbers on them) he would just repeat the simplest level and never seemed to get the idea of advancing at all.

As regards the equivalents of IEP etc here I simply don't know and will need to find out, perhaps when school restarts next week. As mentioned the division of functions in our marriage meant my wife primarily dealt with our son and the school. Had I had a better appreciation of our son's difficulties I would have had input, but I had thought (like last year) he would manage to pass. This assumption had unfortunately been mistaken.

I been reading this thread all the way before commenting as it is an evolving situation.
I have executive function dysfunction too. Alot of your son's problems, I had at his age as well. I still struggle at 34 years old with daily living skills. You are doing good to work on this with him. I was always oppositional when my parrents tried to intall them into me, because I noticed that my friends parrents dont do that with thier kids and I did not wanted to be treated "special". At his age, I wanted more than anything to be normal and have a normal life and any extra attention that I recieved due to autism, I quickly resented and got oppositional about.
I regret that now because I am still banging my head on the brick wall of daily living skills.
I dont know why I felt the need to talk about that...but there it is.

Anyway, As far as getting help with keeping up with the house and his school in your wife's abscence, do you have any friends in the area that could pitch in and help...maybe some relatives??

As for keeping the dog if she forces the sale of the house, you could get your dog to be a certified assistance dog for your son, so then landowners would have to make the accomidation.

I am sorry you are having this difficulty with your wife. My mom has severe PTSD to the point she is paranoid...it is hard for me to cope with her like this. I am sure that her taking him up to her mother's house without warning has caused alot of this year's troubles. We aspies dont cope well with unplanned changes like that. So some degree, the lingering uncertanity of if she is going to do that again probably has caused stress beyond the event itself. The fear of the uncertain can really mess with our productivity and concentration.
He may even be suffering from a mild case of PTSD as we aspies are more prone to it because we experience things so intensely.
What could cause frustration in an NT, can be traumatic to us.

For example, take airports...I was at the Atlanta airport which is the biggest airport on the eastern side of the US. Well after I went through the tightly packed crowds with the sounds of conversation coming every which way, lights blinking, bright colors of advertisments and shops, the sounds of the intercom blasting the latest arivals and departures...to top this off I had to get to point a to point b in an airport that is so big that it has its own subway system.
Anyway so I get off my plane into that enviroment go to the other rside of the airport, by subway of course, and then I get to the car rental place and soon discovered that I booked the car rental for the wrong day and there is no refund. Most people would have been tired and frustrated, not me....I was shaking and crying and nearly about to have a meltdown in the middle of the airport. So I called my sister who dropped studying for finals to pick me up. She was really mad that I couldnt wait for 4 hours because my brother was on the phone with the rental company and talked them into going against thier policy to get me a car. But as soon as I heard mom say 4 more hours, I just started crying uncontrolably because I could not bear the thought of being in that enviroment for 30 minutes longer, let alone 4 hours of being visually and auditorally assaulted by the enviroment.
What to most people was just an anoyance, was traumatic to me.
So I guess what I am saying in a round about way, is all of this upheval with his mother and her taking him unexpectedly to his grandmother's house may have pulled the rug under him as far as his sense of security and predictability of his enviroment....this may have caused him to fail more than the 4 days that he missed.
Look up the symptoms of ptsd on the internet and see if you see an increase in those symptoms over the past year.

hope that helps,

Jojo

Thanks for your comments jojobean

It's incidentally easy to understand your wanting to be normal and getting oppositional to your parents when you were our son's age when they treated you as different. It was interesting to me to go to an ADD conference (our son's original diagnosis) where I was really impressed with one of the lecturers who pointed out that a lot of the problems ADD kids had arose not from the ADD per se, but from other kid's reactions to them etc. Fortunately our son is an easygoing guy (at least on the surface) and is not very oppositional. My nature is more I think on the whole trying to be enabling and reasonably patient (-you have to be with an ASD kid!) It is really clear to me however that some real work will need to be done on our son's executive functioning, otherwise this is going to severly hamper him going forward as you imply.

As far as help is concerned my wife's mother (who lives about four hours drive away) did offer to come down and help, but for various reasons my NT daughter and I did not take up the offer. I think we can cope without outside assistance.

I will check out if there is any possibility that our dog could get a special status, but don't think that is a possibility where we live. I am hoping my wife will ease off anything drastic as our children have made it pretty clear they don't want the house sold, but who knows.

It's interesting what you wrote about PTSD and it is possible that our son has been very upset underneath about being taken away by his mom without warning twice in the past year. On the face of it he seems an easygoing guy, but in chatting with him yesterday he said he gets anxious. He does not look anxious, but I am thinking maybe he is anxious underneath, and he copes with that anxiety by avoidance.

Hi Jojo - thanks for your reply. I will check further into the issue of whether our son has significant hidden anxiousness or not.

If so then the question would be how that arises - it could be because of his lack of executive function leading to problems coping (according to the book Smart but Scattered I would put his executive functioning ie organisational skills etc as around the level of a 11 or 12 year old although he is seventeen), and it also could be because there is a breakup going on in my marriage and eg his schizophrenic mother had without warning been taking him away, and has now also left without warning (he is quite close to his mom).

Whatever, he needs a lot of work on his organisational skills and we need to work on that.

If his mother's actions are being detrimental to him then we need to work around that. He is not overly keen at the moment on going to where his mother is staying as it is a bit run down, without internet and not set up to cater for him. However I think it is important that he have contact with his mother and at the moment am suggesting to him that he might spend a couple of weeknights there. He would just finish after school and take another sections ride in the bus, then walk to his mom's accommodation. I could liaise with her about schoolwork and in some ways he will not have the distraction of the internet on those nights. (His Art teacher had reservations about his use of his laptop at school to possibly be accessing internet not directly related to the task at hand).

Actually it would be easier for me if he did not spend nights with his mom, but I am being careful to try and put his and his mother's interests first here.

As far as the book the Miracle of Mindfulness I have downloaded that and will look further at it when I have the chance. Although this is not something I have done myself I am open to any ideas to assist my son in coping, so thanks for that.

In my opinion, I would schedule some afterschool visits with your son leaving at dinner time before I would schedule a school night sleep over. That is pretty disruptive, even for me (assuming I'm NT), having me sleep in another house, in another room and then get up and function normally the next day - Not gonna happen.

Personally, I would do two after schools, then a sleep over on a school Friday night and then depending on how that goes, a sleep over on a regular school night.

I totally agree with you about supporting your son's relationship with his mom - awesome! Don't make it your son's problem though.

As a thought....what would your wife think about staying at the house and having you go somewhere else a night or two a week until she gets permanent housing? Maybe given her issues that would be too much - it would be best for the kids though.

@jojo
How old were you when you found mindfulness training? I am practicing myself and am trying to figure out how to get my sons (8 & 5) to join me, especially the 5 yo, he is the aspie. Everytime I try to get him to look at some children's books I have bought that focus on mindfulness or get him to do any kind of practice (like mindfully eating a raisin), he balks and runs off. I never push because I don't want to turn him off it permanently. I would love to find a way to make it attractive for both of them because I think they would both really benefit from it. I had come to the conclusion that it just needs to come from someone besides me.

@kailuamom

Yes in general it is more important that I put our son's interests first, even if that means that his mother missed out some in the event of conflicts between her interests and his.

But things are not black and white, and the situation is a little more complex. If our son were not to see his mom much, that might distress her and make the whole situation worse. Also I want his mom to have a continuing connection with him for her sake (as well as our son's).

The position generally is that our son is perhaps equally close to his mom and dad, but would obviously prefer to stay with the parent who is in our home (now being me). If my wife was at home and me not, I think our son would probably want to stay in the home with her.

I hear what you are saying about things like staying over two nights per schoolweek being too disruptive. Our son who generally tends to go along with what his parents suggest was not too keen to go back to stay overnight with his mom in her current (mental health facility) accommodation. His mother had suggested him going again tonight, but first he did not want to go and then, after some persuasion from me, agreed to spend Saturday night with her.

It may be that it's best as you suggest to keep him at home during the schoolweek (maybe with some evenings only with his mom) and then overnight eg Friday night with her. I could consider staying away a couple of nights if my wife was agreeable to being in the home then, although she is being a bit funny about not coming home for whatever reason (and only drops our son and picks him up from the road).