Devastated - please help!

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They do get better. As a child I had all the same problems as my daughter - as an adult I can prioritize and pull order from chaos like few other people can. I've managed teams of 30+ people over several locations. My desk was a holy living nightmare - but I got the work done faster and more completely than my peers. It is not an innate skill - it needs to be learned BUT the capacity to learn continues on and on and on... The desire to learn these skills may take some maturity but rest assured, he CAN learn them. So many AS adults here can attest to that fact.

Their is precious little professional information available on this because most of us adults were never diagnosed. AS didn't magically appear in 1994. Too often AS kids are treated like they will NEVER get better and, in fact, when adults go to get diagnosed one of the biggest hinderances is that doctors are trying to use the children's dx standard with no accounting for learning and progressing. It's a form of discrimination at the heart of it - because their mismatched 'standard' doesn't fit then you must not have a disability. Too many adults are dismissed and discounted because they never had the benefit of a dx and its interventions that may have helped them achieve more in their life. Your son has that benefit. He has parents that can understand and advocate for him in a way that will help him acheive in life along whatever path he may choose. No one gets a guarantee but you can stack the odds in his favor.



For kids with AS you must begin at the absolutely beginning of a process. Where an NT kid may pick up cues and begin somewhere around step 2 or 3, you must begin at absolutely zero when teaching a new skill to kid with AS. Take no preconceived notion of understanding or comprehension for granted. 'Normal' kids may come with some preprogramming - AS kids come to us as blank slates. You need to write their programming from scratch. (This may be where your problems in dressing are going off the rails - you are starting at step 3 where he still isn't sure of step 0.) But, once you begin the process, they do pick it up on their own. They do make connections - many times, connections others can't even see. Once they learn HOW to see patterns and sequences they tend to excel at them. Aspies are best known for teaching themselves complex skills that others must learn in college for years. It is not a guarantee that your son is one of these but know that the potential is there - and learn how to look for the signs of it so you can nurture it if it is in his skill set. YES - he absolutely can learn more complex things.



We fixed the shoe laces problem - we only buy no lace shoes. There is plenty of selection in no tie styles these days. My daughter only wears pull over shirts and elastic waist band pants. At some point when she better masters her dyspraxia issues she may graduate to zippers on jeans and buttons on shirts. She isn't there yet. Take the headache out of the equation - give him the easiest solution so he can be successful. Only when he is successful will he gain the confidence to keep learning more and more. But it is an important distinction to make - these issues with fine motor skills are related to her dyspraxia - not behavioral or even maturity based. It is a fine motor skills issue involving coordination. You can't teach a blind man to see. If your son has legitimate motor skill issues - only therapy can assist in this and even then, it may have a finite limit. If he has the typical Aspie handwriting issues - he very well may have motor skills issues that need to be addressed. My daughter's dyspraxia issues are significant - not insurmountable but they are considerable. But she's been getting therapy since she was 3 1/2 and will continue to do so as long as possible. She is improving. And part of her successes have been in removing obstacles that just do not need to be there. Like laces on shoes.



That highlighted line right there illustrates the point so many people were trying to get across - that right there is where the disconnect has been in this entire thread. You see 'nonsense', as if he is trying to purposely manipulate you into an emotional reaction. This is what it WOULD look like if an NT child did this. You are hearing his emotional upset in his voice. You've identifed that he is distressed by the situation. You have simply misinterpreted WHY. And that is common. It is something we ALL have had to learn.

Know that he probably does not know how to express exactly what he is feeling or why. He is probably feeling confused and scared and perhaps a good bit nervous about doing it wrong. First things first - you need to positively identify exactly why he is so distressed. You may need to play twenty questions, like a detective, to find out. And the time to do that isn't in the morning, in the moment. It is something to be done in a quiet moment, with smiles and a relaxed atmosphere. He very well may not have proper names for his feelings or how to relate an emotion to what he is actually feeling. We needed to teach my daughter which emotion was which and had to coach her when she was feeling them. It wasn't a matter of sitting at a table and doing flash cards or some nonsense. When she was laughing and happy we just tell her 'Look how happy you are." When she's crying we just acknowledge that she is feeling sad. All the things we take for granted - like being able to name our feelings - we just made into constant running commentary throughout our day. Just know that he may have some of that at work to some degree. You are assuming his base level of understanding - you may need to take a closer look to see where his level of understanding really is.

Just know that while kids can be manipulative, it isn't usually in the Aspies realm of behaviors. They can SEEM manipulative when their actions are misinterpreted. Aspies do not usually try to get emotional reactions out of people - we are sort of known for the exact opposite - not being able to identify emotions in others correctly. And assuming that he is trying to manipulate you will only make him even more frustrated because his real meanings are going unheard. It is almost like he is speaking in another language and you are not hearing a single word he says. There is a good chance that when he says 'I don't know what to put on.' he really means "There's so many steps, I don't know where to start." Telling him 'the clothes are right there' isn't answering the question he is really asking. Break it down. Putting on your clothes involves alot of steps. Take off your pajamas, put them in the hamper. Put on clean underwear. Put your pants on. Put your shirt on. Put on your socks (these are a challenge!). Put on your shoes. That right there is 7 steps and we haven't even tackled hair and teeth yet...

If you can see that he is not purposely manipulating you but looking for more detailed input - more description, more clarity of all the little things most people take for granted - you will see that 'ignoring him' is as good and telling him 'you aren't important enough for me to help you'. You obviously don't MEAN it that way but that is how an AS kid internalizes something like ignoring. And then the behavior escalates - he tries harder and harder to make you understand what he is trying to convey and you see him as just trying to manipulate harder... and it spirals out of control. Put a stop to the cycle.

The statements I bolded are points where you have assumed you know what he is thinking or what his motivation is for saying or doing those things. You may want to consider that your assumptions about him might be off target. Perhaps he says that he has no clothes when he sees the ones you have laid out because he actually doesn't like the clothes you laid out (or has some other reason for it). It is often hard for our kids to use the right words that reflect exactly what they are feeling. What they say is not always what they mean. Rather than respond to the obviously non-sensical statement that he has no clothes, try asking other questions about the clothes or about how he feels to see if you can get to the root of his issue.

Getting dressed has been an issue we have been working on for 1.5 years. On 1 or 2 occasions my son has gone into his room and picked out his own clothes and gotten dressed by himself without my even asking. On those days I jumped for joy! But unfortunately that is not how it typically goes. We have used charts and timers and other motivational methods which have helped to varying degrees. What helps most is having the morning routine like draelyn talked about. The boys get to watch TV while I take a shower, they eat breakfast then they get dressed. We follow this routine everyday even on weekends because if we don't getting dressed turns into a big fight. Some days I still have to stand there and say "take off you pajama bottoms, take off your pajama tops, put on your underwear..." But we are miles ahead of the time when every morning was a half hour or more physical struggle just to get clothes on.

EDITED TO ADD: draelyn and I must have been posting at the same time, forgive my repetition of her ideas.

What OddFiction says is totally correct about the reasoning. My daughter will not make her bed. To her reasoning it is an entirely pointless exercise, afterall she's only going to mess it up again later. She regularly changes the bedding, because that has a purpose which makes sense, but in the grand scheme of life, a made bed is an irrelevance to her.

It's difficult to know exactly what is going on with your son, not witnessing it, but I do want to point out that some aspies (my husband and daughter) do seem to have a blindness to what is directly in front of them. My husband can spend 5 minutes looking through the cupboard for coffee before announcing that there is none there. I bloomin know there is and tell him so, but he insists. So I go over and sure enough there it is right in front of him. Drives me insane.

I have a feeling from what you've said that you are in a place further ahead in what you expect of him than he is. Somewhere between him being a baby and you dressing him completely and where you're both at now, he has got left behind. Somehow you need to go back and meet him where he is and then start moving forwards together at a slower pace.

My son 13yrs still wants to know what he should wear everyday, I did all the laying out of clothes, but now I will tell him what to wear but he must organise it himself.

Sometimes he gets it wrong, and then I will gently explain maybe something else might look better with the bottoms he has chosen etc. This gets him upset and then I feel bad! Its ongoing, if I had all the answers to AS I wouldn't be on this forum. Does things get better not sure, are we the one that adjust maybe???

You should see the state of my daughters clothes drawers to see just how different the way of thinking can be. They are an absolute mess with all sorts of clothes in every drawer. I used to sort them out again and again into 'sock drawer', 't-shirt drawer', 'knicker drawer' etc. I used to despair of telling her to put things in the right one. Why the heck can't she do something as simple as that? I even stuck labels on the bloomin drawers. Arrrrrh! She's doing it just to annoy me!

Last year I discovered that in actualy fact she had a system for where everything went that made perfect sense her. The first drawer had her favourite socks, t-shirts, knickers etc. The bottom one had the ones she liked least. The ones in between were graded according to how much she liked them more or less than the others. To me it looks like chaos. To her it makes perfect sense.

I apologize, actually, for saying some things that I have realized aren't always obvious, and then assuming you should see the connections. Since you are an adult with intelligence who speaks of high expectations, you might get that a lot: people assuming you'll know what they are talking about, when you don't. If any place can be understanding of that, it should be here.

If I wasn't on the iPad, a "cool" toy that still confounds me on basic functions, I'd link out the post, but I can't on this. It was on the last page where you listed bad posts, and put the idea that you needed to mourn on that list. The concept of mourning was mine. Wrong word, obviously, but the overall concept of dealing with major changes in how one sees things remains something I am highly serious about, and do not say carelessly, nor did it originally even occur to me that it could be ill-received. That you didn't cling to that once given to you, the idea that you could and should do some version of grieving, actually surprised me. But it also explained something, once I realized you were reacting to it exactly as my Dad would have. Still, to know you actually think I'm nuts or disrespectful with the concept, is hurtful. Look up the stages of grief and hopefully you'll see the connection, the similarity of process.

The other thing I have not done is given you suggestions on how to avoid some of the conflicts that have happened here. I said you should work on it, but didn't say how. Again, assuming you know how you slight, when maybe you don't. Since I really should be at work instead of writing here, I'll make one simple suggestion: when you respond to posts, try to first spend some time referring to or quoting a part you found particularly helpful. You are are very good at quoting what you think does not apply to you, but you rarely mention anything specific that resonated positively. Do that more, preferably in at least equal parts to the challenges, and the other conversation gets easier to swallow.

And now I am seriously beyond out of time. I wish you all the best on your journey with AS, and safe travel across the sea.

My daughter had troubles with dressing. This is what we did (at age 7.5-it wasn't appropriate before that age):

Week one: Sticker chart for the week with the goal that she would put her shirt on by herself each day-everything else would be with assistance. Every day she made this goal she got a sticker. When she was able to do it consistently for 7 days she got a treat-which she had a choice of ice cream, smoothie, or small toy.

Week Two (if week one was a success if not repeat week one): Sticker chart for the week with the goal of putting shirt and pants on unassisted. Reward as above on week one.

Week Three (if week 2 was a success...): Sticker chart for putting shirt, pants and socks on unassisted.

Week four was shirts, pants, socks, and shoes.

For us this process took 3 months. BUT we did it and she now dresses herself about 75% of the time. There are days she is having difficulty so we help on those days.

In all of these processes the clothes are laid out for her exactly how they go on her (imagine the clothes laid out in the shape of her person).

You can also add brushing hair and toothbrushing. It is a process that is dictated by the child's abilities.

If it becomes a war-back off the chart, continue to assist and retry at a later date.

Believe it or not, at age 6 my daughter could not dress herself AT ALL, now at age 8, she does most of the time and also does hair and teeth brushing. We still have a chart showing the steps and this helps her to refer to a list if needed (my daughter loves lists/charts in writing that she can refer to-this is a good aide for executive functioning differences). There are still days she asks for help. We do not have button up shirts or pants-everything is snap or pullover.

My daughter can tie her laces! Don't give up on that-my daughter has horrible eye hand coordination (she scored 6th percentile on the OT assessment) as well as poor muscle tone and she CAN tie her laces! It takes her a while but she is VERY proud of that!

It is my belief that our kids WANT to do these things (dress themselves, etc). They become VERY discouraged when they want to and feel like they can't or just plain can't. It is a vicious cycle-and many of them want to give up-to avoid feelings of discouragement or frustration. You have to set them up for success by breaking it into small steps in my opinion-then rewarding the successes and being VERY careful not to discourage them on their failures. I would be willing to bet that your son is harder on himself than you can imagine and some successes will build his confidence and make him want to TRY more. Him saying nonsensical things is probably his way of saying "I DON'T WANT TO EVEN TRY BECAUSE I FEAR THE FRUSTRATION OF FAILURE".

LOL - we aren't giving up, just adjusting our expections a bit! My daughter has some specific coordination issues - she's still working on steps - going down is still a bit of a challenge. She can pedal a bike but only backwards - not forward. That one has everyone scratching their heads. And laces - it's like trying to watch her write - she tries so very hard but her hands just don't do what she's trying to tell them. At least not yet! She'll get there - it'll just take quite a bit longer than the other skills. I'm not going to stress her out over it when I don't have to - and especially when she's making such good progress in so many other areas. She loves the new Sketchers sneakers - which are all elastic. Win/win. When she absolutely HAS to HAVE a special pair of sneakers with laces I suspect she will force herself to learn. She's not at that stage yet - picking clothes, developing a style. I'm just glad that she now wants to match her headbands to her outfits! Small steps... lots of little victories win the war.

And I'm a bit of a momfail when it comes to the charts. My own executive function is impared enough that I couldn't follow through with that system as consistently as it needs to be to be effective. My husband tries to impliment it but it seems my daughter is either picking up on my distaste for them or she has her own distaste for them. Whatever the reason - they sit unused in her room. Well, unused for scheduling her - she uses them for training schedules and school assignments for her Pokemon...

She gets it. No doubt.

I get it, I really do. My daughter also has co-morbid of dev dyspraxia so I completely understand where you are coming from!
We did a few years of Handwriting Without Tears that helped tremendously with handwriting. It's still not pretty and takes a while but she has come a long way from the illegible writing where she started.

Maybe we need a thread on dyspraxia issues?

Maybe it's just because I've been around so long, but I'm sure we've got at least a few

I still mean to write a good road map on how we got my son communicating on paper; all the other issues caused by his hand problems weren't that important to me (velcro and bungee laces solve a lot of problems!), but not being able to write was definitely going to hold him back. I think there are many things under similar titles that all result in similar issues: dispraxia, disgraphia, hypermobility, and ???

Its just dawned on me that goodolddays refusal to accept perceived collective wisdom and her constant challenging of everyone has actually revealed some extraordinarily detailed and useful information in this thread.
Certainly for me at least reading about other peoples experiences and examples provides a context so I can understand this ASD thing better.

Oh and on the Dyspraxia thing, yes. I have a child without ASD but with Dyspraxia. She exhibits a lot of ASD phenotype traits though. E.g. age 9 and extremely interested in Dinosaurs and evolution and science, not at all what her 9 year old girlfriends are into.
Its all connected in some way.

I agree with you my son dx AS, ADHD, OCD? my daughter dx ADD, GAD but I have suspected Dyspraxia her OT assessment ruled it out but I think its wrong!! Again as you said this thread has proved useful.

You must have been in tight with my mother! She never bought that excuse from me either... although by 16 she kinda gave up. And, you know what, other than when I change the sheets, I NEVER make my bed either. And look at that - the universe hasn't collapsed yet...



That DOES make perfect sense. I wouldn't be surprised if she put them away by full assembled outfits. And honestly, it needs to make sense to her. If you don't get her system, then she'll just have to take care of her own laundry from now on... sounds like a win there, mom!