recent diagnosis at age 13

Post Reply New Topic

Hi, I'm new to wrong planet and new to the diagnosis of Asperger's. My 13 year old son was diagnosed in Jan. of this year (2010). He is very high functioning, but struggling socially. Before learning about his aspergers, we transferred him to the school district where my husband teaches. He is very bright and was going through a lot of bullying at our local middle school, which is why we made the change. The guidance counselor at the new school recognized the signs of aspergers. I had him evaluated independently at a respected children's hospital and the psychologist there confirmed the aspergers. The school he currently attends offers the courses at the levels he needs, but the social issues have caused serious problems. We have been told that if anymore serious incidents occur, he will be removed from the school and sent back to our local district. Because we don't live in the district where he currently attends, they are not required to provide child study team services. He is in therapy for social/behavioral issues, on medication, is a boy scout, and active in his church youth group. I am frustrated for a variety of reasons, but esp. with the school situation. (It also doesn't help that our daughter, his only sibling, is multiply handicapped.)

Hello and Welcome to Wrong Planet!

My son is only 5, so I can't offer too much advice, but there are many other parents here in your situation. I think you have come to the right place to get advice and support.

If there are any specific issues you would like to share, please feel free. There are also posters here that are adults that have Asperger's/autism, and they also are able to give excellent insight into some of the issues that you face---

Hang in there!

My 13 year old son is always in trouble, name calling, fighting. He says the other kids start it, but come to find out he is initiating sometimes. He gets suspended, etc. but shows no remorse. He angers very easily and has little quirks that I believe cause kids to pick on him. He seems to mimick other kids dress, actions, etc because he does not know how to be himself. He is bright, but is failing, which I believe is due to anxiety which causes him to be scatterbrained. He is going to a counselor and is on Zoloft, which seems to take the edge off for him. Does your son get in trouble as well, or is he just being bullied?

Remember that behavior problems usually mean something is wrong. They are usually reactive to situations the child cannot grasp or function in, and has no appropriate tools to use to deal with.

My son is 13 but got his diagnosis when he was 7. That is 6 years of understanding why and how he is different and, more importantly, 6 years educating kids and teachers about his quirks. I strip all that away and consider how incredibly frustrated your boys must be at this point in their lives. My son is frustrated and he's known for 6 years, and had accommodations for 6 years. He is, also, extremely high functioning, but has a co-morbid that enticed us to enter the IEP process (hypomobility / disgraphia, and extreme difficulty writing).

My son was extremely close to checking out and giving up at the time he got his diagnosis. Kids like ours spend a lot of time utterly confused by the world. They also spend a lot of time being told they aren't trying hard enough, that they can do what is being asked, while having no idea how to do it or even understand the question. They'll run up wild theories in their heads to explain the differences they see, and try to create scripts based on that information. The problem is, they've usually read it all wrong.

A key process we used during the first two years of my son's diagnosis was to break every situation and conflict down, usually soliciting the viewpoint of at least one other person involved or observing. This is a process that places no blame and no consequences, but is designed to help the child understand what really happened, instead of what they thought happened. We still do this, but not as often. For a long time, it was pretty much a daily thing, and it needed to be. Invest this time with your child and his teachers; break things down, step by step, and discuss what all the potential responses were at each step, so that the child starts to write new scripts which actually have some basis in reality.

A very nice service is speech therapy, which will focus on the pragmatics of language. Have some tests run to see if your son can qualify for that service. Speech therapy will often also branch into social skills classes or lunch bunches; we've had success with all of that.

Still, helping your child bridge the gap of understanding is a long term process. Once he figures out the rules for 13 year olds, the world will change and he'll now have to figure out the rules for 14 year olds. The plan my son and I have is to focus more on the world of adults and business expectations, instead of the transitory functions of school and teenagers. Not that we don't work on those at all, but that we consider it secondary to integrating the more life long skills he will need.

Be very careful to pick your battles. Yes, our kids need to bend a little to the world, but the world also needs to learn to stop caring as much about things that, long run, don't matter. If your child wants to walk funny, dress oddly, and speak Elizabethan English, why should the world care? None of that affects them, and we shouldn't push our kids to conform; they have enough acting to go through when they wake up and confront the day. I've worked hard with my son on things like hygiene and eating habits, because those standards have some value. But the fact he wants to dress different? That is one the other kids need to learn to accept, and he does not need to learn to change. Part of the process will always be asking others to teach respect for individual uniqueness; our kids can't take on the whole burden of finding common ground.

Some other quick notes that new parents may not be aware of:

1) AS kids tend to be very literal. Learn to be precise in your use of language, and in asking questions. A question like, "did you wash your hands?" needs to be phrased, "have you washed your hands in the last five minutes?"

2) AS kids need to stim (self-stimulating movement). Do not squash it; do teach that there is a time and a place. Ideally, home should be "free," with no restrictions on these often annoying (to us) behaviors.

3) AS kids do not respond well to authoritarian parenting or schooling. They live on logic, and if you can get them to understand the logic of a rule or request, they will do their best to comply. If you can't, they will do their best to make the rule irrelevent, and that can result in some interesting situations. If you can't explain a rule well enough for them to see the logic in it, it may be time to question the rule. If it is a school rule and not yours, so that you have no control over it, then use the logic of wanting to avoid consequences, snowball effect, and so on. At 13 they will care about their futures, if they haven't decided it is all hopeless (which is a real danger, and a new topic), and that angle can be played fairly effectively (the only reason my son will take notes in science, for example, is because he doesn't want a C in a class he should be able ace with his eyes closed - and they grade the notes).

Last edited by DW_a_mom on 02 Oct 2010, 1:09 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Welcome, Kanda.
I went through a lot of that stuff too when I was younger.
I didn't have the benefit of a diagnosis - or even any awareness of Aspergers at that point.
The school I was in, put me in an anger management group "for the moderate crowd" that met every week, simply because I was so often involved in fights - And I can assure you, I never started any of them... Even the other 8 kids in the group knew me as the victim, not the victimizer. Unfortunately i can only say I recognize your son's troubles.. I never quite found a solution... Though in grade 10, much of the worst of it stopped because I was finally involved in a fight that was witnessed beginning to end by a responsable teacher. And thus my story held up. The other kid was going to be sent home on a suspension, and he started bawling that his dad was going to beat him. I pleaded with the principal to go easy on him, not suspend him, and I think word got around that I was to be left alone.

Maybe the only thing that can be attempted is for your son to identify one of the bullies who has a "commanding influence" with the others - not the top dog maybe, but one of his lackeys - and get the school guidance counsellor & principal to gather the bully, your son, and each sides' parents in a room to discuss things -

This may or may not solve the bullying. It may make it spike for the worse for a bit, even. But this way, the counsellor/principal sees that <A> you are noticing that there is a problem and want to solve it <B> sees how the bully responds to the interview, responds IN the interview, and sees how your son responds to him. This will demonstrate to the "authority figures" that your son is primarily the victim, and may extend his "shelf life" in the school, especially if there are further instances involving that same bully, or his crew.

Thanks everyone! The problems we were just made aware of relate to girls (He likes them!) and relate appropriately. He put his arm around a girl, she filed a harassment complaint. We are working with a therapist who is familiar with Aspies. We have allowed the school to contact her and the psychiatrist also.

Ah.

I consider us lucky at this moment to have a child who either is not interested in girls (or boys, just not interested) or who is suppressing it well (given his ability to control his unconscous that is also possible). My son tends to have huge boundary issues, and I so do NOT look forward to his trying to date. Terrifies me, in fact. But, um, he's had quite a few years to figure out how I feel about that, which is one reason he might be supressing it if he does have interest (that and the fact he long ago decided that teens act like total idiots trying to handle their hormones and decided he'd just skip that phase if he had any say over it).

FYI, my son is in Boy Scouts, too. He really likes it, and has grown quite a bit from it. I had a little trouble at first because of the organizations and postions BSA has allied themselves to but, thankfully, the kids really see none of that. At the boy level, there is nothing controversial in the slightest.

my youngest attends a preschool that is operated by a different public school district than the one we reside in. his home district is required to provide services, even tho he attends in another school district. his IEP is written through the home district and he gets speech and OT services from them also. have you talked to the SpEd department in your home district? i would imagine they would be in the same boat and have to provide services for children residing in the district. he should be able to get assessments and necessary therapies through the public school system, even if attending elsewhere. an IEP could be geared towards the social issues he is experiencing, even if academically he is doing well.