16 yo with Aspergers and bedtime

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My son has been diagnosed for a few years with Aspergers, and for the longest time, bedtime has been a nightmare 5 nights a week on average. We try to teach him that hygiene is important, and when he sweats during outside activity, he really needs to shower before bedtime. Most nights, he explodes at the mention of it. He rationalizes it away (I'm not swaety NOW), and he goes through 20 minutes of slamming doors, screaming and insulting my wife and I, then he finally relents.

DO other parents out there have a similar ritual from hell at bedtime? Any advice, tricks, tips?

Thanks (first time poster),

Ken in New Hampshire

Yes.

Get off his case. Don't say anything to him about it for a week. Let him smell.

Then when he gets so smelly it's unbearable, refuse to take him places in the car.

He's not going to see it your way. He's just going to have to discover the cons of smelling bad himself.

I have a problem with hygiene myself, but lucky for my parents I'm not as explosive. For me, I can't really smell myself, so I don't feel that I need to take a shower. However I do not like sweating, or any water dripping on me, and therefore in the summer I take showers.

I agree with what Chronos said though. Let him learn that he will start to smell, and that other people are not going to like him smelling. My mom politely reminds me that after a couple of days, even if I can't smell it, other people can.

As long as he takes a shower in the morning, he probably won't suffer any ill effects from not showering before bed. Unless he has a live-in girlfriend or extremely bad B.O. that overwhelms the rest of the house, he's probably fine.

Lots of us have problems with showers. Suggest sponge/wash cloth bathing. If you suggest it every night, I find it difficult to believe it's a routine problem rather than a sensory one. Do you have a set time for it?

Showers suck. Does he have someone to go see every day?

'Cause to me, it's worth it to cut down on social activity (from an already minimal level) to be able to go dirty. I'm about that age and I find that showering is...

Well, certainly not helpful. Does he actually know how to shower? (Can you find out and teach him without offending him?) Does he know what he's trying to do?

I find that actually getting clean and acceptable is utterly impossible. The best I can hope for is for my parents to hear the water running and shut up every few days. (Which, of course, they don't. "Did you really wash your hair?" Yes, I did, sorry to hear it's not up to snuff. Of course, it's never up to snuff.) And why do I care? No one ever says anything about how I smell except my mother.

The time to shower is when you're getting a rash, or when you need to fit in with NT norms for some fancy function or other. A week or two is sufficient time in between.

Is he squeamish about performing his own ablutions?

Does the heat make him feel faint? Does he not know which of many soaps to use?

And here's a thought: you're thinking about how bad he smells to you when he doesn't shower. I bet he's not. I bet he's thinking how nice he smells when he doesn't shower, and how annoying it is right afterward. Showers mess with my body unpleasantly. My heels are normally thick and hard and cracked. After showering, they're thick and soft and an unpleasant texture. They're supposed to be scratchy. That is not scratchy.

I like how my face smells. I like how acne smells. (Don't ask how I manage to smell it. I have ways. I don't want to get into them.) So getting shampoo all the way to my hairline means I come out smelling bad.

And there's an element of violation to it, as well. Not only do you require him to smell bad, you require him to make himself smell bad. You force him to do it to himself. That makes it feel worse.

Does he know how to dry off? Does he hate feeling cold afterward? Does he not know how to get dry (I don't), and so end up damp? When I've had to deal with my parents insisting that I shower daily, I've cynically wondered if my mother was trying to engineer a rash on my privates. (Dunno if guys get rashes down there...) Because I can't get myself dry all over completely; I count on changing my underwear at least once between showers. (...And I fail to see the point of changing them daily, but that's another question.) Also, I use a powder deodorant under my arms (doesn't help), but when they're wet (remember, can't dry them, and there's enough hair-- can't shave them, either-- that it's not a simple matter), putting it on will cause it to burn and sting very painfully. So I can't use deodorant on the days when I shower.

And that's not "rationalizing," so much as it's completely logical and correct. I'm not sweaty now, so there's no point in washing it off.

My best advice is to give up. Going dirty never killed anyone. It's never even killed a friendship, at least for me. (Ironically, I upset my friends more when I have dandruff snowing. When I go a while without shampooing, my head is so oily, it all gets stuck, no matter how I scratch, even if I draw blood. Mind that when I say that, you're not to think I'm in terrible pain; it's a stim. That's the only downside, for me, of going dirty.) My parents have given up on convincing me to keep to NT norms of hygiene. My mother tells me to shower when my hair is oily enough to look wet (I've taken to brushing it a hundred strokes now, because that's better than showering, even though it's tiring and of course I can't do that up to NT standards either), or when I have something important. I've learned to keep myself shut up inside the house (not a great loss for me, and often exactly what I would've done anyway) when I'm dirtier than average. All this amounts to a few showers a week, less if I have no commitments. It's a comfortable medium.

My 17 year old daughter is the same although she is getting better. We have found it's better for her to shower late afternoon or early evening as she's not so tired then. Also she has a schedule that her therapist has set for her. According to her schedule she has to shower and completely change all her clothes 3 times a week. She chose the days but they are now fixed. It seems to be working.

I've noticed myself that a schedule seems to help us Aspies, or at least me. When I'm not in school/work, then my internal schedule wipes everything and I have to rely on a paper schedule lol

Can he take a bath rather than shower? My AS son prefers baths to showers.

I would assume he smells after sweating? Are you mentioning this little fact to him? "The reason we want you to shower is because you smell, and we find that difficult to deal with." He should be able to respect your nose, even if he doesn't like it.

If he isn't stinking, then you have to re-think the standard. American society goes a little overboard on the hygiene thing, to the point it actually isn't even healthy for our bodies (I still do it, but it is an interesting truth, and something you need to heavily consider when dealing with a logical Aspie who isn't about to do something out of social convention alone).

Work with him on compromises that will allow your main goal to be met (not being so stinky going into bed that his bedroom smells unbearably after a few nights) with routines he doesn't find overly upsetting (my son hates washing, too - not soaking, he likes the warm water - it's the remembering to wash part, and I do think the soap bothers him).

Once you are sure you've got the minimum standard set (I think just washing because one sweated during the day is overboard, unless there is real stink involved), and you've explained the logic behind your standards, and you know he understands the logic (which is why there really needs to be solid logic), then you enforce the standard, even if it means fights. We have a much looser standard than you do and we still have to fight about it, but fortunately not every night. You aren't going to trick a teenager; it's going to have be a line in the sand.

He is 16! You need to let him grow up and mature. Treating him like a 7 year old isn't going to help him mature or behave. Yes you can have some rules/limits like maybe bedtime at 10/11 but you can't treat him like a child. He isn't mentally ret*d he has Aspergers Syndrome...

People with Asperger's also behave in much younger ways regarding some things, or appear and act much younger.

Not true at all. There are isolated cases but the majority of us (like me) are able to function as mature adults just with some troubles with social interaction and other social matters.

It seems like instead of saying he's sweaty the thing to do is say very literally "you are smelling because of the sweat that has evaporated off of you from earlier." It seems silly to be that literal even to me(probably shows I only have a mild case of AS), but if you think about it that's exactly why he is smelly.

Also he's 16, he's going to have hormones. Appeal to this interest. Mention that the girls like the way guys smell when they've showered(this might only lead him to showering in the morning before school or just before a hot date and not at night when he's going to bed and not seeing any girls but at least it will get him showering).

The paradox of this is it's because we grow up too fast. There's ways of engaging and teaching children things that just don't work on people with AS, so we don't learn these things in childhood because the adults are talking to us like we're ordinary children. The only ways that work are ways that you would normally talk to adults, so when we're older you have to get through to us about simple things many children even know about but talk to us about them like adults. Things like "that's bad" or "that just isn't done" don't work, you have to use logic and reasoning and be calm and patient, you might be in for a full blown philosophical discussion. Suggest looking about Kohlberg's Stages of Morality. Thinking back on my childhood I notice I was already using some postconventional reasoning in elementary school and as an adult I rarely rely on preconventional or conventional reasoning at all but am more aware of the psychology of it to handle people who are working on lower moral levels.

EDIT: One good thing is as we learn these things we're more aware of the aspects of "maturity" and "social rules" that are truly superficial and serve no real purpose for society as a whole, or even notice ones that should to be challenged for society's own good.

I've been reading everyone else's posts and it is an interesting thread.
Your son is correct when he says he is not sweaty now (at bedtime). I'm wondering if showering following activity (rather than bedtime) when at all possible is something that could be a solution for him, then it makes more sense to him. There could be other sensory issues about going to bed after showering like wet hair on the pillow, other things like some of the other posters have identified.
I'm also wondering if there is something that he is involved in at the time that the shower is suggested and he is resistant to leaving. Does he play computer games, social network etc. - maybe that time of day that he is being asked to shower is when people he knows/interacts with are on-line?
Just some thoughts that may not have been thrown out there yet for consideration.

Heh, plenty of conflicting ideas here. I think I agree with Chronos.