Messages By: tweedle

I know what its like to be on eggshells all the time. My son is 16 and has AS. I thought his problems stemmed from being in a body cast when he was smaller, missing out the developmental sequence of walking before talking and the fact we lived on a farm, and the nearest neighbor was a quarter mile away. He would get hyper when he saw other children, like he absorbed the energy around him. He hated change; if I told him something was going to happen and it didn’t he would get very upset.  

I thought his problem was he didn’t have anyone but me to play with and it was isolation that was causing the problems. Therefore, I put him in daycare. It was a coop so I was there once a month with him. He was fine when I was there but when others were watching him he would stay off by himself and not participate in anything until the last moment then get upset that he missed it.  I took him to story time at the library I tried to get him into anything I could think of so he could socialize. I even had him in tap and gymnastics hoping they would improve his motor skills. He couldn’t stay focused and tried very hard with tap but just did not have the coordination and would get frustrated. 

The trouble didn’t really come until he started school he was a little guy and he would get excited and throw himself on the floor and not sit in his seat. The public school my son went to have the idea that kids are mean and you need to build a thick skin. Despite my protesting of the treatment the kids was giving my son. The teachers had little patients with him. He had one teacher that liked him so much that she followed him all the way to the 7th grade. He did well in her class but couldn’t concentrate in the others. He was diagnosed when he was 9 and was put on lexpro for the depression then Concerta for the ADHD that went along with the AS. They took my happy baby boy and made him want to be dead because know one would stop the bulling. He thought this was his entire fault. From kindergarten until the 7th grade I tried everything to keep him in school to get the teachers and the administration to listen. We went through IEPS and had specialist come in he had therapists, councilors nothing helped.  

Finally, he was expelled, when he threw a pencil at the principle who brought a cop down to the room that my son was trying to calm down in after a meltdown and was pepper sprayed, in the 8th grade and the ISD decided to put him in there EI program to get him out of his home district. It was as if night and day… the new school bulling and teasing was not tolerated. Anyone caught teasing my son or anyone else for that matter but primarily my son and setting them off got auto suspension. His grades went from failing to As and Bs, he had an Aid that keep him focused on what he was to do. All was great until High school where there were cutbacks and because my son was doing so well they took his Aid away and put him in general Ed. He couldn’t handle the frustrations he wasn’t teased very much because they new what was wrong with my son.  

The principle really liked my son and did everything he could to keep him in his school but it didn’t work they couldn’t afford to give him an aid since he was school of choice. He was becoming a loose cannon, they couldn’t predict when he would go off and had already ticked two teachers on two separate occasions and almost hit a girl with his backpack because she was rude to him. As the principle said he is hit with a double whammy… hormones that make boys do stupid things and AS not being able to control temper.  So now he is home learning on the internet. He misses the friends he finally made but we are working on getting him together with them. After so many steps, back we are finally starting to make progress.  

Thanks for the encouragement. Since RJ was diagnosed I have meet at least 4 other people online with AS kids. Some going through hell just trying to get their child diagnosed. Most teachers it seems want the perfect classroom with perfect children and any child that does not fit in that perfect mold is in a sense abused by the system. Teachers and principles need to learn that we pay them to teach our children. Ever child that fails to learn is their failure. They are responsible for the mental and physical welfare of our children when in their care and they fail by not standing up to the plate and stop the bulling. If our children were in a wheel chair or blind or had an external, disability and a kid picked on them that kid and his parents would be ostracized for such behavior but because our children “look” normal they forget, they aren’t. I wish more teachers and parents would practice and demand there children practice the golden rule, Treat people the way you want to be treated and the world would be a better place for everyone not just kids with AS.  

            When explaining to RJ his connection we equated it with someone from another planet or country dropped in the middle of our society, clueless as to how to act and how things worked. We call this land Aspergia and RJ is an Aspergian. When he does something, I tell him that is the Aspergain way of doing it, which is not the rest of the world’s way. Sort of making it ok to be Aspergain like the one people are Russian and have their culture people with Aspergers have theirs. They just have to learn that when in Rome you do as the Romans do.  

            As fair as homework is concerned, I agree that it is not internally necessary. It has to see if the kid knows and understand what is being taught. Three math problems can show just as much as 50. Two paragraphs can show just as much as three pages if written correctly. In college I took a writing class and it taught how to but as much information in as small an area as possible because people would rather read one page of information as 20 with the same about of information.  RJ could only concentrate on two subjects at a time he was over whelmed when he would have homework in more than two subjects even if it were a sentence worth of work to do in each class. He would see four classes of homework. The compute was a great help to him for school. He had such a hard time writing that if he knew he would have to do any he would get upset but he can type very fast surprisingly so it killed two birds with one stone. He did not mind typing and the teacher could read his work. He has a laptop for school, he would burn his work on a cd and turn the cd in at the end of the day, and the teacher would print out his work. It worked really well with the teachers that would cooperate and except the cd. Math was his hardest subject not because of the subject matter though there is a problem with the abstractness of it but that he could not type of the work. Since he has started Nova Net internet classes, his grades have gone up 100% because he can work at his own pass. He can spend the day on one subject or do several. He is not over whelmed with the idea of four subjects a day. He gets in his groove and flows with it. The big draw back is lack of socializing. 

            For my own sanity I have gone to playing RPG games on line slipping in the world of make believe helps me to escape the stresses here. I can still be there physically to deal with something that comes up but for a little while become mentally detached. My ex husband’s means of escape was to drink excessively and to become abusive possibly thinking he could beat us into being the way he wanted us. I found it unexceptable, packed RJ up, and left. I figured it would be easier on everyone if I took on caring for RJ alone then dealing with a drunk on top of it. Our income is down the toilet but we get by fortunately RJ’s dad has very good health insurance but I still have to pay for his psychiatrist, but she is worth it.  

      If we lived in the city the animal control officers would of impounded the dog  and the people would of gotten a fine and or jail time for letting them out but because we are in a rural community we are subjected to the county and township ordinances. Though they have a leash law for the county they do not enforces it do to cost of adding more animal control officers. We have one officer for the whole county and he only works three days a week. If something happens during his off time, you have to call the sheriffs department and they just give tickets they will not pick up the dogs. 

I only saw the one part of the series so I do not know the whole story but I think you missed the mark a bit Doc on Melissa. I am 47 over weight and with a child with Aspergers Syndrome, and I can relate to her on so many levels it is not even funny. At 30 I gave birth when my son was born and it has be an emotional drain on my since, I cannot imagine the strain it would be on a 17 year old.

Her boyfriend seems to be as useless as my ex husband was in taking care of a child with special needs, leaving 100% of the strain of taking care of the child on her. She is not lazy…she is exhausted. She eats for the same reason I ate…boredom and depression. It was not fair saying if you do not take care of your self who will take care of your child. Odds are like me, she does not have the finical resources to take care of herself, by saying that you just put even more guilt on her. All my financial resources go to taking care of my son, physically and emotionally. Financially and emotionally, there is nothing left.

I spent years wishing I would not wake up in the mornings because I was so burned out by everything that I had been going through. The only thing keeping me from killing myself was the thought of inflicting my son’s problems on someone else. I hate to think of it as inflicting him on anyone because he is a sweet funny kid that I love very much but to be realistic he takes all the emotional strength I have to deal with him. He was not diagnosed until he was 9 years old; at 6 he wanted to kill himself because everyone at school keep telling him he was a bad kid, his dad didn’t help matters much either putting even more stress on me. Her self-esteem is probably in the gutter about now I know mine was. She at least had her child diagnosed early so there is hope for her baby and she will not have to go through as mental torment as I did.

Your comment about her house was not called for either. It is a symptom like everything else. She does not care about her house because she does not care about her life she has no life, she gives everything she has to her child and that good for nothing boyfriend of hers. The only thing she cares about is getting through another day of hell and trying to make a child that has no emotional connection with her, happy and healthy.

My son keeps asking me how I can stay so optimistic and I told him if I did not I would be worthless to everyone. Kids with Aspergers because of the treatment at school and by their peers are so negative that if I did not try to counter that negativity with positive thoughts and actions I would fall deeper into depression and not be able to get out of it. Negativity brings negative results; positive actions bring positive results…and positive voids negative every time well almost.  

The best thing I did was leave my husband, if you cannot be part of the solution do not be part of the problem. I was dealing with my son 24/7 365 day out of the year, I did not need his baggage to add to my burden like she doesn’t need her boyfriends baggage to be put on top of her already overloaded system.