New here and needing HELP!!

Hi! My name is Penny, I have 5 children and my eldest Son was diagnosed with ASD nearly 10 years ago when he was 6. We’ve had our ups and downs but we’ve navigated his needs really quite well I think...that is until now. 

A letter came in the post about 18 months ago for my son and apparently it read, PUBERTY, PLEASE BEGIN COMPLETE AVERSIVE BEHAVIOURS NOW :( Obviously I’m being sarcastic but that’s how quickly he changed. Overnight. 

I could ride out the puberty but it’s everything else that has grow since. The chronic slow moving, inability to achieve anything. It’s taken him 7 hours to have a shower and tidy his already fairly tidy room. His only ‘chore’ is washing up after dinner. 1 and a half hours...easy. Homework, 1 piece will take him from dinner till bed only for him to walk in to the lounge and announce at 11.30, “I didn’t get it”. He sits and stares at walls. It’s not like he’s desperate to get on his x box or watch a film he literally sits and does nothing!! It’s like pulling teeth. “Ben, you really need to get on mate”, “yes, I know”, he’ll say....then still sit there. I stop to drop him off at school and sometimes I have to prompt him to take his seatbelt off and get out of the car and even then you would have thought his legs were made of lead!! And if you’re thinking that he doesn’t know just because I’ve stopped he needs to get out of the car or that, “you really need to get on mate” to him is a non statement well all I can say is he would have understood two years ago. If suddenly he doesn’t he’s regressed massively. 

Then there’s the brewing temper and self harm, the biting his hands and rocking. Today I looked out in through his bedroom window (his bedroom is downstairs and viewable from the lounge) and for no apparent reason he was doing something that vaguely represented Irish dancing?? I asked him just now to do the (well overdue) washing up before he went back to his room and he ran off for his room like he was about to attempt a long jump and when he got in there he’s throwing himself around, shoving things into his mouth and head butting his bed. Now he’s sat at the kitchen bench staring at the sink. And the mention of homework, well, all he’ll can let loose. 

We’re in regular contact with his consultant, we’ve even moved him School and he was on aripiprazole until he developed a second voice he started talking with but taking him off of the meds seems to have solved that. 

I don’t know what to do or what to think. If you’d asked me a couple of years ago I would have said he had a relatively high functioning autism but I’m not so sure anymore.  We’re pretty sure he has the emotional IQ of around a 10/11 year old  

Any advice would be gratefully revived. Even just someone else saying their young person is the same. 

Thanks for reading.