Difficult relationship...

Hi all, just looking for a bit of advice. I have a 13 year old son who has been diagnosed with ASD, on the high end of scale. He has a serious problem with anxiety and finding life at school difficult, it’s a long day when you are trying to mask your fears/anxieties. He comes home exhausted! Anyway his problems don’t end there, when he gets home he has to deal with another issue, his Dad - His Dad is at the moment in the process of being diagnosed with ASD. The relationship has got so bad He can’t stand being in the same room as his Dad. I told me his Dad makes him feel very anxious. I’ve tried to encourage my son to talk to his Dad but he says ‘there is no point as he won’t listen...’ I feel stuck in the middle. I can totally understand how my son feels as my husband has never really had much to do with him, only to reprimand or instruct. If they are in close proximity with each other it’s not long before my husband is barking out instructions of what my son should or shouldn’t be doing. It’s awful watching this relationship getting further and further apart as my son becomes more aware of the relationship other fathers have with their children. Should I say something to my husband? 

Parents
  • Thank you for such a supportive and insightful reply. Motherhood can be a lonely path sometimes. 

    I agree, it is our role as a parent to enable our child’s voice to be heard and understood, but it is very difficult speaking to my husband, he either doesn’t want to hear, dismisses it and becomes defensive or worse, self-depreciating, accusing me of making him feel guilty for being a ‘rubbish father’. It’s just hopeless. I know it’s unhelpful to assume the response will always be the same but I guess I’ve become scared of making matters worse. So I’ve remained quiet hoping things will get better and tried to encourage and empower my son to speak to his Dad - which he has only ever tried to do in anger or frustration. He said he can’t and doesn’t wants to as he feels his Dad is a stranger. This is why I thought maybe I should try again. But there never seems to be the right moment to broach the subject.
    It’s just so sad. My son should feel happy at home and feel free but instead I can see he worries constantly about the reprimanded. 

    Maybe I should take solace in what BlueRay so beautiful articulated -  Some realationships take longer to develop and today I couldn’t love my Dad any more if I tried. 

    Thank you all for being so kind, you honestly don’t know how much you have helped.

Reply
  • Thank you for such a supportive and insightful reply. Motherhood can be a lonely path sometimes. 

    I agree, it is our role as a parent to enable our child’s voice to be heard and understood, but it is very difficult speaking to my husband, he either doesn’t want to hear, dismisses it and becomes defensive or worse, self-depreciating, accusing me of making him feel guilty for being a ‘rubbish father’. It’s just hopeless. I know it’s unhelpful to assume the response will always be the same but I guess I’ve become scared of making matters worse. So I’ve remained quiet hoping things will get better and tried to encourage and empower my son to speak to his Dad - which he has only ever tried to do in anger or frustration. He said he can’t and doesn’t wants to as he feels his Dad is a stranger. This is why I thought maybe I should try again. But there never seems to be the right moment to broach the subject.
    It’s just so sad. My son should feel happy at home and feel free but instead I can see he worries constantly about the reprimanded. 

    Maybe I should take solace in what BlueRay so beautiful articulated -  Some realationships take longer to develop and today I couldn’t love my Dad any more if I tried. 

    Thank you all for being so kind, you honestly don’t know how much you have helped.

Children
  • My dearest SMM,

    I can hear just how lonely you are feeling with all this right now. And it is not ‘unhelpful for you to assume the worst’ at all but instead it seems, to me, that you have a lot of experience of your husband’s reactions to things and therefore you are simply sharing your realistic idea and experiences of how he will likely react.

    Please forgive me if I speak out of turn, however, what is making me feel really sad right now is that, from what you have posted, it sounds as your husband not only dismisses yours sons opinions and needs, but that he also dismisses yours too (by making you feel guilty or wrong) whenever you try to talk to him about important things too?

    Is this correct?