Published on 12, July, 2020
I am reaching out for some help and advice for my 10yr old son. My son has really good verbal and communication skills, but it’s clear he struggles to discuss his emotions with myself and his mum. We have noticed that the other kids at school see him as different and as such end up either excluding him or bullying him. He sometimes gets upset by this, other times shrugs it off as all he wants to do is feel included and part of the peer group (we’ve seen some of this on text between others and sometimes at parties or football where we obviously have a keen eye on what’s going on).
We haven’t discussed his ASD with him yet and nor do his peers understand this, but it hurts to see that he won’t discuss what goes on and we are stuck with what to do worrying that the lother it goes on the harder it will be to get him to talk about those feelings.
Any advice is welcomed.
thanks
I'm with Juniper, I often don't know how I feel, but I am quite good at sensing the mood of others. Just now I can tell you where I am in pain, that my tea is in the oven because I know I have to eat, but I don't feel tired, happy, hungry or sad. I simply exist. My feet are no longer cold since I put a blanket over my legs. My neck is stiff.
If we miss out on picking up the inferences of emotion when everyone else 'gets it' what can we learn about them, and when, from whom?
I enjoy meeting one friend at a time. But am I happy when I meet them? I don't know.
His difference is in processing, so maybe the children are not behaving logically. For example, they play a group game with a set of rules A B C. At some point for some odd reason the rules are A D G, but nobody said the rules changed. This would lead me to frustration (head would physically hurt as it does not make sense to me that A is the only rule being respected and B C are being broken). In my very moral literal word this is like someone lying or being deceptive. So I think it is obvious how I would feel hurt, and want to withdraw from these people.
Nice point about rules changing. I used to experience confusion, frustration and an agitation when others did this (I wouldn't be able to tell you these feelings until I was much older as they would be misidentified and misprepresented by others). I didn't quite understand why "all the world is a stage and..." ready set improvise - was fun. It's not fun, but completely and always unpredictable and as a child I tolerated things that if the situation were reversed, a non-autistic would not tolerate.
Anyway, I believe too heavy emphasis on 'feeling' is the wrong approach to dealing with matters of safety or justice. One cannot merely be slave to the Passions. It's ok to allow the head to teach the heart. x