Published on 12, July, 2020
My partner's youger son is autistic , having been diagnosed when he was about 2. Both my partner and I have children from previous marriages, and I only met my partner's son , when he was around 4.
He has been assessed as high functioning , meaning that he was integrated into mainstream school, and coped pretty well. He also excelled at sport , running and rugby and seemed to integrate pretty well. He has good social skills, when he needs to us them, and to all intents and purposes could appear to a stranger to be a very charming and capable young man.
My partner, his Mother and I have seen a very different side to him, however, over the last few years. He is now 24 and has recently started a Masters in Physio at Cardiff University (something we are very proud of by the way). For the last year or so he has been living at home with us and prior to that was studying for his degree at Oxford Brooks.
Over this period we have had very little real contact with him. He never returns any messages to us whilst he has been away, and never contacts us. When he was at home he would pretty much blank us out , most of the time.
This, of course, is distressing for us but we do understand that his extra sensory overload in certain situations means he needs to shutdown. We are also think that he masks a lot when he is out, which we understand can be exhausting when he gets home.
As he is now away in Cardiff we are concerned about how long lack of contact will be . More immediately we are getting married at the beginning of November and are not sure whether he will attend.
We also , often find it impossible to fine out about how he is getting on, as phoning the University , for example, often gets us nowhere because they won't divulge anything, as he's an adult.
It can lead you to feeling quite helpless. Any advice would be welcome.
Richard
Honestly? Just trust him and be a reassuring presence. I’m in a very similar situation to your partners son and also don’t speak to my parents “spontaneously” too much. A massive part of this is that it’s quite draining, especially my mother, as she has so much of her own anxiety I’m still having to mask/do emotional labour when we speak (even via text) and I just have _absolutely no energy_ for that. The way you phrase it seems like a lot of your desire to contact him is for you-centric reasons (feeling helpless, wanting to know if he’s coming to your wedding etc) and he likely doesn’t have the energy or mental capacity for that. Uni (especially masters!) are also VERY busy, if I have spare “brain processing” it’s much better spent on writing my essay(s) than dealing with family. He’s likely doing fine, just try to offer_him_ support and ease his workload where possible.
Thank you for your very honest response . It's reassuring to hear from someone in a similar situation, and to know that he is probably dealing with things his own way.
You are right to mention the you-centric reason. It's hard for me to sometimes think he should want to make contact , when it;s really hard for him to do so. It's like I am trying to get him thinking like me and obviously that is not possible .