Published on 12, July, 2020
My son refuses to go to school and to discuss what’s going on, he will not listen to his parents and is hugely disrespectful in the process. I have walked on egg shells for years and I’m totally at a loss as to what to do. He puts unrealistic pressure on himself.
Thank you so much for your response, it is incredibly helpful and insightful.
He is not his biological father but has raised him from 2 yrs. His biological Dad sees him every other weekend but is not very supportive and I do suspect he is on the spectrum too. My son has Asperger's and ADHD.
He is driven to succeed and is very clever and has an ambition to improve the world from both an environmental and humanitarian standpoint, but he puts enormous pressure on himself to achieve this. He had surgery a year ago on his legs to lengthen his tendons, so he needs to do physio for 1 hour a day. He has also started following a very aggressive lifestyle coach online and which also involves 1 hour for regular exercise on top of the that, plus 2 hours of study for his A’Levels and then to get ready for school. He also needs time in the morning to research world geo-politics and other humanitarian matters. I am concerned that he spends time on very heavy subjects and I have tried to get him to explore lighter and more fun alternatives.
We have also tried to break his routine down into smaller tasks and to suggest doing them at different times but he is not prepared to do that, he is quite all or nothing. The trouble with the routine he has implemented is that he cannot keep up with it. He does it for a couple of days, is totally burned out and then slips back to not getting up. On these days he feels the need to write off that day and not go to school. As you can imagine, everyone in the house is exhausted including the cat and dog!
When I say we are walking on eggshells, it is actually more that we are containing our emotions despite his aggressive behaviours. Your point about trust makes sense as he has recently said to us that we don’t understand him and we need to let him just deal with this in his own way as he knows what he is doing. Although in reality just seems to perpetuate.
I take your point by taking a step back for a week – I think I lost sight of this as we are under enormous pressure from his school to get him to attend as he is studying A Levels. I certainly need to spend some time finding wisdom as we have tried so many different approaches and can’t seem to get through to him.
We actually took him to Iceland 2 weeks ago to support his interest in the environment, but I will try to do more stuff at home with him that he is interested in rather than focusing too much on his routine and refusing to go to school.
This has been very helpful in giving me clarity and direction on what to explore next to support him. Thank you.
Hi- I can relate to getting stuck in routines. Routines can help to reduce the number of decisions you need to make and can free up brain space and give some predictability and a sense of security. However, routines can also make you very inflexible and anything that changes them can cause anxiety. The world is ever changing and rigid routines can make it hard to adapt. Some routines can be better than others. However at least for me no matter whether the routine is helpful or indeed very detrimental it can be almost impossible to break it. I have been stuck in very damaging routines with food (eg. Had a phase where I had to eat 2 whole pizzas and 2 tiramisus a day... and I have IBS so it was awful for my digestion and health... then I have had phases of eating only handful of foods in rigid pattern and lost a lot of weight unintentionally which is very distressing.). Change is scary and hard and even if the routine is damaging, especially if a lot of other stresses are happening in life it can be almost impossible to change it.
Recently I have again ended up severely underweight again. I had a lot of external stress factors plus I just worry and stress way too much. I tried to change my eating routine but it caused more digestive upset and stress. I was in such a stressed state in general that I then didn’t even want to try changing it anymore- I felt like I could not deal with any more stress or change despite being so worried about the weight loss. Things did change then funnily when I had decided now wasn’t the moment but i was off work for a few days (to go to an interview) plus had a goal and before I knew it I was changing things. Then I ended up stuck in a new routine... and I desperately wanted to change it- but I couldn’t - then I had a few days with a little less stress and I managed to get going on eating more- So there are several things that come to my mind with your son. 1) the harder you try to change a routine/ the more you focus on it the more difficult it can be
2) Routines are there to try give security and help deal with stress and uncertainty-(they might actually make things more difficult but there is comfort in the predictability) . More stress in life = greater need for routine
It sounds like your son doesn’t feel ready yet or able to change his routine. I would suggest taking the focus away from the routine/ behaviour and instead look at what is causing him stress/ anxiety in his life- can those stress factors somehow be limited? It sounds like school is a big stress factor? Can he learn ways to better relax and deal with the stresses of life? I suspect that if some of those factors are addressed maybe he will feel less of a need for the nocturnal routine and he might be more open to change.
I can also relate to all or nothing thinking regarding routines- i know advice is often to do small gradual changes- that doesn’t really work well for me as even a small change causes stress and I then feel like it’s not worth all that stress for such a negligible change. Plus as the change is so small it is very tempting to just compensate and go back to original routine. I usually find it easier to go for drastic change and just completely mix it up- that makes it harder to compare to original routine, it is scary but at least worth it .
Sadly in my experience it’s hard or even impossible to force change to routine even if you really want to- changes are more likely to happen when the stress eases.
Also putting pressure on him to change it, might make him want on hold on tighter to the routine... I think it has to come from him. I would try to take off the pressure as much as possible, and look into trying to limit external stress factors as much as possible and if he wants to look into techniques to manage stress. I can hear that the routine is disruptive to your family- in the meantime if he is not yet up to changing it, can you figure out a way for him to go about it that is less disruptive to the rest of the family? The more i think about it the more I feel that school is the main factor here.