Good evening gang, my name is Nina and I'm 25 years old; please kindly bear wth my very long post.
When I was a student, I had a friend who worked in a school as a support teacher to an autistic boy, and what always struck me about his stories was how terribly aggressive this child sounded - back then that didn't tie into my stereotypical view of what an autistic person should be like. Now, some 5 years later, I am mum to a 3-year-old boy named Alex, who was diagnosed with autism a couple of weeks ago, and his aggression is an aspect of his condition that I find the most difficult to deal with.
It wasn's a surprise - we were almost sure that he was autistic for at least a year beforehand, and he showed definite abnormalities since around 14 months. So it was more a confirmation of what we had already expected. I guess it's taken me this long to ask for help on here because I've gone tthrough my entire life telling myself that I'm strong and relying only on myself, but in this case, who am I kidding? I don't know anything about this and don't know how to fight anymore.
Alexander knows his numbers, colours, shapes and the alphabet in two languages and can operate a tablet and pretty much any mobile phone --- yet he does not speak in sentences or use any clear words. All the seperate single words he says are uttered in his own special way and I only know what he means because I'm used to hearing them or because they are heard in context, he also loves to imitate animal noises and repeat the same incoherent sounds over and over. He definitely has problems understanding speech too, though he is starting to understand more, albeit mainly orders and instructions - a flow of speech or anything remotely resembling a discussion makes him either walk away, babble over you or even cover his ears. In exactly the same way, he will simply walk away from any activity that does not interest him.
I don't know if this is typical for an autistic child, but Alex is actually very cheeky, smiley, giggly and playful, and he laughs a lot especially if he's enjoying a game. He will make eye contact and persistently ask adults for help if he needs it (even strangers!). He is affectionate and will hug and kiss us, though he also sometimes kisses inanimate objects, which leads me to think that maybe his affection is not tied to real emotions?
What is absolutely AWFUL about him - and this is when I feel that the world is about to end - is the fact that he spontaneously goes into meltdown when he does not get his own way. If a magical day goes by when all of our interests match up with his own, he is the loveliest child to have around, but as you can imagine, that's almost impossible even with a child who isn't on the spectrum because, well, kids need to be told stuff all the time!
A few examples - today we got on a bus and there were no seats, so I strapped him into his buggy and said he needs to sit there for now because there is nowhere for us to sit together (of course, he probably didn't register this because it was a flow of speech, but I talk to him all the time anyway!). What he did instead was scream at the top of his lungs (into the face of a sleeping newborn in the pram next to his!!) , arch his back, wave his hands and kick his legs.
Another example - he knows the local area like the back of his hand and he knows what road leads to what place and has very specific preferences as to where we go and what route we take there. If we happen to not go where he thinks we should be going, the same thing happens - he screams as though he's been scalded, falls face down to the ground with no regard to anything/one around him; if I try to pick him up and carry him, he arches his back trying to make me drop him, kicks my stomach, hits my face, grabs my glasses and throws them on the ground and so on.
It's this sort of scenario pretty much every time things don't go his way. Luckily, he is usually quite quick to recover from these hysterical outbursts and seems to act like nothing ever happened 10 minutes down the line. However, sometimes an episode like this can shape our entire day and he will carry in being a nightmare child, screaming at everything. Funnily enough, very occassionally, he actually calmly settles for a no and doesn't go mad about it. Rarely, but it happens.
I can deal with anything, but the aggression is one of those things that I'm really struggling to accept. I don't know if it will pass as he develops more, and I am mortified that he will carry on acting this way into adulthood. I am so scared that he is going to remain aggressive and that he will never talk properly or live fairly independently or fall in love or you know, do all that stuff which people off the ASD spectrum take for granted.
If there was one word I could use to describe Alex, it would be inconsistent. He is inconsistent about absolutely everything he does. Some days I feel like things are moving forward, and then the next day it's the apocalypse again, and these neverending ups and downs are becoming so difficult to deal with and I feel so, so alone and worried about the future. But hey, who isn't?
Thank you so much, if you've read this far, I'm sorry for sounding this emotional, but I'm just grasping at straws here and I thought that a good way to start really learning about this is by talking directly to people in simialr situations, who are probably a lot more experienced than me!
Have a lovely Sunday and all the best to everyone.
