Published on 12, July, 2020
hello, i am new here. i would really appreciate advice how to help my 16 year old son. He has never been diagnosed with autism, but i strongly feel he is on the spectrum. He has always found making friends hard, and has only had one proper friend in secondary school. He is ok talking to someone he sits next to in class, because it is structured. during breaks he cannot cope as well. He has lots of other little issues which add up to big problems for me to know how to support him. He wont go to hairdressers, dentist or shave. he is very open to me, but cannot explain why he finds these things difficult, he just says he is different from other people. He worries about everyday life, and needs to bounce on his trampoline for half an hour at the end of each day. if he cant get onto his trampoline he get distressed, so it is a compulsion and coping mechanism. my main problem now is that his best friend at school as left to go to another sixth form. My son has tried to approach other groups at school, but just doesnt quite fit in. He say no one wants to talk to him or be his friend. my son says he hates who he is, and no one wants to know him.My son would never cope with a diagnosis of autism, and doesnt want help with a counsellor. i feel we have got to the stage when he might need some help, and wondered if anyone can recommend what type of help has helped their child. for the past week since going back to school, he hasnt come out of his room much. he doesnt cope with changes well, and had 3 months off school over the summer due to gcses. this hasnt done him any good as he has become very isolated and lost alot of confidence. sorry to go on and on, i would just love some support from someone who has a child similar to mine, and know how best i can support him. thank you so much.
"Martian in the Playground - understanding the schoolchild with Asperger's syndrome" by Clare Sainsbury, published in 2000, while a little dated, and more attuned to primary and lower secondary, is useful perhaps in understanding behaviour in retrospect. Your son might identify with many of the siituations described, but it would also help you understand, and make it easier to determine whether to broach the subject with him (Lucky Duck Publications ISBN 1 873 942 08 7 this code helps librarians and bookshops find it).
"Making Sense of the unfeasible - My life journey with Asperger Syndrome" by Marc Fleisher (Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2003 ISBN 1 84310 165 3) is biographical. The big problem with biographies is the wide range of manifestations. One person's "life with autism" can seem quite alien to another's. But Marc Fleisher's account spans childhood to adulthood.
Knowing is useful. Understanding why you have social difficulties helps you strategise. Not knowing why things go on makes life much harder. Nothing is "common sense" if you don't have good social referencing in the first place. What he cannot do, if he has asperger's, is pick up much social understanding from his peers.
I agree with what Hope says who has been through very similar things as your son. It does sound very much like Aspergers/autism. Her experience is very relevant and it is absolutely essential to try and see things from your son's point of view.
I managed to get further before hittting a crisis later in life. You may think that he wouldn't cope with a diagnosis but he may not cope without a diagnosis. Perhaps things do have to come to a head in a lot of cases before one accepts that there is a problem.
I think I would probably avoid using the term autistic to begin with with someone of that age. Aspergers is, at least to me, less of a scary profoundly disabling term. I know that it is the same thing but I still have different pictures in my mind of a typical autistic person compared to a person with Aspergers.
Does he realise that there is a problem and would he like his life to be better? I was fortunate in that my first reading about it was a book that emphasises how you really can live well with the syndrome. Living Well on the Spectrum by Valeria Gaus is probably suitable for someone of his age and it works on the basis that it you can deal with it successfully. There is also a Asperger's for Dummies book which might help.
Have you mentioned your concerns that he may be autistic to him? I remember all too well going through similar feelings of feeling different and an outsider at that age without a diagnosis, and I refused to see the counsellor as well. It is an awkward age for broaching diagnosis because you want to fit in and do not want to be identified with anything that could be seen as yet another marker of difference. However in time your son might start to want answers for himself as I did, but this happened for me only after things came to a head when I was 19 years old and reluctantly agreed to visit the GP. Does your son have any strong interests that give him pleasure? Interests can be a real source of comfort at stressful times for people with autism.
It sounds like he could be autistic from what you write, and I do think it is better to get a diagnosis sooner rather than later. Do the school have any concerns? Not all schools pick up on this, my secondary school was hopelessly inadequate in identifying my social issues which were blindingly obvious.