Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi I am new to this site and would welcome your comments and help. My son was finally diagnosed with aspergers at 21 after a lifelong battle with our GP who refused to acknowledge his differences and labelled me an over protective mother not willing to accept that he was just badly behaved. I won't bore you with the tedious details of the lengthy battle to diagnosis, I am sure this is familiar to many of you.
The diagnosis was a huge relief to us as parents, and his sister as we always knew that he was special. For the last three years we have researched, read everything we could, and tried to put in place the best support possible to help him live an independant life. We have had some success, he is well capable of holding down his job as a carer, but periodically, he will crash and burn. Usually something will trigger him to believe he is useless, and he will walk away. It is tough to try and always understand and accept some of the situations he gets himself in to. Continuous bad debt pay day loans phone contracts, we have paid off thousands over the years. And yes I know we should let them fail, so he learns. There is an account currently that he is being pursued for that we are not going to settle. A bad credit rating would be a godsend to put an end to them.
our main problem is whilst we try so hard to understand him, he doesn't understand himself, and doesn't accept that he has aspergers, he may say he does to placate me but he doesn't really. He was deeply hurt when I pursued the diagnosis as he said I was trying to get him declared 'mental'. How does one accept having aspergers, does it help to know and try and understand it? How can I persuade him to talk to others and share his feelings? Would it help if he had a mentor or someone outside of the family he could talk to? We love him dearly and want him to be secure in his adult life, and to recognise his many positive characteristics. He is funny, loyal to his friends, clever in ways he does not recognise, different and individual, and much loved by his family and friends. We would like him to go back to our GP (thankfully a new one who has been great) for an updated assessment, but I am scared to broach the subject in case he feels I am again trying to label him as mental. Apologies for length of this post but it is so good to be able to put all my thoughts on paper. I would appreciate hearing from you. Thank you for reading this.
I am new to the community and I've been searching for others in a similar situation to mine. I know this is an old post but I can relate to Islas story. My son too had a late diagnoses and has only recently been diagnosed At the age of 20. He is now 21. To cut a long story short he developed severe anxiety at the age of 14 and struggled through school and college. He eventually gave up college at the age of 19 and failed to find a permanent job. His mental health has gradually deteriorated since then. he started spending all of his days performing rituals and routines and would not engage in any conversation or activity other than his rituals. Eventually he stopped looking after himself and had not washed at all for a whole year. Neither did he change his clothes or under wear, wash his teeth or shave. He also had control issues around eating and was loosing weight. He was 9 and a half stone and is 6 ft tall. we eventually had him assessed under the mental health act and he is now living in a care home for young people. i tried everything in my power to help him. My son too is in denial about his diagnoses and thinks that his behaviour is perfectly normal. I would love to be able to let my son make his own decisions and learn from his mistakes but sometimes you have to do what is best for them. He hates it in the home but would be at risk of severe self neglect without support from care staff and family.