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.
Thank you Narra. Your post is reassuring. Unfortunately my son doesn't seem to have the high intelligence part of Aspergers. I believe his IQ is only about 85. I have tried to give him the bits of paper/qualifications in things that he can do, like powerboat licence etc. he isnt ashamed of his diagnosis and we had to tell him to stop giving out his 'I have Aspergers' cards and told him to only use them when you felt threatened or in trouble. This came from a minor incident with the police that could have been bigger if someone hadn't intervened and said he isn't being rude, he has Aspergers!
you are right in that interviews aren't great for him but the one where we had bad feedback was over 2 days, doing activities etc. it was the kind of interview where I thought they could see through his issues and he could show what he can do.
He has had another interview today with another place. It was the more traditional type of interview but the college had done more last minute prep with him. He only holds most information for a short period and questions about 'how you might react in a certain scenario' are impossible for him.
i will let you know how things go, but it helps to write it down and know someone out there is listening to me.