Published on 12, July, 2020
Not impressed I must admit but thats my son to a tee. Goes with the flow, expects things to bend the way he wants etc and will make zero effort to help himself.
We've spent over £500 on private consultant appointments to get him seen and presribed medication. Found out for the last 10 days hes "forgotten" to take it.
Hes almost 15 - I'm absolately bomping mad with him. Surely, at 14/15 he should be able to know the importance of it?
I’m 50 years old and I forget to take my medication and because of that I’ve stopped taking it altogether now. It was causing me more anxiety just to remember to take it, even when I put it on the little table I use to put my drink on in a morning, I still forgot. I honestly don’t know why I forget to take it so often and I haven’t told the doctor yet that I’ve stopped taking it, I just can’t seem to remember and I haven’t got anybody to remind me so I’ve just stopped. I’m not causing any physical violence to anybody but I’ve noticed I do speak my mind a lot more when I’m not taking it and that often upsets people. The only thing I could suggest is somebody giving it to him so he can’t forget. It must be a very frightening situation to be in when he is violent, particularly with a young child around.
Yes fair point Blue Ray. Maybe we need to help him remember a little better.
Unfortunately, at the moment, we're having a lot of trouble helping him remember anything - hes totally occupoed with computer games. Homework the lot gets forgotten about.
p.s. I’m not saying your son doesn’t need guidance. My support worker getting a bit annoyed with me and more or less telling me I was acting like a spoilt child, did the trick. Ok I might have got horribly drunk on gin and Valium but everything has improved since then. And I’m certainly not trying to tell you what to do. You’ve got to do whatever you’ve got to do and I would never criticise you for whatever you did. I’m just sharing my experience in case it sheds some light for you and your boy and your family. You’re already doing a far better job as a parent than I could ever do. My child only had to cry and I would freak out. Thank god he didn’t cry a lot. It’s a tough role being a parent and we often get little thanks or recognition for all the effort we put into parenting, so I’m on your side.
I understand that. Since just before Christmas and up until a couple of weeks ago, I was totally preoccupied with watching black and white movies. I naturally stopped watching them when I started to feel better (incidently this was around the same time as I stopped taking the meds). Now I’ve moved on to playing a game on my phone, which I’ve never done before but it’s helping me in so many ways. For example, unless I’m in a routine, I have difficulty eating and in this burnout, even though I’m trained in Ayurvedic medicine and I’ve been studying nutrition for 30 years, I honestly have been unable to make nutrition a priority. I’m getting a headache now and even though I don’t like taking medication, I will take some solpadiene rather than eat because I’m doing something. I’m talking to you and it’s quicker and easier to take the medication rather than eat, which would prevent the need for medication but it means I can keep talking to you without a gap. However, I have learned by playing the game, that when I’ve had something to eat and I’m not tired, I play better, I get better scores. This is speaking to me in a way that I can now understand. You would think that an intelligent 50 year old with a vast experience of health and nutrition, would be able to understand the need for nutrition. But in a burnout, I can’t. And the only reason that I’m now coming out of the burnout is because I’ve had enough rest. Physical rest isn’t enough for me. I also need rest from my ever active mind and thoughts and the black and white movies gave me that rest. I watch the romantic type films that always have a happy ending. The stories aren’t difficult to follow, you don’t even have to follow them, they don’t go on for hours and they give me a lovely feeling when I watched them and more crucially, they give me a rest from my mind.
I have just taken the pain killers, knowing full well that if I ate some food, the headache would go away, but it’s not possible for me to break away from this just to eat. But I did get myself a drink of hot water so I’ll at least attempt to drink that. There’s no logic in this. I used to fight it because I couldn’t understand it but I’m starting to understand it and the less I fight, the more I eat. I’m still not eating every day and that’s ok. I’m only just starting to come out of this burnout and it’s been quite a year, so I’m being easy on myself. I even forgot to go to court on the day my case was being heard and there was a possible outcome of me losing my home. The woman from the council actually came to my door and gave me a letter with the appointment date on it and handed it to me and said I must be there if I want a chance to save my tenancy. I thought she was crazy. I thought did she honestly think I would forget something as important as that. But three days rolled by, after the court date, when I suddenly remembered I was in court and I had missed the hearing. Fortunately, I got to keep my tenancy. I sound like I’m useless or something but I’m not. I’m used to earning easily in excess of £1000 a week, which I know isn’t a lot for some people, but it was way more than I needed. Yet here I am, not even able to realise the importance of nutrition and not be able to priorities it over other things. I’m at a university tomorrow, to see about joining their masters degree in autism leading to a PhD in the same subject yet I can’t even get myself out of bed, dressed and fed on a regular basis. My support worker got a bit angry with me, saying that I will never manage to get through university if I don’t eat, she’s really worried about me, and inside I’m thinking, what are you getting so upset about, it’s only food, now let’s talk about my new plans! But the game on my phone is finally making me realise that of course I have to eat. If I eat regularly I’ll be better able to do the course, but it’s taken me this long (over a year) to figure this out. It’s almost like a form of temporary dementia. It’s like parts of the brain stop working. I would go into my kitchen, knowing there is food, ordinarily I’m an amazing vegan cook, everyone loves my food, yet I wouldn’t have a clue what to do when I got in the kitchen. It was like I was playing okey cokey. I would put all this fresh food in my fridge then the following week throw it all away and in the mean time if I ate anything it would usually be chocolate. Milk chocolate that I don’t normally eat. I make my own chocolate or eat the dark stuff. There’s no rhyme or reason to any of this and since I decided to stop working it out and to simply go with it, you wouldn’t believe the progress I’ve made in less than a week. It’s simple but complex and almost impossible to explain to somebody who isn’t autistic. My support worker kept encouraging me to write out a simple weekly plan that said eat at 10 am and 2 pm and that’s it. But week after week I wouldn’t do it because I 100% would totally forget, the minute she left my house. I thought it was an amazing idea while we were talking about it but I just couldn’t remember it after she left. Even if I put reminders on my phone with an alarm, I would switch the alarm off and forget about it. It wouldn’t matter if it was written down in several places, I would still forget, I tried it. In the end I ended up taking some Valium and downing a bottle of gin because I was so confused. This resulted in the best thing ever. My friend did the shopping and came and made me the soup that me and the support worker had been talking about and even though I ended up throwing most of it away, because I’ve had it done for me once, it’s enough for me to do it myself next time. I’m still not eating every day but I’m eating better than I was. I had pictures on my bedroom wall showing somebody waking up then brushing their teeth etc so I would know what to do when I opened my eyes but they fell off the wall after a while and I was overly ambitious anyway. I had me doing my meditation, yoga, going for a run and doing some spiritual reading and practice, before most people are even stirrring from their slumber. This was before I got a support worker. She’s helping me be more realistic and helping me build up to that but we needed to get the eating thing sorted. She said its like I’m acting like a spoilt rebellious child or something, which threw me into this tail spin and I ended up in a pretty bad state.
Anyway, I feel for you. I couldn’t have coped with a child like me, no way, I totally give my family credit for not killing me or putting me in a kids home because I wasn’t an easy child and I’m not an easy adult to be around. But not because I’m intentionally difficult, even though I am often intentially difficult, but because I didn’t know any other way to express myself. Now I’m understanding me better in so much as it’s autism and I’m not trying to understand the hell out of it, I’m doing much better but as a kid and even up to a few years ago, I realise now I was a bit of a nightmare, but I honestly never saw it back then.