Any advice on how to keep my young adult son safe. He has recently been diagnosed with asperger' s syndrome.

My son is 19. He removed himself from peer relationships more or less in the second year of a'levels. He has a university place but deferred. He struggles with social relationships and will not work due to anxiety, though we did try to persuade him to use the help suggested for this in our area, via an advocate. He goes online most of the night. However, he now says that with the bit of money given to him by his grandparents he is going to a conference on anime? in Los Angeles with the people in America he has met online. He hasn't given us any details. He won't even catch a train or go shopping normally!! My concern is it's a scam or that he will be unsafe. We have no one to help as he was diagnosed post 18...after years of chasing for help as we knew something was not right. We feel powerless. We just want him to be happy and safe but something feels wrong about this. He just rants at us and tells us we are controlling parents if we try to find out more details, though we have tried to explain this is what any parent would want to know, venues etc. 

Parents
  • My concern is it's a scam or that he will be unsafe.

    Just to throw in another generalisation: I think autistic people may be more vulnerable to scams if they don't have time to process information. So a salesperson's time pressure tactics may be effective, but just smiling probably won't work. Given a chance to investigate something in depth, they may check out background more thoroughly.

    Hope the other testimony is reassuring regarding safety. If you express positive interest in the subject, or offer to answer questions about travel and so on, maybe he will volunteer more info and trust?

Reply
  • My concern is it's a scam or that he will be unsafe.

    Just to throw in another generalisation: I think autistic people may be more vulnerable to scams if they don't have time to process information. So a salesperson's time pressure tactics may be effective, but just smiling probably won't work. Given a chance to investigate something in depth, they may check out background more thoroughly.

    Hope the other testimony is reassuring regarding safety. If you express positive interest in the subject, or offer to answer questions about travel and so on, maybe he will volunteer more info and trust?

Children