15 year old son recently diagnosed with ASD, at my wits end

But seriously, I think you are trying to avoid the elephant in the room. Why haven't you discuss it with him yet? The care worker will be surprised that you delegate such important thing to a stranger, in a way it is a message to your son, a very hurtful one, have you thought of that? From his point of view it could look like you are feeling awkward about discussing with your son that he has a disability... There are many people on this site going through diagnosis, it is a cathartic moment and a process that takes time to process and to rebuild a new positive identity. I can't look for it now, but there are a few studies that show mental health and coping outcomes are significantly better for people who build positive self identity after the autism diagnosis. There are a few 15 years olds on this site now, reading this thread, that might be able to chat with him and support him through processing of the diagnosis. Direct him to hear.

But I think you need the same process, to re frame and rebuild your concept of what it means to be autistic, and what it does not mean. The diagnosis process is distressing and draining for parents as well. I totally sympathise. Why can't you talk about it?  I don't mean to criticise you, you need support with this as well, it's bewildering and information out there is of very variable quality. It might help your son if you researched a little about neurodiversity and the culture and identity of autistic adult community. 

Maybe someone can advise about a good autistic young man youtuber

This is a bit too young, there is one boy here about his age, https://vimeo.com/216052066

This blog has a video on how to deal with the diagnosis https://www.autistamatic.com/videos

Boating_taxonomist advice is spot on, she made several excellent points. Especially the bit about his coping and you interfering with that. He really need ways to process and relax after the school day, so he might need a break after school and then the routine of revising in short bursts would help. If he settles into a routine, it's great. He needs to find ways that work for him, based on autistic way of being and autistic priorities of coping. An autistic speaker Sara Hendrickx say that to cope better with her work and demands of professional of life she needs to become 'more autistic', have more rigidity and routine in small things to free the bandwidth to cope with the big thing. So if he gets to a routine of revising well, why do you need to worry about being flexible and living the house earlier? Cancel living the house all together until he gets results. Generally, in autistic life you have to focus on what matters and let go of the rest. Yes, aspies are nocturnal, noisy and interact through devices. Channel this. Other aspies might be more helpful for him in this that any NT family therapy. It should not really be about normalising and controlling him. You might damage your relationship this way.

I meet a lot of adults on autism forums, mostly from US, estranged from their families because of the controlling and  'normalising' stance they took (i.e. forcing the ASD to comply with the appearance of NT normal' behaviour, with NT norms, rather that functioning well as an autistic person and feel well on the inside. 

There is autism show in Birmingham this week-end, with a lot of autistic speakers, maybe you could both explore it together?

I am an autistic woman and have two daughters on the spectrum. This all is so familiar, I struggle with similar issues with my daughter and read countless similar stories from parents of teens, autistic and not. When my daughter was this age and was posting exactly the same questions, and I also bought all the revision guides and printed exam papers :) and people on another site were saying to me this is teenage rebellion, she is not a child anymore, but a young person, stop micromanaging her, it's time to let go, you are focusing on your ambitions, not on hers,  it's her life.. while they were all also desperately focusing on Oxbridge ambitions for their children. And I was like c&*$ what do you know about my daughter, she it a total baby, but also very bright and absolutely deserve and has the ability to do well and go to uni.. she just needs to carry on while she seem to be derailing on sharp turn here... true her 'maturity' age is much lower than her physical age.. So maybe the rebellion of the 13's is hitting him now?

A lot of autistic teens derail at this sharp turn, where they need to develop a new self driven good routine for studying and revising while dealing with teen issues. I can't say my daughter negotiated the turn well.IWith hindside, I think counselling is the answer, I would advise finding a counsellor privately ASAP, you don't have time to lose before year 11, that would have an empowering understanding of autism and would recognise that he is immature and doesn't have all the self insight to drive the conversation, he needs a directive counsellor that would coach him back to  studies and uni aspirations. My therapist always advises me about my relationship with my daughter :remove the pressure, the more you push, the more anxious she gets, the more she resists. Instead invest in relationship. At this age you are not able to control them physically anymore, so as parents we need to develop very close relationship, understand their priorities and basically we can influence them more if we join them where they are. I was advised to play computer games with my daughter. It did wonders. Try it 

Thanks for your reply... I will have a look through some of these links. I have found Youngminds very good in the past. Before my son was referred, and after being told by a locum doctor it was all in my head, I used the call back service from Youngminds and the professional I spoke with told me exactly what to say when I went back to see my own doctor. After listening to what we were experiencing she told me which were the important points to highlight.

Thanks for replying... we are currently seeing a family therapist through CAMHS. Based on his advice we are trying to implement a 'timetable' ( if you can call it that) where he does homework/revision after getting home from school, has dinner and then is free to go on his devices. This was given to him as an 'announcement' in a positive way explaining that by getting it out the way early on he can then go on his devices and we don't have to keep interrupting his 'fun' to call him for dinner, or to ask him to do his homework etc.

The problem we always have with this is that if we specify times, or an amount of time, than he sees it as set in stone. As an example 3 years ago when we were struggling with him getting ready for school (not because he didn't want to go) we made a list of the things he had to do i.e. wake up at 7, breakfast at 7:30, get dressed at 7:50, but since then he finds it hard to deviate from the times. So if we need to leave early and ask him to start getting dressed, he will not start to do so until 7:50.

It's difficult finding the balance. I have bought every revision book available, I've bought index cards for him to create flash cards. I've printed example past papers for him to work through so as to highlight any small topics which he needs to go over. He's always on Youtube watching various videos and I've even recommended he find some short sharp revision clips, but he's not open to it. I think all the time he thinks his friends might be on.

He's in the middle of his end of year tests at the moment, so I drew up a realistic schedule with the exams shown and which subject I want him to go over on a particular night, but getting him to do it is difficult. His Ipad is constantly on by his side.

I only have to ask him something once, and I am 'nagging'. The difficulty we have too is that if the wifi stayed on constantly, he would sit on his Ipad till really late. We would be asleep but then he would wake us when he gets ready as he cannot do it quietly and walks back and forth in the bathroom and on the landing before going to bed.

Thanks @nicw3... Through CAMHS we are currently seeing a Family Therapist who is helping in some ways, trying to get my son to express himself verbally in our Family sessions, rather than expressing himself through actions (throwing things etc). Like you on one occasion I called the police. I didn't really want to but all the people we had seen at CAMHS kept telling us that if things kept escalating i.e. damaging things to call the police. The police came quite quickly but I don't think it had any impact... he was just like a rabbit in headlights. Afterwards whenever he was being difficult he just kept saying "I suppose you are going to call them every time". My daughter gets frightened at times, although there are occasions when she can calm him down. It was difficult last year when she had her mock GCSE's and then her final exams as she was on 'edge' all the time in case it all 'kicked off' with him shouting etc. At times it was very difficult for her to revise. Next year she has her A levels at the same time as he has his GCSE's, but I may need to make arrangements for her to be somewhere else to revise at times as it's unfair when she is desperately trying to concentrate. I'm encouraging her to move away to Uni so that she can finally have some space to herself. Initially she said she didn't want to as she didn't want to have to leave with me to deal with it all, but I explained to her how it's important for her to enjoy herself and have some time for herself.

I can understand why you might be keen not to have your son glued to a screen all the time, especially when there are other important things you feel he should be doing, but his alone time in his room with his Ipad/xbox etc may be what gets him through coping the rest of the time. Especially as you say he seems fine at school; it is common that us people with ASD might be able to put all their energy into coping through a school or work day, but desperately need to decompress at the end of the day/at weekends. By taking that away by physically limiting his wifi access you might be just taking away his coping mechanism, so not surprising that meltdowns than ensue (please try and remember his reaction is not because he is trying to give you a hard time, but because he is having a hard time coping with your demands).

You say you want to get him out of the cycle of behaviour, but he's reacting to what you're doing, so of course if you keep doing the same things (that are obviously not having the desired effect), he's going to keep reacting the same way. You obviously need to find another way of doing things. Perhaps it might help to come up with some sort of routine (after your son has had some initial time to decompress immediately after school) that incorporates short revision periods (people don't really concentrate for more than 20-30 minutes at a time anyway) before being allowed back on his devices. If you don't already have them, get some of the revision guides for each subject because that will break the revision down into manageable chunks; it doesn't seem quite so difficult to be asked to specifically complete two pages of a revision guide than it is to say, revise an entire particular topic. It might help to print out any schedule and put it up where he can see it so he has a clear idea of what's expected (you could include specific time for him to write his blog post in this to encourage him to complete it at a reasonable time). Time based reminders are often helpful because autistic people aren't good at task switching and it gives them time to prepare for the next thing, but only if you can be non-confrontational about it; it might help to phrase it as a positive than a negative-so rather than 'in ten minutes you have to come off the computer', phrase it as 'in ten minutes I want you to start working on your revision'.

Hello

I can completely sympathise and understand your sheer desperation. I have a15 year old son whom is currently at home on a permanent exclusion from school because of a meltdown! I had a very long road too with a diagnosis the system completely failed and still is failing my son. I could go on about this but I won't. My advice to you is get help and support now. Don't let anyone put barriers up as to why you shouldn't and can't receive support for your son. It can feel like a battle to get the help and support he is entitled to but please do battle for him because you have to. Honestly I completely understand how you feel regarding the meltdowns. I have 2 other children at home and it is frightening. We have had to call police as we have been so frightened and this is an awful situation for any family let alone a family with a child who has additional needs.

All the very best of luck and I'm not sure if we are allowed to but if you ever wanted to email me you could as it could help you just having someone who knows what it is truly like to chat with.

Nic

Hi SC6ll and welcome.  

I'm not sure if you've already had a look at our website but there are some pages that might be of interest:

This one is for parents of recently diagnosed children: 

https://www.autism.org.uk/about/diagnosis/children/recently-diagnosed.aspx

You may like to have a look at the following link for more information on behaviour and strategies:

http://www.autism.org.uk/living-with-autism/understanding-behaviour.aspx

We also have a page on our website that centres around physically challenging behaviour, there may be elements that are useful to regarding your son and destroying clothes, it talks about possible causes as well as strategies and interventions that might be possible to improve behaviour: http://www.autism.org.uk/about/behaviour/challenging-behaviour.aspx

You may also like to contact Young Minds:

 https://youngminds.org.uk/

who are the UK's leading charity regarding children and young people's mental health and wellbeing.  They have a helpline offering confidential support to anyone concerned about the emotional problems or behaviour of a child or young person.  Their Helpline number is 0808 802 5544.

You may be interested in seeking some professional support regarding the behaviour. You can search for professionals in your area we are aware of on the Autism Services Directory: www.autism.org.uk/directory.aspx

 If you were looking for further information or if you have any more queries you may like to contact our Autism helpline team. You can call them on 0808 800 4104 (Monday to Thursday 10am to 4pm, Friday 9am to 3pm).Please note that the Helpline is experiencing a high volume of calls and it may take a couple of attempts before you get through to speak to an advisor.

I hope you find something that is helpful.

Kind regards,

Heather - Mod