Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi, I am new to all of this, my son is 13 and for a while we have suspected some kind of autism but only in the last few months have we managed to get any help from the school. This help is coming in the form of formally having him diagnosed so currently I have no help or guidance in how to deal with his behaviour or help him.
The other issue I have is that my husband is seriously depressed right now, he lost his job before Christmas and cannot see a way out of his depression right now. He has asked for help (but I am not sure he will follow through with the counselling that he has been offered). He has never been able to deal with my son very well, and now it is even worse. The second my son says something hurtful or has a melt down my husband just either flies off the handle or goes off in to an even more depressed mood.
My son is struggling mentally, he has the feelings a lot of the time that his father hates him (due to some rather harsh exchanged of words on several occasions), my husband doesn't but has a very hard time trying to convince my son he doesn't. My son is also struggling tremendously with home schooling, he is really not coping well with the lack of structure to his day and cannot focus easily on his lessons. I work full time (from home currently) so am doing the best I can but it is getting harder and harder each day.
His format of day at the moment is that he has online lessons in the morning, then after lunch is allowed some time on the computer to play games. Following this treat time he should be settling down to do some more work. All was going OK until this week, the past 2 days he has come off his computer games and had a complete melt down, over very trivial things to the rest of us but his headphones not working correctly. A situation easily resolved, but he cannot see past the dark mist that comes over him of something is not working. In his eyes it has to be fixed and it has to be fixed now.
These meltdowns are not going down well with my husband who today had already spent the entire day upstairs sleeping, on both occasions he has walked out. Leaving me of course to try and calm the situation down and deal with my son's emotional frustration.
I am looking for some advise, although I have been dealing with his melt downs for years I am still struggling, there are times that I just cannot get him to see any reasoning. He will often be violent with these meltdowns and take his anger and frustration out on both myself and his older sister. Or if he is not violent towards us he believes the answer is to hit something he is frustrated with, so yesterday his tablet was hit against the sofa.
Now that I know it is autism I am looking for help from other people who know how an autisic meltdown occurs and their suggestions on how to deal with them. Also any advise you can give in relation to how to help his mental health and understanding his Dad's depression.
I am really struggling myself, it is so hard trying to be a home working, home schooling parent dealing with an autisic son and a husband who is clinically depressed and all I want to do is help them through it.
It's been a long time since I was a teen but I can relate to the melt downs.
Make sure he has a routine, make it as rigid as you can - do not deviate from it. Even try and ask him what order subjects he wants to do with home school and do them the same every time or on a rotation that he can follow.
Reduce sensory input, you can try dimming screens, keeping the house quiet (or allowing him to wear headphones), make sure his clothes are comfortable, if applicable ask the school to make sure he isn't looking at a huge screen of faces and colours during online classes.
Sort out your husband, I'm sorry but he's the adult in this situation and depression or no depression no child should be made to feel like his parents don't like him. Your husband needs to adjust his attitude or you're at risk of your child growing to resent both of you.