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Step Son

NAS84047

I met my now husband 6 years ago. We have a blended family (I have 3 kids - 2 are older and my son is 8).

My husband has 2 kids, oldest son has ASD and is non verbal, he also has a 15 year old daughter.

My step son is nearing the end of school and we have been advised by our local authorities that there is very little to no facilities for him come the end of term. The only option would be for my step son to ‘employ’ a carer.

At present, the care is shared between my husband and I and his biological mum. 2 weeks here and 2 weeks with his mum - this has been the arrangement long before I was present. Sadly, none of our respective family members are capable of any kind of care (the odd hour here and there while he is in his room is the limit for them).

My husband has a full time job and I work also. His mum is his registered carer so doesn’t work, but she’s not physically able to look after him any more than she does as she is alone.

I am really concerned about what care plan is going to be provided for my step son. He is extremely strong and both his mum and myself have been head-butted, kicked and punched (he is far bigger than both of us). My husband has little sympathy for us when he lashes out and has on occasion blamed me for ‘trying too hard’ with him and blamed his mum for being too lazy with him. She doesn’t take him out other than to school.

The situation has gone from bad to worse over the years and it’s becoming extremely frustrating for me and the other kids - to my husband, I think he feels as if I want his son out of our lives, which is not the case at all! I love him like my own, but he’s now an adult and his life has become being locked in a room with no real future plans. Come the summer, he will have no routine and I’m worried what it will mean for the rest of the family too.

I’ve come on here to ask for some support. Any advice would be welcomed 

  • in reply to JuniperFromGallifrey

    Yes, a strong sense of connection. That's why I ended up back in my home village. I wasn't cut for urban life. No matter how often I tried to be 'Geezer'. 

  • From what I'm reading, your husband appears to have some kind of understanding of his son and this young mans frustrations. I'm a little unclear as to how the father is helping give him a purpose? 

    When he lashes out or locks himself away, these are usually responses like survival mechanisms or responses to unnecessary frustrations. When the response is toward someone in particular, for autistic kids, it can be from a recurring sense of being misunderstood, being demanded to switch tasks too abruptly or continual interruptions, it can be from being misjudged, which can happen daily. Autistic individuals don't have the same motives as their non-autistic peers. There's several reasons for this, including misunderstanding social cues and misinterpreting them. Often, when young we might attempt to mirror back a movement or gesture or word but without all the nuance and detail, so it comes across like bad acting when we're doing our best to try an 'fit in'. Everyone wants to feel accepted for who they are. Everyone wants to be afforded dignity and respect. For autistic individuals it might mean giving us more time alone or allowing us to finish a project in detail, to completion - many times before it's due.

    Everyone wants to feel a purpose and reach their potential. What is his? Males in particular tend to thrive when they feel connected to something which makes them useful and worthwhile. When they feel overlooked and misrepresented and have yet to find what they're skilled at, they can feel a deep sense of despair or failure which cycles into depression. 

    If you can help us understand what is happening in the exchange with you when he responds back by 'lashing out', it may shed light on a loss of translation or mismatch of understanding. 

    What makes us autistic can be that we are really impacted - deeply. By sensory input including emotion. And then we may have trouble with language, compounding the emotion. And we might also have problems identifying all the emotions - it's never just happy or sad, but incredibly complex - it is an everything-all-at-once we can be impacted by, so when there's an inability to relate and also sensory overload (many homes are not suitable for autistic kids) add a feeling of unknown expectations, growing into adulthood and not maturing as fast as ones peers, all of this can really weigh on a young man. It can be crushing. So it can be even more important to begin to find purpose, learn ethics for building the internal-integrated self, and doing this one thing at a time.