Help! Son ignores me!

Thanks everyone for your messages!

I agree that society places too many unreasonable demands on people, which is especially difficult for those of us who are neurodiverse.

Good point about being interupted being distressing - he does react badly if I have to make him turn a device off to do something else. I should probably try to make sure he's not on devices as shower time approaches, for example.

Juniper - Love the Gallifrey reference - I'm a Whovian, too!

It might be to just do things with him until he asserts agency and pushes you away. Often, life is too much for everyone and we are simply too shattered from the day, end up giving our kids commands (do this, do that) rather than spending their life with them. It could be adjusting how you ask, instead of "please change your socks", you could wait until they're finished, ask, "will you come with me please? I'd like to change your socks". If they're exhausted, it can be best to just baby them - bring the socks down and make a game of it (My lord, please give us thy foot)!

Being tribal humans, born in the wild, modern civilisation can literally be too much. From sensory overload - unnatural lights, constant VOCs, unnatural fibres, cheap acoustics and so on, we're surrounded by things we were not designed for. Autistics can be far more in-tune with their natural being and sense a mismatch. From a lack of green spaces to a lack of dark skies. This isn't exactly progress. We all need to feel the ground under our feet far more often than we allow and in no other time in history has the demand we tolerate not just machinery and sensory assault but also mental and educational. The demands on children are beyond unreasonable. These lovely small future humans cannot cope and haven't had 40+ years to even attempt to deal with the change of natural light to unnatural (LED) and the change in sound levels. 

It's not just sensory but emotional overload. Anyone who feels like they are not being related-with, feeling unseen, unknown will not trust those giving the command. While obviously you know your child better than anyone else, it can be really important to turn all else off and just engage with him until he responds in such a way that says "I believe you can see me". 

Lastly, there is the issue of interruptions. The Autistic mind can flip into a flow-state and to be interrupted from this can feel like being hit from behind. It can be like waking a sleepwalker and incredibly disorienting. Hyper-focus and Flow is something gurus and yogis aim for later in life and here are kids who have a natural capacity for it. So in order to parent around this, it takes planning ahead. Give advance and reasonable set times to allow free-play uninterrupted. Sometimes a timed 10 and 5 minutes to come back down out of it. Extend the time well beyond what you would like. 

There are many things which can create overload from a lack of feeling connexion to inhumane sensory elements. But I found just mothering my kid until he asked me to stop worked best. I even helped clean or just cleaned his room until one day he realised it wasn't working for him and asked me to never do it again. Loads of early effort made the teenage years much easier. 

It will get better as he gets older..its probably because he can't speak many words or is having trouble with language..Google it as the aspbergers makes brain pathways with language dificult ie he is not being naughty etc....I would highly recommend and can not stress enough the importance of visual aids for him ie get a book and put literal photos or cartoon stickers of things you need him to do...take the time to address each issue and calmly explain in a non threatening way why he needs to wash etc.Most likely when he is older ie teens or maybe early twenty and get more conscious of his appearance he may be more inclined to wash etc..but he's a kid and most any2ay want to just play games etc..also aspbergers if you look up the word autism it stems from the word self in some way whatb'm trying to sat that for your son it will feel like he is in his own world separate unablento connect so anything you want him to do is of no importance or he can't connect to that..he will be able to donit if its purely what he wants or is interested in so you could try something like say for example if he is interested in trains get him a wash bag with trains on it and a toothbrush in the shape of a train ie you have to spark and engage his interests.