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Challenges of being Parent of Young adult with autism - any advice ??

Suzanne

Hi,

I have just joined this forum as I am a parent of an adult of 20 who received an autism diagnosis last year. I encouraged my son to seek a diagnosis because he has really struggled since leaving school to find his way. He has dropped out of two college courses, he doesn’t seem to be able to apply himself, and he has had two part time jobs which he has left after a few months because he found them too boring and difficult. I have tried to encourage him to find work but he is not interested. I know it sounds like a cliche but he spends most of his time in his room playing computer games. He stays up late and sleeps until around 1 if I don’t ask him to get up. We end up having a lot of arguments, he is very oppositional and demand avoidant. If I ask him to help with housework it usually ends in an argument and he is increasingly verbally abusive towards me, swearing and calling me a b**ch. he sees me as being overly critical of him, which I know has been a problem in the past, I didn’t know much about autism or even that he had the condition - since finding out , I have tried to learn and change how I deal with him but I do still get frustrated because his behaviour is very challenging. I feel that he sometimes uses  his diagnosis is a licence to avoid doing anything he doesn’t want to do. Last night he had a melt down after I asked him to wash his dishes, we had an escalating row which ended in me asking him to leave the house because of his abusive language and threatening behaviour. I am now regretting how I handled this situation but he was being very abusive towards me and I was at my wits end. He is now staying with a friend. Today I contacted him by text to say he could come home but I would like him to follow basic ground rules of helping more around the house and going to bed and getting up at a reasonable time. This resulted in another barrage of abuse from him, basically saying I don’t understand anything about his condition and am a terrible parent who has caused all of his problems. It’s really upsetting because I feel I’ve tried to help him but everything I do  is interpreted as me being controlling or meddling. 
Anyway, I wanted to reach out on this forum to see if there are any parents of adults with autism with similar experiences and how have you managed your situation. Thanks for any advice. 

Parents

  • As an adult who has autism One perspective I might offer is that when you feel trapped in life and you don’t have much control over your life, you tend to feel a lot of resentment towards everybody and you don’t feel much like helping anybody.

    I don’t know why your son dropped out of college. Maybe it was because he genuinely didn’t give a toss. That does sometimes happen. Young autistic people get told ‘oh you need to do a course’ and they just pick one based on their parents advice and their teachers expectations and what they did well on in there exams. And then they discover that they don’t really have any passion for it and really struggle to stick with it. Because they were doing it because it was what was expected of them and they couldn’t produce any better ideas about what to do with their future.

    however it’s also sometimes the case that an autistic person enters a course absolutely intending to try hard and do well, but because their autism isn’t recognised or isn’t well supported they simply can’t hack it. They don’t fail the course, the course fails them.

    if there was something your son was really passionate about, now that he has the diagnosis, it might be worth him thinking about having another try at education. Subject to the proviso that you go really hard on reasonable adjustments and support for his special educational needs when he gets there.

    I don’t know what he went to college to do in the first instance but it would be better for him to study something that appears to have very poor career prospects but that he loves than something that has good career prospects that he has no passion for because he probably won’t be able to apply himself to that.

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  • As an adult who has autism One perspective I might offer is that when you feel trapped in life and you don’t have much control over your life, you tend to feel a lot of resentment towards everybody and you don’t feel much like helping anybody.

    I don’t know why your son dropped out of college. Maybe it was because he genuinely didn’t give a toss. That does sometimes happen. Young autistic people get told ‘oh you need to do a course’ and they just pick one based on their parents advice and their teachers expectations and what they did well on in there exams. And then they discover that they don’t really have any passion for it and really struggle to stick with it. Because they were doing it because it was what was expected of them and they couldn’t produce any better ideas about what to do with their future.

    however it’s also sometimes the case that an autistic person enters a course absolutely intending to try hard and do well, but because their autism isn’t recognised or isn’t well supported they simply can’t hack it. They don’t fail the course, the course fails them.

    if there was something your son was really passionate about, now that he has the diagnosis, it might be worth him thinking about having another try at education. Subject to the proviso that you go really hard on reasonable adjustments and support for his special educational needs when he gets there.

    I don’t know what he went to college to do in the first instance but it would be better for him to study something that appears to have very poor career prospects but that he loves than something that has good career prospects that he has no passion for because he probably won’t be able to apply himself to that.

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