Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi all,
Looking for a wee bit of advice - if anyone else is in (or has been) in the same boat, or has had similar situations. My son is currently going through a skateboarding phase and is suddenly taking an interest in weather. He hates not being able to go out with his board as he sees the rain as an obstical to do this activity, he currently lives and breaths skateboarding. Although, I am all for encouraging him to be outdoors and getting exercise - however - living near the highlands (I'm near the Glens on the east coast) - the weather is not so great this time of the year. My boy won't stop having meltdowns as a result of not wanting to take his skateboard out in the rain and is struggling to understand that his board won't get ruined straight away - and that nobody can control the weather. He also seems to think that by constantly screaming at me about where he can go to skate that's sheltered and not flooded, and hitting me for good measure, will get me to know where he can go. I have tried countless times sitting down with him in a quiet and relaxed manner and talking to him gently about this, but this only seems to be aggrivating the situation and making him worse. It's so bad that my neighbour shouts out his window telling him to shut up and calls him derogetory names - knowing fine well he has autism and potentially other disabilities. I have tried to explain to him that he can have more than one interest and have tried exploring some examples with him. I am fully aware that it's not as straight forward as that for his brain to understand this.
Can anyone relate to this? How have you helped your autistic with things like this? (I will be bringing all this up to CAMHS when he eventually gets his appointment)
My son is 26 & dyslexic. Skateboarding became a way for him to make real friends. It's a great addiction! Healthy, promotes trying new things, great for proprioception and building confidence. The intensity of his *disappointment* is due to being autistic and just feeling everything to a great degree of impact. The day didn't match the vision he had emotionally prepared for. It's learning to prepare for the worst, hope for the best, and seize the moment when it arrives, which he'll need to work on.
When it rains, my son will practice tricks in his bedroom, watch skate videos, video what he's doing on the board and compare notes. When he was little, we cleared the living room so he could practice on the carpet. Life doesn't need the classic living room anyway, I'd much rather have a space to be creative in.
unfortunately it's skate outside or nothing for him - as he says - "skate or die" - he actually needs to be outside and actually on his board, I'm absolutley 1000 percent all for excersise however, he has issues with mother nature and despite being 13, he thinks that it doesn't need to rain and that it's a waist of time and nobody and nothing needs rain - not this much. He's insisting I move him to a city at the other side of the country so he can have an indoor skate park - but again he's not in a place where he can understand that we can't just move whenever he says so - he is also very naive to the fact that it's me that decides where we live, not him, Unfortunatley I can't take him to the skate park he wants as it takes 3 hours to get there by public transport. I've tried assuring him that we can look into things to help get something similar set up here - but this isn't good enough for him
Of course it is when you’re autistic and young the notion that adults get to decide things for children simply because they’re older it seems incredibly absurd and arbitrary. It’s like saying I get to be in charge because I have red hair. it’s a coincidence of birth from their point of view. Adults coincidentally happened to be born longer ago and therefore on that arbitrary basis get to be in charge of things.
you’ll get absolutely nowhere with him going for because I say so or because I’m the grown-up. You might get a better response by talking about the practical reasons why moving around the country just isn’t feasible.
I've tried all that and it still doesn't go in
You need to appreciate that, ‘it’s common sense,’ isn’t going to work with him. He may have the ‘common sense’ of a 5 year old but you’ll probably find his logic is quite developed. You’ll need to stop falling back on common sense in your arguments and start arguing from first principles. Be willing to go into details. Stop seeing the big picture. You’ve got to build him up to the big picture on top of lots of small details.
sitting having a reasonable conversations about practical reasons why moving around aint gonna work - he's got to be right all the time - he always needs to know better - although he's 13 - he's more like a 5 year old in his understanding of the world and how it works