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)
Something else to consider a lot of autistic people really struggle to get work when they grow up. And a lot of the ones that do end up working in a field related to their obsessions. I was like that perpetually obsessed with science and now I am a research scientist. I mean our local Vicar had been a professional nuclear physicist and even he couldn’t stand talking with me. i’ve had periods of unemployment where I just couldn’t seem to find work and a large part of it is that I really stacked up my entire CV just to be good at scientific research. even if I wanted to shift career in another direction it would be very hard for me to do so.
so what I’m saying is there’s a very serious possibility that your son will grow up to be a pro skater. I know teenage boys are always saying they’re going to be professional footballers or skaters or rockstars or some other celebrity style profession. But if an autistic kid says it and they put in huge amounts of time into it you should take it seriously because it may be the best shot they have actually having a career when they grow up. Because the chances are they gonna get fantastically good at it and secondly they’re likely to end up being useless for anything else.
My son's issue is with the fact that we live in a country that's prodominantly a wet country and that the weather can't be controlled. I just don't know any more how else to try and explain to him that nobody is able to control the weather and it's just something that needs to be accepted (i know - his brain isn't wired the same as mine)
I trust hes aware that you can’t control the weather. Hes also aware in bigger cities it doesn’t matter because they have indoors facilities. Some kids are just city kids. They’ll never really take to the countryside no matter what. That not an autism thing per se. But being autistic will make him less flexible about it.
Yes, violent drug related crime is less common, but youth drug / alcohol use is often worse than in the city. Although if we're talking about Scotland, I believe the rates in Glasgow are fairly bad too.
The transition to high school, where there are often 1000s of students, that greatly increases the pool of people an autistic teen can find friends / social groups among. Also, the greater mobility of teens in cities means they can engage with all sorts of after school activities which are again opportunities to make friends. But in the countryside, none of this is possible. In the city did your son not have skater friends as into skating as him? In my experience skaters tend to hang together and often make friends that way? Or was he never allowed to mix with those kids?
If you write off your son’s social life as a teen as a lost cause ... well don't expect him to be understanding about it when he's older. I've seen kids, autistic kids who've been sheltered and over protected come to university and they go crazy. Booze, drugs, casual sex if they are conventionally attractive, and they can't handle it. By the 2nd year they are burned out and at risk of dropping out. And it's typically the ones who lived in the countryside or who had incredibly overprotective parents.
here is the safest place that he has lived, I knew exactly what I was getting into before I moved here as I had extensively researched the place and we already have experience living in the countryside. My son has never had ANY groups that he can be part of. He will struggle to fit in regardless of where he lives, and everywhere that he HAS lived has proven this. We lived in in England for five years before coming back home to Scotland where he was extensively bullied - this was before his autism diagnosis. He forgets that and struggles to understand this. Yes sure there have been a few issues with the local kids - with him being the new kid - which is - of course - normal, yes there have been mild issues with neighbours, but your gonna get that everywhere, there are addicts here, but they don't bother anyone - not like they do in the big cities.