Discipline and boundaries

I am feeling terrible today following an evening at our friends' house where my 17 year old, very intelligent aspie son ate apple pie when everyone else was eating chili, talked loudly over the top of the conversation without seeming to know how to pick up cues at all, and later referred to their 12 year old daughter as a *** after she hurt his arm in a fight over a slinky toy.  He had earlier spent ages patiently and gently trying to teach her to play chess. 

At home afterwards, he said he was very stressed at the moment and couldn't help how he had behaved.  He has just started college to do A levels and is struggling with the change in working methods so that his self esteem has plummeted as he feels stupid.  Although he has made some friends, he is also subject, as usual, to a lot of teasing and winding up, so no wonder he feels stressed. 

I am wondering today whether I have taught him as much as I should have done about how to behave in social situations, and whether we have given him enough in the way of discipline and boundaries, as we have always tried to support him as a person making his individual way in the world.  My husband says we have done our best and that the problem is that our son cant see there is a problem with his grasp of social situations/rules, the way he behaves.

Is anyone else out there struggling with this dilemma -  support and reassurance/acceptance versus discipline and boundary setting when explanations slide like water off a duck's back?  He is a kind hearted person but doesn't  "get" where other people are coming from.

I would really appreciate any feedback.

  • Hi all

    My son is also a teenager (16) With AS and dyspraxia also very clever and just started college with all the problems that that all brings with teenage hormones kicking in.

    However he is recently diagnoised with AS so I feel guilty coz we have always been strict and worried too much about boundaries and his behaviour in social situations etc so I guess as parents whatever our approach to our kids we must be pre programmed to feel guilt!!

    So I think we should just try our best and trust its good enough!!

    Sam

    x

  • Thankyou all for your supportive and helpful comments.  I am finding it really helpful to keep reading them and thinking things through.

  • Hi Lucymac

     

    I have to agree with longman .. Teenagers, A levels and a change of routine are a deadly mix!  The fact that your son does know that his behaviour was inappropriate is really good and a good stepping stone.  My son was exactly the same (and can still be on some occasions) but it can just be a case of sensory overload.  Your son knows his behaviour was not what you had hoped it would be and that will in itself be making him feel bad. Give him time and space and he will find his way.  A NT teenager can be pretty awful at the best of times so an AS teenager is allowed to be as well.  Despite all the work you have done with helping him with social situations, you are never going to be able to deal with every single situation.  The fact that your son had spent time teaching chess to someone should be appaulded and you must be very proud of him for that.  

     

    I hope this helps

     

    Good luck

     

    Colinthecat

  • Hiya, I'm 17 and recently diagnosed with Aspergers. I currently attend 6th form at my former high school (year 13) as it was less of a change hence why I avoided college.

    I'm just wondering if your sons teachers know about his condition? Before I got diagnosed teachers saw fit to just give me tons of homework which I'd then panic over because in my mind I had to get it all done that night, or worse, not make the homewok specific enough. Now, they know to 'back off' in that respect and give me specialised one to one assignments once they're done addressing the rest of the class, whether its just explaining what to do in simpler terms or asking if I had any trouble understanding anything they talked about in lesson.

    Teasing and winding up a.k.a bullying is pretty much gauranteed I'm afraid. As a girl I can expect snide comments about my clothes or hairstyle (short hair, black hoodies and dragon t-shirts: comfy, practical, very me  ) from the 'normals' even though I have a few friends. But from what I've noticed with the boys in my year group is that they are:

    1) Loud

    2) Rude

    3) Are prone to physical gestures such as shoving and poking

    4) Most likely in groups of 3 or 4 who will all participate in cat calling/making fun of an individual.

    Most of the time this is all done in good humour but for people like me who struggle to understand the difference between a joke, sarcasm and a statement its easy to get offended.

    In terms of family, I have many younger cousins, and I find that once they reach a certain age (5+) I expect them to act how I would behave at the time so generally treat them as equals, and get extremely annoyed when they don't live up to these expectations. Take two people with a short attention span and add conflict over a wanted object= chaos. If the adults didn't have a rota in place for the computer I'd probably be getting in fights with them all all the time.

    Growing up, there's one phrase my parents always used on me.

    "How would you like it if .......?"

    By making me think of how I'd like being treated in the manner I treat others forces me to gain a rough idea of how others feel. Like my tone, if someone spoke loudly over me while I was trying to speak I wouldn't like, therefore, I should assume other people don't like it either.

    Also, in terms of food anything too 'extreme' would immediately send me running for the hills. I avoid chili like the plague, and at meals I usually have to make my own meal which teaches me some form of independance, because I don't like what everyone else eats.

    In general its always hard to pick up on how 'normals' act or to develop a desire to behave in the same way. 'Normals' often scare me because of their (in my opinion) misguided values of things like games or make up and money over their own family and most of the time come across as stupid because most of them hardly consider things beyond their next social activity.

    I found that by taking an observational approach it can make things seem more fun, e.g. pretending to be David Attenborough while watching a pack of females preen themselves in front of a mirror or a group of males wrestling to demonstrate their strength. Now, while I don't do any of that, simply knowing thats how others behave makes me more aware of how to approach them or mimic the essential behaviours as and when I need to.

    Hope things work out for you

  • Don't overload. I appreciate you feel concerned whether you have done enough to stipulate boundaries, but the combination of aspergers with teenage angst (and A Levels!) is an explosive mix. It might help to ask him to go through issues he feels you can help him unravel, but don't overcrowd, don't go two against one, and don't force issues. You could explain that the incidents were hurtful to those who experienced them but at the same time be supportive to his circumstances.