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OverwhelmedMommy
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20 Nov 2017, 10:41 am

What information did you find helpful when your child received an ASD diagnosis; for your child, yourself and spouse, and extended family members?

When did you tell your child the verbiage of their diagnosis?



Last edited by OverwhelmedMommy on 20 Nov 2017, 1:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

eikonabridge
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20 Nov 2017, 11:50 am

OverwhelmedMommy wrote:
His main issues are having two way conversations especially on topics that don't interest him, eye contact during conversations, and understanding social norms.
My husband and I recently met with his school's ARD committee to develop his IEP. We are currently satisfied with the level of support they are offering through the school, but we aren't getting much in the way of home support. We also need to discuss with our little man about why he will be leaving his kindergarten class twice a week for 30 minutes at a time to learn about life skills and social norms, but we're not sure how to go about it.

So, everything is OK with your child, but you are looking to create problems where there is none?

Please read this:

Lies about autism
http://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=356339

Quote:
1. How does one find resources to help with parenting an Aspie kiddo?

Well, the main thing is: use your hands instead of your mouth. Here are some handicraft ideas.

http://www.eikonabridge.com/handicrafts.pdf

Here is the picture my son drew recently about Captain Underpants (to the left). The babysitter drew the picture to the right. She actually worked out a whole comic book story together with my son. See, you draw pictures, and discuss ideas about the story line.

Image

You could also start to teach your son to code in the Python programming language. My son wrote his first computer program at age 5.



Quote:
2. When does one tell their child of his/her diagnosis?

At his 8th birthday would be good. Write a letter to your son. Here is a template. (I have suppressed paragraphs that involve personal details.) I took him to a train ride on his birthday, and we read the letter together on the train.

http://www.eikonabridge.com/Ivan_8th_birthday.pdf

Quote:
3. Where does one find a good local support group?

You don't want one that's out there. Whatever you find out there, is harmful to your son. You can start by forming your own local group. For instance, I have formed a local group of autistic children, and we have gone to take elevator rides a few times. With some families, we have build some elevator models with foam boards. (See page 11 inside handicrafts.pdf, link provided above.)

Quote:
It's been a long and rough road to get to this point. We're hoping that with early intervention our road can be a little less bumpy.

Why is it bumpy? Having autistic children should be fun. At least we've had loads of fun, and my children are happy and smiling everyday. In my opinion, autistic children are easier to raise than neurotypical children. Take my wife's word. She says that if she had a choice and have to do it all over again, she would still choose to raise autistic children. She is neurotypical, by the way.

Here are a few articles you should look at (in order of importance):

Yogurt Is Yummy, Because It Has Honey (Modulation, Part 2)
http://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=293342

Fun and Facts
http://www.eikonabridge.com/fun_and_facts.pdf

AMoRe: Autism, Modulation, Renormalization
http://www.eikonabridge.com/AMoRe.pdf

Tomatoes, color blindness, autism, schizophrenia, Down syndrome, and evolution
http://www.eikonabridge.com/Tomatoes.pdf

How to solve anxiety problems
http://www.eikonabridge.com/anxiety.pdf


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ASDMommyASDKid
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20 Nov 2017, 12:39 pm

Your school district is not using the most current terminology if they told you your son has Asperger's Syndrome. That term is not used for diagnosis since the last DSM came out awhile back. AS has been subsumed into the autism label and they have added a severity rating to indicate severity. Older texts will still use the term, and are not any less helpful, if they were helpful before the DSM change.

Ok, pedantics out of the way. it does not seem your son needs professional at home support, unless you have concerns you have not stated. Not sure if you provided that info just informationally, or b/c you thought he should have in-home support.

Reciprocity can be worked at best by playing on the floor with him, doing things he likes to do and talking with him. What are his interests? What are his favorite things to play? Don't worry if they are not typical -- it doesn't matter because the point is to engage him and have him welcome you into his world. He may be rigid about controlling the play at first,and use a lot of scripting, but hopefully after awhile he will be open to your suggestions and the play will become more even. To me, this is the best way to work on social reciprocity. Also, it helps to communicate how your child prefers it -- not just with the spoken world, if that is not their thing. Many kids on the spectrum have auditory processing issues. We would write notes often times, especially when our son was stressed because he is hyperlexic and he finds the written word soothing. We could not do stand-alone pictures because he had trouble interpreting those without actual writing.

Eye contact is much more controversial because it can truly be uncomfortable to the child. We never required it, but our son grew more comfortable with it over time, though he does not do it as often as neurotypicals, which is fine with us. The main reason it is stressed is so the kid "appears" more normal, and because looking at a person's face gives clues just as body language does that are helpful to be able to interpret. That said, me personally, I would not stress over it.

Tony Atwood is an excellent author on the subject and I would recommend him for sure. Some people have found Michelle Gracia Winner's Social Thinking program helpful as well as Carol Grey's info on social stories. (They both have websites) I always made fun little comics under the social stories when I wrote them to try to distract from the preachy tone, but eventually he figured them out for the propaganda they are and they stopped working. Social Thinking puts a lot of emphasis on making NTs feel at ease-- which I felt some discomfort with so, I always adapted those for our purposes. (And honestly he really was not going to be motivated by whether NT kids thought he was weird or not)

We never bothered with local support groups because I am not a social, group kind of person but I would assume Facebook and MeetUp would be places to start.

Informing the child about the diagnosis can be tricky. Most people will recommend you do it ASAP. We didn't because we have relatives who are unsupportive of anything of this nature and we did not want him blabbing it. In addition he didn't think he was unusual in any way b/c he was not paying much attention to little kids and how they behave to know. It seemed weird to tell him he had issues he would not have recognized as issues.

Mainly we just talked about how people are different when we talked about things he had non-typical issues with and tried not to get hung up on labels with him. We never hid it, in he sense that he knows we talk about autism --and I have tried to have conversations with him sense, but he really doesn't care which is fine. So many kids in his class had pulls for various things, it never made him curious why he was taking speech or occupational therapy in school.

With a kid who is more aware of social differences, and cares about them, you can bring it up if he talks about having issues with the other kids or at another point where it segues well. Always remember though for yourself and for him that kids with autism vary greatly, not just by severity and not to teach stereotypes. I would talk about ways it effects him and say there are ways it effects other autistic kids that are different. Also there are NT kids who may also have issues with socialization etc. That is basically how we do it, but we didn't mention the word autism when talking about it for awhile. Basically it is the same conversation -- people are different from each other and that is OK -- whether you use the label or not.



OverwhelmedMommy
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20 Nov 2017, 1:38 pm

eikonabridge "So, everything is OK with your child, but you are looking to create problems where there is none?"

No, I am not trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill. My son is often upset about having trouble making friends. If it didn't affect his happiness, I wouldn't really care about his quirkiness. We're all quirky in our own way.

I'm happy for you and your wife if you find nothing but joy with your children, but I don't have to love being hit by a son that is stronger than me when he is upset. I don't have to love being late all the time because he just can't stop drawing, building, etc. until it is perfect. I don't have to love watching other kids blow him off and call him weird and then watch his little heart break.

I love my special little guy more than anything on this earth. It makes me sad knowing that his life going to be more challenging for him than it already has to be.


ASDMommyASDKid.

To clarify, my son's school district just uses ASD in their terms. I myself am trying to learn all the terms as I am very new to this. Thank you for the input.

I more so wanted help for my husband and myself to figure out how to be better parents for our wonderful, loving, and challenging son. Where to go to learn the tools to help us all understand each other and be the best versions of yourselves.

We build a lot of Lego creations and read a ton of stories in my home. My little one loves robots and I have an unnatural fear of them. Ha! I'm overcoming my fears so that he and I can learn more about them together. I'll try note writing when his level of reading it up to the task. For now, we stick with tight bear hugs when he is feeling overwhelmed.

I don't much care about the eye contact issue. I myself find it uncomfortable at times. Though it is a helpful skill when interviewing for jobs later in life as it as seen as a trustworthy trait. My brother has trouble in interviews because of the lack of this skill.

Thank you for the suggested reading. I have heard of Carol Grey's social stories. I'll keep an eye out for the preachy tone. I have read a few articles by Tony Atwood and liked his work I have read.

I myself am not a social person either, but I thought it might be helpful to know a few people with kiddos similar personalities.

My husband and I were thinking of going with a similar more natural approach as you have described.

I really appreciate your insightful response.



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20 Nov 2017, 4:41 pm

OverwhelmedMommy wrote:

... I don't have to love being hit by a son that is stronger than me when he is upset. I don't have to love being late all the time because he just can't stop drawing, building, etc. until it is perfect. I don't have to love watching other kids blow him off and call him weird and then watch his little heart break.



Specific concerns are always helpful b/c all autistic kids are different.

From my experiences, the hitting comes from two things that unfortunately take time -- inability to communicate and inability at deal with strong emotions. I would like to give you instant fixes, but there isn't one. Not all autistic kids have these issues, but the ones that do, usually take awhile to learn these skills. It almost seems like at different points a developmental switch turns on and you get quick progress in something for awhile, until you reach the next developmental obstacle. Some things seem to help when there is readiness but the readiness has to be there.

Punishment/reward systems tend not to work real well when the issue is developmental because motivation is not the problem. That said, the non-negotiables are things having to do with safety -- whether it is his or someone elses and property damage. These are the things we have emphasized are things that we do not compromise about. It happens sometimes, still, but much more rarely --partially because of maturity and partially because of scaffolding.

Rigidity is a bigger driver for outbursts, and that is a thing worth working on. When my son was little we had weekly "Wacky Wednesday" (as in Dr. Seuss) where I would take a different route from school, or make a minor change to our itinerary (which he knew in advance was coming) to promote flexibility.

In terms of understanding emotions the best thing we have found is the movie Inside Out. He must have also has developmental readiness at the time the movie came out for it to have worked--but he finally started to grok how emotions work.

Warning: Sometimes as they understand emotions the intensity of reactions will increase versus decrease temporarily when they work this stuff out --so summer is often a good time to work on it if you want to avoid teachers having to deal with increased issues.

Also something like:http://www.do2learn.com/organizationtools/EmotionsColorWheel/ is helpful in helping a child visualize emotions.



Last edited by ASDMommyASDKid on 20 Nov 2017, 4:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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20 Nov 2017, 4:48 pm

OverwhelmedMommy wrote:
I'll try note writing when his level of reading it up to the task. For now, we stick with tight bear hugs when he is feeling overwhelmed.

I don't much care about the eye contact issue. I myself find it uncomfortable at times. Though it is a helpful skill when interviewing for jobs later in life as it as seen as a trustworthy trait. My brother has trouble in interviews because of the lack of this skill.


If note writing is not his thing, that is OK too. Snuggles are awesome! It really is about customization. Use whatever he recognizes as helpful and can respond to.

Yeah--the eye-contact thing is important for interviews and teachers like it too. :roll:

I had to constantly tell my son's first grade teacher to disregard the lack of it. Luckily with job interviews, there is time. When he gets older, if he continues to struggle with it, it can be explained from a pragmatic standpoint. Often autistic kids will work on something when they know it is needed for pragmatic reasons -- and at an older age he can communicate better as to why he has difficulty, and you can explain tricks like looking at a person's forehead instead.



eikonabridge
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21 Nov 2017, 2:39 am

OverwhelmedMommy wrote:
... but I don't have to love being hit by a son that is stronger than me when he is upset. I don't have to love being late all the time because he just can't stop drawing, building, etc. until it is perfect.

Oh boy. Transition is the simplest courtesy, and tantrum issues are trivial to handle. Instead of reading the article on "Fun and Facts," you choose to reply immediately. Need I remind you that your son is only 5 years old? It is legitimate for a child to be a child.

Autistic children are not neurotypical children. Or as I put it, you can't play a recorder the way you play a bugle.

I invite you to read the message by Tawaki in http://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=356435&start=8

"... The whole family would be treated like they had the plague if they had an Aspie. I'm not talking really low kids with helmets. If your kid walked on tip toes or stimmed, people would actively avoid your whole family. Like get up and leave the restaurant in the middle of dinner."

or a comment by Aspie1 as why he considers a shot of alcohol works out better than any therapy:
http://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=354400&start=24.

"... One shot of whiskey lifted me out of depression like a Valkyrie carrying off a fallen soldier's soul to the Valhalla. Way better than months of rehashing my feelings with some quack. I can't think of any therapy that can achieve it even today, let alone in 1996.
... In fact, if I could run America like a dictator, I'd make alcohol available by prescription to aspie children age 10 and older. While "sharing your feelings" is all well and good, sometimes an aspie child needs a fast jolt of happiness that only a shot of whiskey can deliver."


- - -

The thing is, our society invents a disease that is not even there. At the slightest sign of something different, we panic and administer the only thing we know: we apply the way how we deal with neurotypical children to deal with autistic children. The results are disasterous. After seeing the same thing for years and years, sometimes I just have to laugh. It's so comical. Tragicomical. But still funny.

"Punishment and reward" doesn't work on autistic children. Nor does behavioral correction or substitution. After all these 74 years since the formal discovery of autism, you'd think people would have waken up. But nope. They keep repeating the same mistakes, year after year, from one family to another.

Tantrums are the easiest thing to handle in autistic children. I've never failed once to remove bad/sad feelings from my children. Frankly, if I had left my children to other parents, my children would have turned out just as violent or depressed as any other autistic children out there. Take a look at the "Fun and Fact" article that I have included above, and compare it to what you have been doing in these 5 years of your son's life. See, I don't need to lecture my children on what to do or what not to do. I don't need to teach them any of the coping techniques, behavior substitution. None of that. I think it is preposterous that parents and teachers adopt the view that these children are defective and in need for lecturing on all those coping techniques and behavior substitution.

In adopting the view that the children are defective, we are perpetuating the stereotype that autistic people are like a plague that must be avoided. We are destroying the self-esteem of these children to the point that they find alcohol to be a better therapy than anything else. In short, you are not only not helping your son, you are contributing to the negative stereotype out there regarding autistic people.

These children are perfectly fine the way they are. Treat them as equal-rights human beings. They have a different way of growing up. There is a different way of approaching them without viewing them as defective. They are not defective. Our society is.

There is a reason why my children are always happy and smiling.


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21 Nov 2017, 11:22 am

It is definitely beneficial to scaffold. If you know your son is frequently late, try to start earlier and build in time for the delays. This is a very common thing. Transitioning is an issue for autistic kids and even very young NT kids and it is an issue that tends to be worse when transitioning from favored activity to non-favored activity. Even when you transition from a non-favored activity to something else, he may have a favored issue thought in his mind that it is hard to break away from.

Depending on how much notice he needs, you can give him verbal reminders at various intervals. So like maybe one at an hour, one at 30 minutes, one at 15 minutes, 1 at 10 min, one at 5 and then maybe one at 2 min and one at 1 minute. (This would need to be customized) My son is ok with timer noises, and actually likes them, so he will even set timers for himself at this point and he doesn't need the same amount of notice or number anymore. They adapt and improve with time, usually.


For things that are the same time every day or every week, you can set up visual schedules for him as well. He may already have one at school, and you can mimic that if you want. He is used to their format, and that may help. If they don't have one, you can Google it, but basically it is a schedule made with things that look like little pictures (PECS cards) I had them add captions also b/c my son is hyperlexic and that made it better for him, but YMMV. Add whatever you think he will like and understand better, if you need to.

Honestly, scaffolding is going to be necessary for anything that causes too much stress. I found that in the early years it was best to scaffold anything I could predict in advance would be an issue. Life provided enough surprises and challenges for him to grow on and be challenged by, so anything I could prevent I did. You can always carefully, and gradually, unscaffold something later as a test when you detect readiness.



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21 Nov 2017, 7:17 pm

I second Tony Attwood. His books should be a must read. I also like Temple Grandin. Her books like 'Different....not less' are really good. And I hope you wont be offended, but reading about how you and your brother are not great at eye contact makes me wonder if maybe your son has inherited autism. It's not uncommon. You sound like you have achieved a lot. Medical scientist in a lab sounds really interesting. Have faith. You are obviously an intelligent, capable person. You love your son. My advice is not to wait for services, become your sons service provider. Read good books like Attwood and Grandin and go from there. You know your son better than anyone else. Trust that and remember, he's only 5. 5 year old's are challenging whether they are on the spectrum or not. Being a parent is hard but the rewards are immense. Don't let a fear of failure stop you from enjoying the experience. :heart:


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22 Nov 2017, 3:35 am

bunnyb wrote:
I second Tony Attwood. His books should be a must read.

No offense, but Tony Attwood still doesn't have a coherent view on autism. He is still on the traditional approach of trial and error. So you need tons of recipes to deal with all issues of autism. Some of them frankly are band-aids. For instance, in his explanation of how to deal with anxiety:

He totally missed the mark.

Autism is one single issue. Everything about autism comes from unmitigated auto-feedback due to an overly connected brain. The autistic brain is a powerful brain. It's a better brain in many ways. But in order for it to develop properly, you need to rely on the modulation process. You peg the negative to the positive, the unknown to the known. That's about it all. No mystery. I have one and only one tool to deal with ALL issues of autism, which is modulation. Modulation is what allows the information entropy to be built up inside our brains. It's all quite simply summarized in the Taijitu Yin-Yang symbol:

Image

The best way of handling anxiety is to solve it (for each specific issue), for good. For that, you only need a digital voice recorder. It beats all those other band-aid solutions. See, no matter whether it's tantrums, transition, anxiety, stimming, eye-focus, eye-contact, hyperactivity, sensory/rigidity issues, or skill development (anywhere from talking, reading, writing, typing, math, etc. etc.) you name it, I have used one and only one tool. Autism is truly trivial. It's a 5 minute issue. People make too much a big deal out of it.

https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/where.htm
"When word of a crisis breaks out in Washington, it's no accident that the first question that comes to everyone's lips is: 'Where's the nearest carrier?'"
President Bill Clinton
March 12, 1993
aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt


The same applies to autism issues. When you want to handle any issue in autism, the only question you need to ask is: "Where's the nearest carrier?" Yeap, once you figure out the nearest carrier signal, everything is solved. That's what modulation is all about.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.


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22 Nov 2017, 6:35 am

I get Attwood doesn't get a whole bunch of love on this forum. He isn't perfect.

Out of all the books written about Autism, giving a NT a liitle insight of what the person with Autism deals with, Attwood's is the best of a mediocre lot.

Had it not been for Attwood's book, I would have divorced my husband.

Local support groups can cut down the leg work finding information. Which local doctors/dentists are ASD friendly? Many don't want to work with a kid that takes x3 longer to exam. Education issues are state/local/county specific in the US. A local support group can tell you yes, that principal is an asshat and you need to lawyer up. This district has better services.

My area has two decent size support groups that sponsor movie nights that take into account people who "have sensory issues". The house lights aren't turned off. The bass is cut down on the sound. Kids can get out of their seats and move around. They run a spectrum friendly Minecraft night. A support group doesn't have to be a b***h and moan session.

In my area, most groups do MeetUp, with Facebook a far behind second.



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22 Nov 2017, 6:56 am

Tawaki wrote:

Local support groups can cut down the leg work finding information. Which local doctors/dentists are ASD friendly? Many don't want to work with a kid that takes x3 longer to exam. Education issues are state/local/county specific in the US. A local support group can tell you yes, that principal is an asshat and you need to lawyer up. This district has better services.

My area has two decent size support groups that sponsor movie nights that take into account people who "have sensory issues". The house lights aren't turned off. The bass is cut down on the sound. Kids can get out of their seats and move around. They run a spectrum friendly Minecraft night. A support group doesn't have to be a b***h and moan session.

In my area, most groups do MeetUp, with Facebook a far behind second.


That is a good point. I guess I just honestly have an aversion to it (and a dislike of the local fauna) but that is good advice.



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22 Nov 2017, 10:26 pm

Tawaki wrote:
Out of all the books written about Autism, giving a NT a liitle insight of what the person with Autism deals with, Attwood's is the best of a mediocre lot.

He does offer some good advices. I would think he is a good person to talk to, for teenager dilemmas and relationships in general. I usually don't touch those topics, as my focus has always been on making sure children are able to get jobs and become independent, in this cut-throat robotic era. To me, relationships are pretty much meaningless when one cannot feed oneself. I think the new generation agrees with me on this, as a recent study has shown teenagers are postponing driving, drinking, dating, etc. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/neither-drinking-nor-driving-more-teens-are-putting-off-traditional-markers-of-adulthood/2017/09/18/b46027a0-93f1-11e7-8754-d478688d23b4_story.html

Quote:
Local support groups can cut down the leg work finding information. Which local doctors/dentists are ASD friendly? Many don't want to work with a kid that takes x3 longer to exam. Education issues are state/local/county specific in the US. A local support group can tell you yes, that principal is an asshat and you need to lawyer up. This district has better services.

It's true. We do benefit from some local-group informed activities. For instance, my children are attending some art and music classes run by a non-profit organization. However, one has to take into account that my children are far more advanced than other children on the spectrum. Those activities certainly have contributed to my daughter's own interest at home to figure out YouTube music tunes on the electronic piano keyboard, or my son's using color lately in his drawings. However, what I don't see other parents doing is communicating visual-manually to their children. That should be the primary activity. Yet all to many parents load up the schedule of their children with too many fun activities, and the end result is their children don't have a chance to develop. These local groups are also big into fringe therapies and diet/supplement discussions. None of those things actually help their children to develop. Some parents are even stuck with the discredited vaccine theory. What can you do?

I only can control what happens with my children. I am so grateful to all the help that I have received. As an example, here is what my son's babysitter has done in her last three visits. She has made three multi-page "comic books" of Captain Underpants. She has incorporated elements of my son's life and interests. She would do some initial pages, and let me son continue the story. In the whole process, they'd talk and make up story lines together, take turn in drawing and writing. It's a lot of fun, given that my son's main interest nowadays is reading the Captain Underpants series. See, when my son was into elevators, she would play with him on the elevator theme. Same with laundry machines. When my son was interested in cashier's register machine, they would play with checkout stands and price lists of fast-food items. I mean, it was always centered around my son's interests. We've also had some good teachers. Some of them would work very closely with me. It takes a village to raise a child. And I am so grateful to everyone that has chosen to work with us... I thank them all on this day of Thanksgiving. See, the same people that have worked with us are also now working with other children. So there are people that are now understanding how to approach autistic children. Slowly but surely, our world is changing for better.

Home is the most important part of raising autistic children. It's not about play dates, socializing or fun activities out there. It's all about communicating with your children through the visual-manual channel and developing their brains, non-stop, right here, at home.

Happy Thanksgiving. There is much to thank in life.

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23 Nov 2017, 12:08 pm

ASDMommyASDKid wrote:
Punishment/reward systems tend not to work real well when the issue is developmental because motivation is not the problem. That said, the non-negotiables are things having to do with safety -- whether it is his or someone elses and property damage. These are the things we have emphasized are things that we do not compromise about. It happens sometimes, still, but much more rarely --partially because of maturity and partially because of scaffolding.
I agree, and I speak from experience. Punishment/reward systems can also backfire. When I was growing up, my parents were extreme perfectionists. Which meant I was getting in trouble at home constantly, oftentimes when I least expected it. All that caused me to think that my parents enjoyed punishing me. So, in an effort to appease them, I sometimes misbehaved on purpose, to give them an opportunity to do some punishing. Plus, as an added bonus, by "volunteering" to let them punish me when I was ready for it, I figured I had lesser odds of getting punished unexpectedly. Wow! That's pretty far-out, especially for an aspie child.

Sweetleaf wrote:
Ok well if he is getting all kinds of assistance and therapy and such, yet you keep the diagnoses from him, he is going to be confused about it and even angry. He needs to understand he could need help with things for this to be effective. Otherwise he'll just wonder why he gets all this treatment and therapy sessions when other kids his age don't go through that. So he gets all kinds of special help but doesn't even know he has a diagnoses of anything, that would freak any kid out. It would probably help him to know....
I think that's exactly what happened with my therapy stints. I was, pretty much, told to "sit and talk" with someone who seemed like a blithering idiot, at least when it came to understanding me. She'd grill me about my feelings, accuse me of lying when I answered her, and tried to make me cry, all in an effort to "get me in touch with my feelings". To add insult to the injury, I had to put on a happy face when my parents picked me afterwards, so they wouldn't ask questions. In the end, the therapy degraded into a battle of wits. She'd do what I described, while I either lied to her face, only to have her believe me, or fabricated problems that didn't exist, and watched her fall over herself to help me with them. I gotta give myself credit: a mental fight between an aspie child and a shrink is one hell of a challenge.