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raky
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19 Jul 2017, 8:17 pm

I am very thankful to other fellow forum members for their past feedback to my posts and opportunity to share thoughts. My son who was reasonably high functioning but is having a lot of emotional rigidity and obsessions seems to reached¬¬ a point of no-return. Diagnosed as high functioning autistic with inattention and obsession at the age of 4 and now he is 20. Over past 6 years he has regressed and have given up a lot of things. First he lost interest in social activities, video games, travel etc. Since last 3 years he makes conscious effort about to NOT-LEARN anything. Recently had been saying I don’t know how to do simple things like wash hands or turn on light switch etc. To the best of our knowledge regression is not result of any biological change, but only his thought process. One negative belief leading to other wrong belief. We had been in regular consultation with Doctors (psychiatrists and neurologist), but mostly they indicate they are out of ideas. Although it may seem like depression but Doctors say it is not classic depression either. Last couple of years he had been on anti-depressant medications too. Mostly meds had been helpful to contain aggression but nothing more. Also we had been working with therapists since many years. Some say nothing can be done for such rigidity and some say it is his intentional bad behavior. But efforts to deal with so called bad behavior don’t bring results either. We are well aware of resources around but can not avail many due to lack of co-operation from our son.
The idea of this post is not to ask for any suggestion but a request to share experiences who have similar situations.



DW_a_mom
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21 Jul 2017, 3:36 am

I am so sorry to hear this. I am not in your situation but I've always known it could happen anytime to any of our kids. There are so many unknowns with ASD. One of those unknowns, however, is also that it could turn around again. I wish there was a way to know.


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traven
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21 Jul 2017, 7:09 am

some things are recognisable
although dd seemed to know what she wanted to do and things were going well, there was an underlying feeling she was somewhat stuck in her 14yo attitude
and everything went wrong at uni and shtf, reconciliation and forward, and again it blow up hard

under the attitude is a great anxiety and not understanding the simplest demands or how to get organised
i think, they want you to give all the steps to do (while the 14yo inside resists) in very precise details
because in their mind there's no way to know what to do, how to do it, how to start, what's wanted etc

a basiclevel-skill-training (adult-education) helped with that, she liked the firm rules of behaviour, the certainty of must-do-it-that-way,
any indeterminate demand will not give an outcome at all



traven
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21 Jul 2017, 7:34 am

some more ideas
google someting like; parenting a PDA adolescent, for other insights,
imo you don't need to have that (diagnosed) to find some usefull information, especially for the older teens !?
http://www.pdasociety.org.uk/forum#/dis ... my-teen/p1



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21 Jul 2017, 9:46 am

Maybe the meds aren't helping and are contributing some...

Some meds can certainly make you mentally sluggish and lethargic and make it hard to do simple things.


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BTDT
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21 Jul 2017, 10:09 am

Approaching the age of 18 is a difficult time for many of the higher functioning guys on the forum. Undoubtedly they have friends who are dating successfully at this time and starting promising jobs. Or going off to college. Coupled with the very black/white thinking typical of those on the spectrum, there is no "middle ground."



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21 Jul 2017, 10:15 am

Might be a good idea to focus on his transitioning from a teen to an adult...I mean if adults in my life continued treating me the same as when I was 14 for instance into my 20's I cant imagine having much motivation for life and might have became convinced I was mentally ret*d or something. Now I don't know you or your son so perhaps that is not the case, but it did occur to me that a lot of info about autistic people and dealing with them is more geared towards autistic children so that could certainly be an issue amoung some parents and autistic children that are reaching adulthood.
I don't have many other ideas as I am not sure what he has expressed if anything in regards to his current state of functioning and why he thinks it is.


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Chronos
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25 Jul 2017, 2:31 am

raky wrote:
I am very thankful to other fellow forum members for their past feedback to my posts and opportunity to share thoughts. My son who was reasonably high functioning but is having a lot of emotional rigidity and obsessions seems to reached¬¬ a point of no-return. Diagnosed as high functioning autistic with inattention and obsession at the age of 4 and now he is 20. Over past 6 years he has regressed and have given up a lot of things. First he lost interest in social activities, video games, travel etc. Since last 3 years he makes conscious effort about to NOT-LEARN anything. Recently had been saying I don’t know how to do simple things like wash hands or turn on light switch etc. To the best of our knowledge regression is not result of any biological change, but only his thought process. One negative belief leading to other wrong belief. We had been in regular consultation with Doctors (psychiatrists and neurologist), but mostly they indicate they are out of ideas. Although it may seem like depression but Doctors say it is not classic depression either. Last couple of years he had been on anti-depressant medications too. Mostly meds had been helpful to contain aggression but nothing more. Also we had been working with therapists since many years. Some say nothing can be done for such rigidity and some say it is his intentional bad behavior. But efforts to deal with so called bad behavior don’t bring results either. We are well aware of resources around but can not avail many due to lack of co-operation from our son.
The idea of this post is not to ask for any suggestion but a request to share experiences who have similar situations.


Has he had had a full medical workup? Thyroid panel? Testosterone and other hormone levels checked? Vitamin levels checked?



CharityGoodyGrace
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08 Sep 2017, 4:11 am

Have you tried Cognitive Behavioral Therapy? He can learn to help himself with his unhelpful thinking styles, from catastrophizing to all-or-nothing thinking to overgeneralization to others. Maybe he felt he couldn't do a certain thing and then just gave up on everything.