he's sooo loud!

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Christ in this day and age of having so much knowledge about what makes people tick (though a lot we still dont fully understand) still having people being wilfully blind, putting their fingers in their ears and stating "im not listening" when it comes to their own children's potential problems frankly people like that dont deserve to be parents.. Sorry Grace if this comes off as harsh but the parents wont be living the lifetime with those anvil weight difficulties their child will so if they arent prepared to help their child and instead neglect them like that then someone else should take over..

So you know where im coming from i should state i wasnt diagnosed with Asperger's til i was out of high school but had various interventions from early childhood onwards but none of them helped perhaps cause im extremely insular and quiet by nature in social situations i wasnt deemed a priority to figure out plus i dont believe that Asperger's at least in australia was widely known or diagnosed but i may of just been missed im not sure, 80's through to late 90's im talking about here.. Sorry i derailed your problems with your stepson into a discussion bout my own issues LOL but yes have little tolerance for those parents that wont help their kids and put aside their own pride..

For the drawers, perhaps buy some sort of little piece of rubber and adhere it to where the wood meets when he closes the drawers.

For the loudness, realize that he most likely has NO clue. My 9 year old has almost no volume control as well. He speaks on one level, he has to concentrate very hard to get out a whisper and before the end of the sentence he is back to his normal volume, it is also very difficult for him to speak louder. If he is in the backseat of the car and the air is on it is easier for him to say "never mind" than to repeat himself louder. At times he gets wound up and the volume level goes up a little on its own, I just say "honey, you're a little loud." or "I need you a little calmer." and it'll help for about 5 minutes, maybe. Just remember, he has no clue that he is doing this so it just takes all the little reminders.

It's morning and I need you to be quiet. haha, yeah right. Try diversion. Bring up an one of his special interests that would take him out of the room and keep him busy for a little while.

With my, now ex, his theory was ignore it, it will go away. "There's nothing wrong with him." Then when he could no longer deny that he wasn't just like other kids his age he decided that he probably wasn't his. What the! He's a honeymoon baby, who else was I sleeping with on my honeymoon? Anyway!

My children have all actually stood on my feet or gotten right up in my face, as well. I just tell them, "You're a little close, could you please move back just a little bit?" and they move back and just continue speaking. You could try saying "You're a little close, actually, most people prefer that you are about x far away when you speak to them. They are more comfortable that way."

I cannot even begin to understand why parents wouldn't tell their children. My daughter is 6, and she has a great understanding of her differences. For us, the important thing wasn't keeping it a secret, but rather making sure she saw it as a difference rather than a disability. We explained to her that every person is different and that everybody's brains are really good at different things. Her brain is great at organizing, and doing puzzles, and working on computers, and she's great at math, and she is much smarter than most people at learning facts about things and memorizing. She also knows that her brain has trouble understanding other people, that sometimes people say things that are teasing or aren't exactly what they mean and she has trouble understanding those things, and that she has a lot more trouble with noises and touches and lights than some other people. We also explained that some other people's brains are really good at understanding other people, but that they have to work a lot harder at the things she does well.

Knowing that she has an "Aspergers brain" has helped her self esteem tremendously. Whether you tell the kid or not, they know that they feel uncomfortable socially, they know that other kids are shunning them, they can see that other kids are doing fine at times when there are loud noises that they want to hide from. The difference after we told her is, instead of picking her up from school and listening to her cry all the way home because the other children were so mean to her...now she can rationalize it, and there's a calm discussion about "some of the other humans in my class today were playing a game and they didn't want me to play. I think it was because it was loud in my class this morning and my Asperger brain was hurting from the noise and they haven't been taught about brain differences so they didn't understand me." Knowing about her "Asperger brain" has also helped her accept help....she looks forward to her "friendship group" (social skills group) where she goes 3 times a week at school because there are other children with similar brains and they can work together to understand the things that don't come naturally. If the chaos in the classroom is getting to be too much, she will go to her teacher and say she needs 10 minutes in a quiet place to work because she is starting to feel out of control. She is learning to monitor her own thoughts and feelings and to function in the world despite her differences because she understands the differences.

In my opinion, ignoring it is doing a great disservice to the child. I believe my job as a parent is to raise my child in a way that she is able to function at work when she's an adult, have some friendships, and have a loving and accepting attitude about herself and the other people in the world. Extra bonus if I do so well that she decides to use her understandings of differences to help others someday. If I left her blind to the Aspergers diagnosis, I would feel like I was the one that turned a difference into a disability by not giving her the tools and teaching she needs to capitalize on her strengths, and strengthen her weaknesses. I know that this diagnosis is hard for a lot of parents to accept...but as parents we need to put our children's needs above our own egos..and I really do believe that parents that choose to ignore it are putting themselves and their wishes for a "normal" child as a higher priority than the child that they have and that child's unique needs.

I apologize if I come off as being overly judgemental...seeing that there is a 13 year old boy suffering here and that his parents have known all these years and hidden these things from the child to "protect" him (or more likely protect themselves) makes me really upset. I truly empathize with your situation because you seem to really want to help your stepson, and your hands are fairly tied....you've been put in a tough spot where you have to confront your husband in order to do the right thing for his son. I wish you the best of luck and hope you find some of the support you need on this board.

No eeyore, you don't come off as judgmental. I don't know what to do anymore, I mean I am having a baby in 8 weeks and just getting too tired now to do anything!

The thing that is somewhat disturbing to me though, is that I've realized these kids with AS are much better off it seems (then he is). His social and academic problems seem so much worse. I don't think he could become friends with an aspie kid, I think they would think he was weird. Not like he's talking about astronomy, he's talking about a plug, like a different type of cord or something or he'll obsess over the 5 different ways you can get from point A to point B, all the different freeways you can take.

Whenever I go out, he'll say, which way are you going to go? In the beginning he would want us to sit down and he could write directions for me, I indulged him even though I have a GPS so I don't really need directions. After awhile I realized it was an obsession of his.

Yes, his parents should tell him because even at his new school, the other kids (who are all LD) think he's weird. Thing is, his parents have encouraged and indulged all his weird hobbies and listened to him talk about car keys with great interest that he doesn't even realize that people aren't interested in these things.

You said your daughter is good at puzzles, well he never had the hand-eye coordination. He can't build Legos. An MRI would probably be able to tell his parents what is going on a lot better but that will never happen. I mean I can pinpoint definite right-side brain dysfunction. He also is math disabled. He has visual-spacial problems. Sometimes I wonder if medication would help but it's a non-issue because you need to be really involved to reach that point and I know his parents wouldn't do it.

They always act like he's just a typical boy but when we go out, or to the pool, or the park, or anyplace where there are other kids, his behavior sticks out like a sore thumb. Other parents give him strange looks and he is also obsessed with shopping carts but will constantly bump into people with the cart. I avoid making extra trips with him because it is just too stressful. He'll talk about pushing the baby stroller, the thought is very exciting to him but there's no way I can allow that. He's pushed his 6 yr old stepsister in a stroller at Disneyland, and knocked her out accidentally and that was that.