I am just so tired.....

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Every parent knows there is a push and a pull between when to help, when to push. There is no set answer on it; each parent has to figure out the one unique child from those lovely indistinct signals. Don't support enough, and the child gives up / checks out. Over support, and they don't learn something they could have. I don't think there is a parent here that is not aware of the fine line, and doing their best to make careful choices on it. Which is a good part of why we get so exhausted. It isn't just the wiping that exhausts us, but the whole mental process that goes along with it, of double checking our instincts to make sure the help is appropriate.

Perhaps then, you should not push so much that you burn yourself out...at least with respect to children with AS.

OK - While I wasn't asking for suggestions or ideas, and just wanted to vent - I am compelled to answer to a couple of points.......

Wiping of bottoms.... He doesn't care. I treated him as an NT kid for a long time and assumed he would eventually move past it. I was incorrect. He constantly stinks and will actually trail poo crumbles from failue to take care of this business. it is disgusting and I will no longer tolerate it in my home. It also causes his bottom to hurt if it is not clean.

My Ds' tantrums are big violent scary tantrums, once he gets going he hits and trashes stuff. He is 150#, there is no "making" him do anything and certainly you aren't bringing him anywhere. I have treated him as an NT kid up until just recently, giving consequences for this behavior. In the NT world, that should work. Well, with my DS it doesn't - that is actually what started us looking for a dx. The normal behavioral mod techniques that are effective for NT kids are not for him.

Part of what is making me so grumpy is that I am having to let go of these expectations. What happens for him is that he is just completely inflexible sometimes and can't or won't shake it. I believe that the anxiety around going somewhere he doesn't want to go, is more than he can handle. I don't have anyone who can readily stay with him when I need to go somewhere, so if I can't gethim to go - I don't go. I feel like I'm held hostage.

What is 150# ?
Are there characters that are not showing up correctly on my screen?

I forget how old your son is. Either a few years younger or a few years older than mine? Sorry, just not remembering.

The reason that matters is because there are certain ages where kids, even AS kids, take giant leaps in maturity. If you are heading into one of those, I can tell you that there is some light at the end of the tunnel, and that investing in his needs at this moment WILL pay off. I've always done with and for my son what it seemed he needed, and there were definitely periods that held me hostage. Long, long periods. Head down, keep on doing it, cross fingers it will improve.

I can't guarantee anything, but I can say that with my son, things DID improve. He has right now crossed to the other sides on some of the biggest, scariest hurdles we had with him, and that I lived terrified he wouldn't be able to cross. Will every AS child make that leap? Maybe not. But our kids do grow and mature, it's just a very long, slow, slog through mud, no idea when you are doing to actually get there, process. Can new issues crop up? Guaranteed, they will. But right now I'm breathing, and it feels soooo good.

I think you are doing the right things right now with your son. You are making the investments you have to make. We don't know what the pay off will be for making that investment, but we do know what happens if you don't. So ... head down, keep on doing it, cross fingers it will improve.

I wish I could say something different, but it's just the way it is, as far as I can tell.

150 pounds (# is the pound sign), and he'll be 11 in three weeks.

11, thanks.

One leap is often right at 11, as they move from elementary to middle school. Somehow they mature just enough to handle that difference. But, much of that leap is reserved for the increased expectations they now face in school, so you don't get to enjoy it at all. You see it, you're thankful, but you're still in the trenches.

My son's next leap was somewhere around the start of 8th grade. Still not sure where it came from. We were terrified at the start of school; he was unhappy with his schedule, X wasn't right, etc etc etc. But he's kept it all together. Shoot, we're got him pulled out of school next week to travel to my MIL's, and so he got all the homework for those days beforehand, due today, and while he gave me a gloomy disappointed look, he actually got it all done. Not a single tantrum. I am soooo proud of him (I told him that and he basically gave me this look that said, "humph, don't do it to me again!" lol!). Most likely, when he hits high school it will all get used up again in the flurry of increased expectations but, for now, it's good.

Hygiene, btw, has kind of turned into a joke in our house. My son actually has gotten fairly good over the past two years, but I'm still in the habit of yelling, "wash!" every time I hear a flush. I even do it to his friends ... well, seems that forgetting is a boy thing, because they just laugh and run back, too. We're still battling pieces of it, because my son will never care, but it's better, it's better.

Every kid times a bit differently, but this is a really important and scary age. If he can feel securely supported through the rapid increases in expectations, he will rise up to them. That sense of support is so important, though.

The majority of men don't wash after they use the restroom because the majority of men don't view their penis as an unclean thing.

To quote a question I once came across from one man...

"My question: why is it customary for males to wash their hands after urination? I never do, which shocks and disgusts some of my guy friends. I bathe daily and wear fresh underpants, so how does my penis get dirty? It's not like I dig a ditch with it. However, my hands might get dirty from daily activities. Is it not more sensible then to wash my hands before touching my clean penis? Is posturination hand washing a throwback to the bad old days, when sex was "dirty" and so, by extension, were sex organs? I'm serious about this. Please advise.

— Tom Sharpley, Los Angeles"

You may read the entire question, and the answer to it, here
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/rea ... -urination

Of course by his logic, women should never wash their hands because we touch nothing but the toilet paper. Of course his perceptions are incorrect and his logic is skewed.

Our generation knows about Aspergers and ASDs so we have information that our parents did not generally have. Because we have this information, we have the ability to break the cycle of mistreatment that has occurred in the past with respect to many people on the spectrum. I would venture to say that becasue we have the information that our children have certain conditions, we have an OBLIGATION to make different choices in how we parent these kids. I would not call this pandering.

I truly understand how you feel. As exhausted as I am, I am often glad I don't have a husband or boyfriend because unless they were perfectly supportive and active about helping out, I can only imagine how much more complicated and stressful it would be.

It is exhausting dealing with a special needs child. To be honest, when I do have a free evening because my son goes to grandmas or something and the baby is asleep, I sometimes just cry. It is not depression. It is just exhaustion, frustration, sometimes anger.

Having to change your parenting style is extremely hard. Parenting ASD is opposite of all my values and beliefs in regard to parenting. Doesn't help when the people around you don't understand and judge.

I wish I could tell you it gets better (did in our case), but sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. The 'take a hot bath' 'have a night out' 'do a date night' blah blah blah advice just doesn't work for most parents in this type of situation.

You guys do make me laugh!

Actually DS is great about washing his hands - it's his bottom that he doesn't want to deal with! I think there's a sensory issue, I'm not actually sure. "Bottom" line is for now, if I don't do it, it doesn't get done. He is getting better about a regular nightly cleaning schedule. I am hoping that will soon transition into him taking care of it.

I can completely relate. I think a lot of the kids of the parents on the forum are less severe, or have less severe anxiety/mood/rage issues, which is why you get the kind of responses you get (this is not to be comparative of ASD children or to be offensive to anyone on the board). I forget your child's age and dx, remind me?

EDIT: Just saw it, 11 years old and Aspergers. PS - I wiped my son's butt for the same reasons until the past year.

My first two boys were not diagnosed as children or adolescents; they were both challenging n their own ways to raise and I feel that it would have been helpful for my husband and myself as parents to have had the knowledge of ASD's in their earlier years,
Our 15 year old youngest boy was only diagnosed in Spring 2010, we didn't have a label to put on him that would give him an excuse for his behaviors before that time and we didn't pander to him, we just knew that what worked for our third NT son, didn't work for this one and hadn't worked for the first two either, this time we decided to ask for expert help.
Asking for help changed our lives. My 15 year old was diagnosed as PDD-NOS, I was also identified as AS and I realized that my oldest two sons were also AS.
It is not the knowledge of AS that makes the child demanding, it is the nature of AS that places the demands on a parents time and energy.

i totally get where you guys are coming from. i have two children on the spectrum. my 11yo daughter has AS and my 5yo has pdd-nos. i do have some difficulties with my daughter but over all she is very intelligent and wants to please me. she has tantrums and she is very loud, she yells alot and never stops talking. she also doesn't have any friends to play with and has a really hard time coping with new things, routine changes and moving from one activity to the next. she is strong though and has good grades so i'm sure she will be successful in whatever she choses to do in her life. with my 5yo things are difficult. he is not my birth child but it was obvious once he came to live here that something was different about him. it would have been nice if we had been warned about it but of course they somehow managed to let that slip their mind when we discussed him. i had to put him on medication because he is violent. it has helped a bit but he still hurts himself, but now he stops when it actually hurts. he often gives himself black eyes and bloody noses smashing his head/face on things when he's angry. he attacks my other two boy who are 4 and 2. he doesn't listen at all, ever. he destroys everything he touches. he makes #2 in his pants on purpose when he's mad at me and plays in it. he gets kicked out of school because they have labeled him a danger to himself and other. the teacher has recently told me she can't make him learn anything because he just cries all the time if he's not allowed to do whatever he wants so his teachers aid basically just babysits him while he's there and tried to keep him from being distructive. i can't ever go out anywhere because he is sure to have a tantrum out in public while everyone stares judgingly at me. i have no sitter that will take him, as he torments them while i am gone and they practically run away screaming as i walk in the door. i know what it's like to just be fed up with a kid. there doesn't seem to be anything i can do to help him. he also does not wipe himself and seems to like the way he stinks. i don't know why he is so angry all the time or why he cries about every little thing but he is making it impossible for any of us to lead a normal life. it's at the point where i feel guilty for exposing my other children to his behaviour on a daily basis and my heart aches because i can't take them to things like other kids or spend time doing things with them like i should be doing because my as son will always interfere. i feel like i am beating my head against the wall and wonder if the whole world would just be better if i sent him off to live in a group home. but how can i do that to him and make him worse? there is no answer. i'd love to get away from him for some releif. i don't get time to myself because he doesn't really sleep, like at all, ever. and on top of that my 4yo is starting to show symptoms of as and i'm terrified of what this will mean for us. i don't think i can do it with three of them, two is hard enough. anyways, sorry for venting on your vent thread. just saying, i can totally relate.

MissKrissie - you are welcome to vent on my venting thread! I'm sorry you feel the same way.

I actually got a break tonight. DS played with a friend and my older guy and I got to watch a movie together. (like a real grown up movie - no anamation at all!)

MissKrissie- I feel for you. When I read posts like yours, it makes me stop feeling sorry for myself that I was only able to have one child. I am amazed at how much many of you parents here are able to deal with. I find it overwhelming at times to take care of one child with autism, and my son is not even that severe. I am humbled when I read some of the stories here.