HFA in Boy's Club

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^^Reason and logic is one of the best strategies to use.


Depending on where you live in the US, it is hard to get knowledgeable help. If everyone is describing the boy's behavior as manipulative and the therapist is not versed in ASD or just wants to make the adults happy, this is what you get. Given that the child is being raised by a great-grandmother, I would infer that this child has been through some trauma and/or that layers of family have and are continuing to fail him. That could be what the therapy is for, and the therapist is not a specialist in ASD.

To be honest, no one is doing him any favors by assuming the worst possible motivations for his actions. From what you describe above and from your second post on, it seems like you have a strange interest in trying to divorce his behavior from ASD or to deny he has it, when he has been diagnosed already by someone else.

If it is because you want to be harder on him because you are trying to get him to fit into your general behavioral strategies, because they are more comfortable for you, this is misguided. You can believe in the value of personal responsibility and the importance of character without denying the child's difficulties and trying to twist everything he does into something bad. In fact, I think the contrary would be true. If you attribute positive/neutral motivations to these things and actually see him for who he is, you will get better results.

As I understand it, the therapist was specifically involved for a few months in helping him develop more social skills. A big red flag for me was when she mentioned that if something happened to the Mom, she would want to adopt him. I don't think he has a regular therapist. The Mom (great-grandmother) expressed that I am the only male role model Hal has, which is something I do not try to be for any of the boys. (She may be manipulative herself...) That sort of thing in an organization can be a danger to vulnerable boys... Sure, some of them, and even their parents, may see me that way but it is a role I strongly believe I should not try to peruse. Like "Watch me, guys. This is how a MAN does it. Don't you want to be just-like-me?" - Disgusting!

The latest change in the DSM was to consolidate Asperger's with the umbrella category of autism, so if anything, here they have gone in the opposite direction. Based on the commentary for the changes, it seems like they feel there are too many variants and the combinations too numerous to make into profiles. There is a valid point in it, but the problem is that people now imagine stereotypical profiles anyway, and they are very limiting. When people think of autism, they basically think of two things: The kid melting down and banging his head against a wall, or a math genius with a very specific profile.

This has had a really bad impact here because, when you invariably have a kid who fits neither stereotype well, you have all sorts of people trying to say the kid is not autistic. Even professionals can be affected by these stereotypes. For example, when my son was little and we did the county 0-3 yr phone screen, they didn't think there was cause to think ASD b/c he was snuggly. Well, guess what, autistic people can be sensory seeking as well as sensory averse and you absolutely can be snuggly and have ASD. So this is the kind of ignorance that can lead to delayed diagnosis and all sorts of things. We got the diagnosis when he hit school age and we were lucky in that even though our county is very rural, the school district here actually did the ADOS and a professional diagnosis

Yikes, again. This therapist sounds very unprofessional. As far as the great-grandmother goes, she is probably overwhelmed and in the weeds. They typically don't place a young child with a great-grandmother unless no one else in the family is willing or stable enough to take care of a child. Do you know what is up with his actual parents?

^^ I also have a super snuggly autistic child. In fact I don't know anyone else who seeks out so much physical contact (with me that is, nobody else!)

I have had an extremely poor experience with assessment so far here. My daughter is high functioning, masks in social situations and is very intelligent. Given she was my first child each time something happened I kept pondering and then deciding it fell within a normal variant of NT behaviour. This was particularly the case as school and GP kept shooting down my feeling something was up. Since she turned 8 everything changed and I now have very little reservation that my daughter has autism. We are going down the private route for assessment and I imagine she might either be given the diagnosis HFA with demand avoidance or HFA-PDA. It will be interesting to see. The PDA aspect is strange. I was at a conference recently and there were many parents of children who had very strong PDA traits from birth. Boy, that sounded so tough. My daughter's demand avoidance is very related to stress. If she is given long periods without too many demands she is much better at functioning all round. Hopefully when we finally get to assessment we will get some more tools. How old is your son now?

So I should consider it natural and healthy for him to plot to make others uncomfortable by taking advantage of situations, as if it is something he cannot help like the color of his hair? Actually I do see a positive motivation. As I said, he is trying to get something good, but in the wrong way. (That is where we all go wrong...) The best way for us to deal with this is within the gang when possible. I am hopeful it will be possible again soon.

See, this autism thing keeps re-inventing itself. Every time it is understood a little more, everyone is supposed to jump on the latest bandwagon. I am just not buying into all of it in Hal's case. Everyone involved sees improvement with how we are doing things, treating him mostly as just another kid in a gang, including giving caring discipline when need be.

Thanks for taking the time to reply so clearly. This might sound really stupid but have you tried just levelling with him, one on one, and saying some thing are working really well but there are some where you feel a bit of brainstorming might help to improve the dynamic of the group? Have you asked him how he feels in the group? Simply saying something like: "oh that seemed really challenging for you, do you have any ideas of how we might approach it next time," might give you some vital clues, it might be that really small adjustments help.

With regard to role modelling. I think it is hard for you to not be a role model. You are a responsible authority figure who tries to bring out the best in the boys by being the best version of yourself with them. That can be done in a fairly neutral way. It doesn't mean you are trying to impress views or set ways upon the boys, it just means you represent a well functioning adult in their view that can be trusted.

No, I don't. For what we do at the Club, I don't see that it matters. Got to concentrate on what we do best and set strong, appropriate boundaries or we will be in the "weeds" too.

He's not my son, but a 10 yo in our boy's Club that I respect and admire in many ways. I think he could become independent.

See, this autism thing keeps re-inventing itself.

I know that feeling all too well. Autism is not particularly straightforward and it is probably one of the reasons that there is such lacking understanding of it. Autism presents so differently in different people, in different environments and depending upon outside support. And whilst you are right, it might be good for him to feel like just another kid in the gang, the reason you are here is that there are some stumbling blocks with just treating him as another kid in the gang, right? It might be that there are accommodations that help him that can be applied to the whole gang and that will benefit everyone. Does he have any special interests? Any particular fascinations?

Last edited by elsapelsa on 05 Jan 2018, 9:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

He's not my son, but a 10 yo in our boy's Club that I respect and admire in many ways. I think he could become independent. [/quote]

oh, sorry that bit was a reply to ASDMom about PDA, sorry for hogging your thread!

^ ^ ^ This, this, this, very this!

As a high functioning one, I got severily traumatized after others were constantly mistaking my social confusion for manipulating, ill will, intentional rudeness, heartlessness, selfishness, lying and whatever evil one could imagine. No one ever believed I was simply confused, as I was so intelligent and gifted, they couldn't imagine my inability to get "obvious" things and denied it.
I know, NTs believe body language more than anything else. This is how you can say "he really doesn't feel A, he really feels B". But with autism, body language is often screwed up, gives false information, or it is a performance learned after years of experimenting.

The dynamics of the group you described is fairly challenging for an autistic kid. Boys naturally form gangs but autistic ones don't naturally become part of the gangs. Autism is about lacking natural social intuition that makes boys form the gangs in the beginning. The unofficial rules among the children are much more confusing and hard to decipher than official rules imposed by adults.

You said, when you raised your expectations, he grew to them. But wasn't it a moment you pronounced your expectations, so he got the clear direction?

As I said, we avoid working one on one. When a gang is functioning we regularly talk together about how things can be improved. The boys intuitively understand the situations. I have seen them come up with seemingly unworkable solutions that worked perfectly, but only because it was []their[/i] solution. Because they had a group identity, they were able to take possession of both the problem and the solution. It is how the Wilderness Camps work. I think it is an excellent place for Hal - but gotta have that functioning gang.

Yes, I recognize I am a male role model whether I like it or not. The best way I can be one, is by not trying to be one. Instead, put my interest in the gangs of boys. I hope we are on the same page here.

Huh! I am thinking how different what I am saying is from what most Topics and Posts are about. Instead of dealing individually with kids having social challenges, it is about the society (gang) directly dealing with them as a group. Kinda like cutting out the middle man?

My son is 12. I scaffold the heck out of everything to take away the stress and that works really well. He has elements of PDA but not the full description. He is on the lower end of social abilities even for regular autism. The avoidance is relatively mild in that you can see the avoidance only for the really stressful requests. He complies very easily when he can do so without stress. Of course what is stressful to him does not always make sense to the regular world, so it has caused problems in that way.

Do the gang members discuss their personal expectations and challenges? If Hal is anything like me, he needs to be given clear, pronounced feedback after his actions. Can be from the group if you can make sure the group doesn't get cruel on him.

Here you are perfectly right

Rather than cutting out the middle man, it is working on the opposite side of the problem. Very valuable.