Desperate advice needed

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We caught him lighting matches outside of his window. He stole a check out of his dad's checkbook and cashed it. The money was for a prostitute. We caught him crawling on his stomach to try and take the phone from our room (his only contacts are people from myspace and facebook but we don't let him on the computer because of it-none are local people.) These incidents have all happened after we have had a meetings about school. His school wants to ship him off to an alternative school. The school where some of his former bullies were sent. He turns 18 in about 10 days and I know that is very stressful to him. He has been told a million times that when he is 18, he will get arrested for his behavior. His dad has threatened to throw him out when he is 18. He seems to have a compulsion or an anxiety that he just gets blinded with and then gets in major trouble. The things he has stolen in the past (up until the prostitute) have all had to do with cell phones or computers. For years..... His psychiatrist said that his expertise is ADHD and he feels like he can't help us. His therapist feels that he needs to feel the real consequences (i.e. alternative school or arrest). I have a call into the psychologist but we had the effects of Hurricane Ike and most of the city is still without power. A friend said she talked to her school psychologist and they wonder if he is sociopathic. The traits fit but for the most part he is a very sweet kid. He helps people in need and is wonderful with older adults and young kids. I just don't know why all of these behaviors seem to be coming to a peak. I am worried sick about what he will do next. At the IEP meeting on Friday, the school psychologist read over the Asperger's report and discussed the issues and said it was very much Asperger's. My husband quit his part time job and is now with my son full time for 4 days out of the week. I am there with him one day solid of the week. We are trying to just give him love and support to see if that helps. I am also trying to get him into the Star Autism program. After I read the definition of a sociopath, I thought I would throw up. Where is my child?

Is his father his real biological father?
if not send him too his fathers for a while.

We are his biological parents. My brother is exactly like him which makes me scared it is more than Asperger's. My brother just didn't get into this type of trouble because there was no internet and the opportunities that kids have today. My son even called a phone service he saw on television to try and find a friend and it cost $49.99 a call. I can only imagine what those people said to him.

I am so glad you both are doing this. I honestly think your son is in a panic, and what he needs most is guidance. Well supervised guidance, until he has figured things out on his own. He most likely is not a sociopath, but there are things he probably needs to relearn, and that will take time. He cannot do it on his own, or without supervision.

Your child is in there. I am glad you are taking the time to try to find him. I do wish you the best of luck, I know it has to be very, very difficult.

Your brother also grew up very frustrated in a time when no one understood Aspergers. It is impossible to know what might have been different if he had not encountered the difficulties he did as a child. It is very scary what goes on in the minds of adult AS who never felt they got a break from anyone, anywhere, all the while knowing that their brains were alive with brilliant ideas. When you read their posts elsewhere on this forum, it is very dark, very scary. But I firmly, FIRMLY, do not believe it has to be that way. It will NOT be that way for my child, and I am secure in that already. How much comes from society and how much comes from other conditions an individual may have been born with won't be known until some of our younger ones, that are growing up with much better understanding, have passed into adulthood. I cannot promise that your efforts now will make a difference, but of course you have to try. You have to believe that you can make a difference, teach him to trust, and that this will need the end to steal, etc.

If it doesn't, separately treat that addiction. Which it may have become by now: an addiction to stealing. Hopefully not, but be ready for that possibility.

This is kind of off on a tangent here, but have you considered military school? A boarding one? I've seen stranger things work.

Sometimes it's the regimentation, the discipline, becoming part of a unit (something "bigger" than one's self in which one can find pride and meaning) that makes a tremendous amount of change possible. Being away from triggers, parents and loved ones (who may feed things without even knowing it's happening), familiar surroundings -

just a thought.

My brother was a total screw-up until he joined the Army. Made a career of it, retired with a pension. Of course, there was no "real" war going on at the time, so you have to factor that in.

This is very tough...Many who have responded seem to have missed your point that he is almost an adult and has been stealing since he was small. Has he ever had to face the consequenses of his thefts? Has he been made to return items and offer apologies? Has he ever been caught by his victim? If so, how did he respond? I am not thinking behavior problem at all. I have heard of people who are compulsive about stealing. I agree some therapy is in order before he gets himself into really big trouble. Even though he is not eighteen, he is still old enough for a charge to go on his permanent record and be tried as an adult.

Let me tell you a story about "tough love". Unlike the person who told someone else's story, i'll tell my own. I was always "bright", "sweet", gentle at heart. I genuinely cared about people because I didnt know any better, I still do for the most part. Much like your son, I stole and lied, but the reason shouldn't be shocking.

My mother worked 12 hour days sometimes as an er and icu nurse. When she got home, she was tired. My father, up until his death when I was 9, worked his ass off owning a limosine business. On saturdays I was woken up to help with the "family business" a.k.a. clean the damn limos(making sure that the white walls we're white or Id have to do it again). I dont want to come off as a kid who hated his father, or his mother. I showed them the love I could, the love I understood.

I learned how to help out by the age of 6 with answering phones and getting ahold of my father's drivers. My brother and I could cook our own meals by 7. Mind you, I grew up in the early 90's, where no one let thier kids cook for themselves it seemed at that age.

The problem started when I actually gained a little perception. I realized I was a puppet, being forced to do things other kids weren't. I didnt much appreciate being used as a slave(as many parents do). I also realized my mother was far too guided by some book full of non-sense. I was never god fearing, only bored by him. I hated the fact that I couldnt be myself and enjoy my childhood. It didnt help being told all that bs like "you can be anything you want when you grow up".

But I had no way of explaining these thoughts at that time. I couldnt express myself with words well, I'd use the wrong ones in pressure conversations. I stole because I was told I couldnt have something I wanted.

IF YOU DONT READ ANYTHING OTHER THAN THIS LINE, READ THIS. You cant stop an aspie's obsessions! You cant choose them, and you cant control them. They are what essentially make us who we are. The best you could have done for your son was encourage him towards a career in his obsession. Instead, you most likely tried to deter him from them somehow(even unknowingly) which caused his "defiance".

Fact of the matter is, He's in there. He's just drowning in the sorrow you never cared to understand. You never PROVED to him you wanted to help, you just sent him to some stranger and expected him to open up. How f*****g stupid is that? Would you tell a stranger your thoughts? Especially at the scope of perception Aspies see through at these ages?

And by the age of 18, You've been told your whole life you dont belong and you shouldnt exist and how people wish you were dead. After enough of this s**t, you just stop caring about what happens to you, you just hope sooner or later you'll get in enough trouble to get the help you need...

Sad story and it sucks that its mine, but someone needs to tell you the truth, even if you dont like it.

DIAGNOSIS: Your son is suffering from a LACK OF LOVE, UNDERSTANDING, and most importantly ACCEPTANCE!! !! !

Ok, granted that I'm almost to retirement age and have a rather different perspective on life: I don't buy most of that last post at all. The fact that the poster has never quite grasped that he wasn't "a slave" but was expected to help out in the support of his family, which was obviously struggling to make it financially, as a member of his family does stand out. Son, you were expected to contribute so you could eat and have a roof over your head. I think it was great your parents had you doing something to contribute, rather than sitting back like some caged bird waiting to be fed and watered and knowing nothing about what's involved in earning a living and surviving financially on a day-to-day basis. They've done you a hell of a favor, though you don't realize it yet.

Those caged birds are going to be tossed to the winds when they turn 18 or 21 and they'll have to figure it out after having spent a lifetime being cosseted - and it'll be that much harder for them to survive. Though most seem to survive, quite a lot have a terrible time adjusting to the world "out there." Some try and get shot down (ending up drunks, druggies, or homeless), or are so afraid to try to fly that they never leave home, emotional cripples. Worst case, they can't handle it and remove themselves from this existence. And it'll all be blamed on "their condition" that they're "Aspies" - when that need never have been the case at all. You, on the other hand, already have a head-start on the primary daily skills that no school or therapy teaches. Hopefully you'll realize that in 10 or 15 years. Perhaps someday you'll even thank the people who've put up with your moods, tantrums, and fed/clothed/housed you as you grew. To paraphrase my grandmother here: "The world owes you nothing, young man. Get over it and get on with it."

Expecting the world to revolve around you is a hallmark of childhood. Not every Aspie stays there, although some may for longer than a NT child typically does. Saying/thinking "gee, I have to do things that other kids don't have to do and it sucks so I'm gonna go eat worms" "or how come I don't get to do what other kids do?" "or "Jimmie got a bicycle, why can't I have a bicycle?" is a part of childhood. I've never heard of a child that ever lived that didn't want what it wanted - and be upset that it couldn't have everything it its life just as it wanted it to be. (My own mother's stock answer was "If everybody jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you want to, too?" - and she'd been given that speech in her youth by HER mother....) Self-absorption is not unique to Aspiedom, and Aspies do not necessarily stay there their entire lives. Most, if not all, do grow up. Eventually. The degree of self-absorption varies among Aspies, as it does NTs, and may very well change throughout their lives.

"The World Hates Me" and "I'm Utterly Alone" and "They Were Mean to Me So That's The Way I Am" are also hallmarks - of being a teenager/very young adult. Even in Aspies, those sentiments can rear their ugly, greasy, hormone-laden, pimply little heads, much to the dismay of those people around the afflicted who now have to put up with all that as well as having to deal with their own lives. All one has to do is look at the "teen angst" music that's been churned out for generations, targeted and marketed to that age group, if one needs a barometer. This, too, shall pass. Currently, the dark eyeliner, vampire-obsession, soppy music, black clothing and "let's pretend I cut myself so I can feel a martyr" schtick is really rather... This, too, shall pass. It's more tolerable than the slicked back hair, beer, and noisy drag-racing cars were, or the "I'm counter-culture and you pigs are all fascists" gig was, I guess. Less hard on the ears, anyway.

Stealing because you want something, when you know better and claiming that because someone is an Aspie it exempts them from "knowing better" is disingenuous. Stealing because you want something you were told you could not have is a form of acting out, immaturity, a temper tantrum. It is not something "an Aspie does." It's something a self-absorbed, immature child who values only his or her wants and needs does - again, a hallmark of childhood, not necessarily of being Aspie. Aspies may see the world from a self-centered universe, but it's not quite the same as the developmental stage that children move through.

A compulsion, on the other hand, is a psychological issue - the overpowering need to do something, when one knows it is detrimental and doesn't want to do it but ends up doing it anyway - that's something that may need more help than one can provide to oneself. Research shows it may be a chemical issue as well. That's one tough load to carry.

Given that we know very little about the young man the poster describes, other than what she's told us - we know little about his upbringing, his life-long discipline plan, his surroundings, the expectations of his family as he grew, their interactions, and what is actually going on in their household on a day-to-day basis - there's not a lot we can realistically offer as advice that's likely to be very useful. Especially since this has been going on for so very long. If the child were 6, it would be much more likely we could offer strategies that the person might try to see if they had an impact. It's a tough situation. At 17, as another poster commented, the boy is likely to end up in the adult justice system. And they don't really give a damn about labels like Aspergers' Syndrome there. If you are extraordinarily rich and have very good lawyers, you might be able to leverage the boy into an alternative sentence if you have a judge who can be swayed. But most likely at 17 it'll be a stint in the county or city jail if he's caught committing a crime. They put kids at age 14 and 15 (and younger) in the adult system in the USA. Don't think "Aspergers" will keep him out of it.

As it is, the child may well just be yanking his parent's strings for s**ts and giggles (pardon the French), to watch them squirm, to see how he can manipulate them, for his amusement. We have no way to know, really, what's going on. Obviously, if that's the case the poster doesn't see it. In which case there's REALLY nothing we can do for her.

I have sympathy for the original poster, but I'm not sure that this late there's a lot that isn't really drastic (some kids DO respond well to a solid metaphorical kick on the backsides, some do not) that can be done. At 17 the child is arguably an adult - if you did the best you could when you were raising him, at least you have that to comfort you. If you slacked off, or took the easy way through things, that's going to haunt him and you for the rest of your respective lives. But you already know that. I wish things were different for you.

woah, Nan. Emoal's viewpoint is valid, whether we agree with it or not. It is how he felt, right or wrong, and wasn't it his parent's job to pick up on that and give him a more accurate sense of what was going on, instead of the one he held? He was supposed to perceive that on his own starting from a very young age and simply "get" it? That is what you have implied, and I disagree.

There is road down the middle, and it is the job of parents to find it with and for their children.

I'm not talking about gilded cages. I'm talking about making sure you have passed information and values onto your children in a way that makes sense to them, and that they can relate to. You can't just say it and expect it to be absorbed exactly as said all the time for every child.

Especially for kids on the spectrum. I am often surprised by how much my son doesn't understand, or understands incorrectly. It is MY job to ferret that out, not his. He is a CHILD, and still has a lot to learn. It is me, my job, to help him through all that.

I am not saying that the values you believe in are wrong. I am saying that your frustration that the Emoal doesn't seem to understand them is misplaced.

One of the huge challenges of parenting AS kids is that they DO perceive everything differently than we might expect them to. But we have to break through that, and find the message that makes sense, or our kids will grow up with all the negative perceptions and feelings that Emoal has. It is my job to do that, not my child's. And it is posters like Emoal that have taught me that most clearly. My child will not feel as he does, or believe as he does, but not because my child is different than he is, but because I am more informed about AS than his parents were. I know with all my heart and soul that I cannot parent as they did and raise the young man I hope to raise. One that is self-sufficient, confident, secure in himself, and enjoying the wings I gave him.

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First off, I'd like to thank the mother who noticed I was telling my story, not wallowing in my pain. As for you nan, I have only this to say.

AT THE AGE OF NINE, my father, my grandparents, and 2 aunt/uncles were dead already, last one being my father. I understand my mother had to work long hours to keep food on the table and clothes on my back and I've thanked her.

But the subject of this post was to find out why this mother's son was stealing. I told her the reason I did was because I was told I couldnt have them for NO GOOD REASON. It wasnt like I was collecting knives or s**t like that. We're talking magic cards(not tricks, the card game you know nothing about), and rap cds. you know things that were allowing my mind to expand and see things from different perspectives than the NORMAL WHITE FAMILY'S from the farm. Allowing me to connect with different heritages and cultures. Allowed me to make the few friends I could by having something in common with them instead of all my differences.

We're talking about video games because I wasnt ABLE(or rather allowed by society) to have a social life. I wasn't COOL, or hip, or with it, or maybe groovy is a better word for you nan. I was held back, not by my own abilities and disabilities, but by social perception and heirarchy. I didnt get to have a prom, or a girlfriend for that matter because I was traumatized at the age of 12 being told I killed my own father by being too fat and stupid by my first crush in front of 44 other kids.

I am the kid from hell. I have the scars and burn marks to prove it. But what I am not doing, is wallowing in my pain. I have done something with my life, albeit small and for only a short period of time.

IVE SERVED MY COUNTRY DURING A TIME OF WAR. I'VE BEEN STATIONED IN ALASKA, AND SENT TO JAPAN FOR ADVANCED WAR EXCERCISES(WITH ONLY 6 months in service I MIGHT ADD). I'VE DONE MORE THAN I EVER THOUGHT POSSIBLE, or anyone else for that matter.

But it all comes back to obsessions in the long run. Obsessions control your actions, whether you like it or not, ESPECIALLY WITH ASPIES. And what I tried to portray was that an aspie with an obsession will DO WHATEVER IS NECESSARY TO GET TO IT. Its like an addiction, except it doesnt have to be a drug per se. It just has to fill the void caused by a society that refuses to understand what is different, let alone ACCEPT IT.

I wasnt a bad kid, and I didnt deserve the life I lived through. But I survived it. And I was only being honest in my reasoning behind theft. I wanted it and was told I couldnt have it. Not because it was dangerous to my health, but because of some fictitious book. Because my mother couldnt understand that maybe you dont swim against the current, sometimes, you just go with it.

The Autistic spectrum is a current of its own, a force you cannot compete with. you can try to help an autistic ADAPT, but you cant change them. They will FOREVER BE THEMSELVES. Wether they are alone or in a crowd, you can only hope you've trained them well enough to hide thier oddities. I wasnt afforded that luxury ma'am. Autism wasnt really accepted during my childhood. People made sure I knew I didnt belong. There were no teachers looking out for my better health, mentally or physically. There was no special aide to guide me. HELL, I DIDNT EVEN HAVE A FATHER.

Id like to think I came out alright ma'am, and frankly, I'll give your words no thought after this. You're idea of tough love working in the long run, leads to kids like me who couldnt swim in the deep end, they just got THROWN IN ANYWAY.

Nan and Emoal, I understand both your points of view.

It's in my nature to try to balance it all. I believe it is possible and I choose to not ever be talked out of that.

Yes, I'm in the mother-hen years, and I know quite well that the wings will either be grown or not when my son insists on flying on his own in a few years. I know that I will then have to let go, give him rope so to speak, etc. But I still can feel for those kids who had to try to fly before their wings had been given a fair chance to grow in. They speak to why the mother-hen stage is so very important.

Yes, once someone is grown, it's time to get over it. But I don't believe that sharing history is any proof that someone has not. You would have to look at how life today is for them, and I rarely have that information. Recognizing the pain isn't the same as saying, "please, keep wallowing it." It is, simply, recognition. We can't do anything about how they felt, feel, or will feel. But we can say, "I hear you." Sometimes that is all that is needed. Besides, getting over it can take years, decades. It's a process, and a very personal one.

Anyway ... we've digressed from the topic in this thread. I feel that what Emoal shared could be useful to the OP, but that is only my opinion. He probably was far, far too harsh on her, but most of us know how to sort through that when it comes to us. We aren't in her situation, and she will decide for herself.