I need ideas please

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We have a 12 year old that needs a break from life at this point. His life feels way too overwhelming for him. He is regressing and shutting down.

We have a large support team of doctor's and psychiatrists and he will probably begin inpatient treatment today.

He has been there before and really feels comfortable there.

I am concerned because while I am thankful for this, I want him to be able to adapt to life comfortably.

Does anyone have anything that worked for them? We continue to accommodate him here at home. It seems his emotions are too overwhelming, maintaining a schedule, school, he continues to relate to innappropriate violent characters. He is looking for relief with inappropriate substances. I am thinking this could be the onset of puberty.

I am feeling like I need some veteran aspie moms, anybody, to share some insight with me here. Thank you!

Take a vacation to someplace far away. No TV, no computers, no people. Bring a lot of books and magazines, and some cards and board games. Talk as little as possible.

Having been in inpatient care, it always seems like a good idea at the time. Get away from the hectic everyday life and go someplace where you will be monitored. Yeah, except for the place is filled with f*****g screaming insane people pissing themselves in the hall and falling asleep mid-sentence because they're so drugged up, and people crying in hysterics, stupid quizzes about how your self esteem is today.

A nice vacation will do wonders, trust me.

I was twelve years old when they first discovered my difficulties with school, social experiences and life in general. Inpatient
treatment may seem fine in the beginning but, it never teaches a person how to truly face one's difficulties. I wish I had never received inpatient treatment...psychiatric inpatient care does more harm than good. After years of psychiatric treatment since childhood, I no longer see the benefit of psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health professionals. They are more interested in their own economic well being and their paycheck. Besides, if a patient truly gets "better," they lose that income.

There are individuals who get so comfortable with inpatient life in a residential facility that they become " institutionalized" over time and never want to leave. Later in life, they become permanent residents especially when Mom and Dad are no longer living
to provide for their care.

reducing the stimulus is good,
but eventually he will have to adjust to life on life's terms,
but
if you tried everything else,
this is a hard one,
try overloading him for a good long while,
what this will do is possibly reset his tolerance levels,
this does not always work and with many children it don't,
but when it does work it works wonders,
other things to try is distractions,
find something you agree with that he can or may obsess over,
this in its self will reduce some of the issues,
but just beware, you give him something to obsess over and then
distract him in some other way it may set him off,
the down side to this is its only a distraction, the issues would remain,
he needs to learn that the world is not always going to cater to his needs,
he may be shutting down because he knows how you will react.

Homeschool?

Long vacation before starting that - not Disneyland or anything programmed like that. Something most people would find incredibly boring. Much sleep, no stress, good food, clean air kinda thing. If you can get to a camp, somewhere that you wake up when you wake up, eat when you're hungry, go to sleep when it gets dark, for a while. Where he can go swimming, hiking, stare at the clouds. At least two or three weeks, as it takes some time to wind down. A couple of months would be better. Send him to live with "Grandma Edna out on the farm" if you've got one. Go with him. When you get back, add tasks back into his life slowly. Make sure he understands he's only responsible for the tasks he's been given.

Get him away from sources of illegal pharmacuticals - if that means his old playmates, so be it.

Where is he seeing "inappropriate violent characters"? Remove the TVs and computer games from your house. Give him selected books, crafts items (or let him garden - things that take time and keep one busy). Disconnect the phone, or put it on "muted" ring. Slow the pace of your home down drastically.

Add structure - Have meals at set times. Routine is important.

Good luck.

reduce your expectations for him....we went through a period like this with our son. certain things we let go of. those things will be different for each kid, so i can't honestly tell you what to let go of, and what to keep.........for us, we let go of our expectations for our son to remain in scouts. it was just too much for him. we let go of him having to tell his scout leader that he no longer wanted to be in scouts. again, it was just too much for him to handle.

The people on here rock!

These insights are incredibly helpful to me.

I am very excited to announce that we get to do outpatient this time around!!


It's encouraging to hear from other people what has worked for them, because it tells me there are more options.

Those relaxing ideas about books and sleep and hilking and magazines sounds fun to me!

Oddly enough he is getting the negative sources from school! All of them. I think we are going to try some other resources for schooling for sure. I feel like I send him into a circle of confused circus clowns at times when I drop him off at his well-meaning school.

camping.

I am curious, does your son have a self-calming mechanism? Trampoline, swing, pacing ... I've come to understand that many Aspies use some sort of repetitive physical motion to block out the world and center themselves. My son is a pacer. In some situations parents or teachers may halted the inclination in the child when the child was young, since many of the habits seem excessive to us, but if your son does not have something like this, I would encourage it. Look back into your memory and see if there was something ...

Otherwise, I like many of the suggestions, above. My son loves hiking and camping. Nature is really good to him.

those are the two constants for him recreationally.


Anybody know how to steer away from negative obsessions? Do you have processes that have worked well for you?

As cheery and bright as he is, his intellect tends to seek out the morbid and he relates to it somehow, probably because he feels odd and he can relate to the oddity of it all. This isn't healthy so we are working with him sincerely to avoid constant thought processes involving that negativity.

it's hard to steer them from morbid topics once they get interested in them......had quite a diffiuclt time with our son and this. we just ended up trying to keep him busy with other things.

that your son moved past it. I'll try distracting him somehow with intellectual things. Maybe if I challenge him with positive intellectual things it will encourage him to not think of the other things.

When my son was in public school, he had a very negative view of himself and the world. He frequently referred to himself as "bad" and he hated school. He was also teased at school. He had behaviors that prevented him from being in mainstream. I talk about homeschooling all the time in this forum, but we chose that route and it has improved my son's outlook on life. He also gets more schoolwork done at home.

We'll definitely go there if our other options don't seem to be working. I've heard of many success stories .

The best decisions in my life when I was isolated from my normal environments. That was when I was living in Sweden, when I was busy on the lab and when I took a vacation for 3,5 weeks with the family of my best friend (I was 14 at the time).

The positive side is that you are away from everything and have time to reflect. Also habits are broken. This way you force your son to do something with his life again.

The difficult part will be to return to normal life, but that will probably change after that.

Another choice could be to let him spend some time without yourselves as parents, put him in with some good family / friends. Maybe something in your behaviour is blocking him? (please do not read this wrong, it is merely a suggestion)

The suggestions earlier in this topic also look fine.