Advice to Parents....

Post Reply New Topic

Well Parent’s after reading your posts all I can say is how sad it is that you don’t take the time to research the disorder to try to understand why your son/daughter is the way there are.

I’m 22 years old Male, I have As & shyness and social Anxiety on the sick it is probably more special that I have the SSA part as I don’t talk about my special subjects or interest’s & focus all my skill’s into game programming, I am also more skilled than most of the help you get from the health and social care team’s that are not qualified or take the time to research or the training to handle As people.

My advice to parents is to sit down and look at the way your approaching this is it really your son/daughters fault there get angry / frustrated / depressed / & so on, maybe your fuelling them into this situation because you haven’t researched the disorder enough or at all to understand what there going through as a person and not what effect it is having on your life or feel embarrassed about your son / daughter.

My Advice to you parents is to go to parent help class’s buy books on techniques for handling situations and to take an assertiveness class because. I’ve talked to a 19 year old woman and the things she was saying I felt like I was talking to a wife that had been abused and beaten – the fear and the – feeling like a failure coz she felt like her mam did not care, I gave her the help lines to contact but she fears that there will not help her and that is what happens from bad parenting so stop and think is it really your sons / daughter fault? Or do you not understand or take the time to get the skills to help them.

more fixed posts should be at the top if theres advice for parents............

Unfortunately, I have to agree in part with these comments. Too many unrealistic expectations are being placed on autistic children. They are never going to get "cured" but usually will improve with time.

I put a lot of responsibility upon the childcare "experts" who seem to take the attitude that only "perfect" people should be parents and that most parents are doing it wrongly. This makes parents lose confidence in their own judgement and become vulnerable to all sorts of wacky theories.

Adults with autism are a valuable resource to parents of autistic children because we can help explain some of their "strange" or "inexplicable" behaviours as we were once autistic children ourselves.

I think that if there were less organizations out there focused on "finding the cure" and "fixing" our kids, parents would be less apt to buy into their nonsense.

It is *very* hard as a parent to know the right thing to do for your kids all the time - whether they have an ASD dx or not! Most (not all sadly, but most) parents only have their children's best interests at heart when they take the actions they take - many times actions they were advised of by "professionals" such as peds, neuro's, etc.

In our case I took our son from dr to dr - I took him to several neurologists convinced that the way he walked had to be the result of some sort of palsy. They all pronounced him "normal". What the heck does that mean?

Finally one day I put his behaviors two by two into google - my thought being that my dear little son couldn't have all these different things going on - and sure enough the only answers I kept getting were AS and HFA. It was several months later before we got the "official" (school-approved) dx, but even then it was a rocky road learning how best to deal with things.

I started by giving into everything to avoid a meltdown - it was great to have no meltdowns for 2 months but I was going broke and was exhausted (and DD was feeling mighty left out).

It took time to find the right resources - to get off the only website I'd been visiting that talked incessently of chelation, diet changes, and the woe is me mommy syndrome. I found this site and some others, where people who have lived with AS - including other parents who had the same mindset as me - were willing to give advice, ideas, and just lend a shoulder when the day got too long.

I'm not a perfect mom by a long shot - my kids will be the first to tell you that. But I do the best I can. I learned by trial and error about my son's proprioreception issues, his SID issues, and where to give in and where to stand my ground. Because not everything is about the AS. Some of it is him being a 12 year old boy spreading his wings - which occassionally need to be clipped!

Our household is interesting to say the least - in addition to my son dx'd with AS, so is my husband (how obvious that became after finding my son's dx!); I have social anxiety issues, always have - which is probably why dh and I get on so well - and the last child in our house is DD - the world's most uber NT social butterfly!! I try not to clip her wings too much out of my own anxieties, but she's still just a 2nd grader - I can't imagine what the future will bring!

I have a 22 year old son with AS and I have no desire for him to be "cured". He is an awesome individual and I would not trade him for any NT child. Here is a perfect example, my son fixes computers for a computer retail chain, so he calls me today and tells me he got in trouble at work, so I asked him what for? He tells me his boss asked him does he always try to sell the customer a service plan when they come in to pick up their computers, so he tells his boss, no I do not always try to sell them a service plan sometimes I forget, so his boss starts yelling at him. My son tells me mom he was mad because I did not lie to him like the other techs do, none of the techs try and sell the service plans to every customer they talk to. Point in case, 1.) it never occurs to him to lie even when he knows there will be consequences for telling the truth. 2.) he takes everything literally, his boss does not really think anyone trys to sell service plans to every customer 100% of the time, no one really expects that, but my son takes it to the exact literal term. I am so glad he is different, I love him just as he is. My son does not need a cure, he is perfect just the way he is, I could not possibly love him more. He bring something new, refreshing and unexpected into our otherwise very "normal" lives.