How do you stay positive about your child's future?

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providing a loving framily, loving him unconditionally, helping him in every area and focusing on the positives, the accheivements is how I try to remain positive.

Not every day is roses for any of us, it can be much harder for our ASD kids and for us. BUt I try to always look on the bright side.

All you can do is support and love your child no matter what, get all the help for him that you can and try to stay positive, it's not easy but look for the positives in every situation if you can.

My teenage boys both have aspergers, my eldest is clever and considering different career options, my youngest is not accademic at all, but very artistic and creative this I hope will stand him in good stead in the future.

Also when you do come up against problems and difficulties you can post them here and be sure of lots of help and advice.

God I hope you're right. I really, really, really hope you're right.

Seeing the divorce statistics-- that the average is around 50% and the average for AS/NT couples is close to 100%?? Knowing what a pressure-cooker of constant effort, judgment, fear, and inadequacy marriage has been to me?? Remembering how my husband and my in-laws have taken me the wrong way and demanded that I comply with their desires (not reasonable desires, either-- things like "Agree with me whether you agree with me or not," "Obey me without comment," "Turn your back on your father and be there to f**k my son and cook his dinner) or else they'd take the kids??

Frankly, honey, I'm not talking marriage up to any of my kids. My NT daughter?? Well, if I end up at her wedding, those won't be tears of pride and joy running down my face. I won't be bawling because she's just so lovely in her dress.

You're right-- he does need a stable mother. One that's reliably realistic. One that can say, "Honey, you have a serious disability. I just don't think those goals are realistic for you." Say it without the sing-song voice of one who's mocking the very words coming out their mouth. And say it without hating the fact that she's telling him not to try, that he should really consider himself dead in the water, so damn much that it's infuriating.

I really wish the first people I asked for help had told me that. I saw it myself at the outset, when I was 19. I fell apart sobbing saying, "This means I should give up. I can never find a mate. I can never have a family. No one will ever want to be friends with me, unless I knock myself out trying so hard not to be myself that it's a miserable experience for me anyway. I should be grateful that I can speak and stop wishing for a life."

No, they had to be all sweet and comforting. "Oh, not at all! You have a shadow of a shadow! No more than a personality trait! You just need to find the people you fit with, find a comfortable niche for yourself! There are plenty of people out there who will love you for you, just how you are!"

Yeah, gullible Aspie, I believed them. I really thought I'd found it when I met my husband.

I'd like to go back and play them a tape of my husband screaming, "You will kiss my f*****g ass or I will take Katie, and the trailer, and the shirt off your back. If I don't get my way, I will leave you just like Molly! Any judge in the country would go my way!" Molly was a friend of mine who was living with us because her abusive husband had left her, taking the house and the child and their savings.

She was paying him alimony, paying him child support, paying all his bills, and then bringing him beer and caviar and letting him rape her all in the hope that he might allow her a few minutes with her child. He got away with it because she was diagnosed bi-polar; her mental health team's version of helping her cope was feeding her HUGE doses of Seroquel so she could take it all with a smile on her face.

When I took her in, she was living in her car, driving 15 miles out of town every night so she could park somewhere where she wouldn't get arrested for vagrancy. She confided in me because she was afraid she would fail to overcome the sedation from the Seroquel, cause an accident, and kill someone. She asked if I could buy her some instant coffee bags and Vivarin.

I'd like to go back and play them a tape of me trying to explain to my husband that we couldn't afford $190,000 for a dilapidated lakefront fishing cabin. Pleading with him, laying my thoughts and fears and heart at his feet. Him saying, "I need this. If you love me as much as you say, prove it. Buy me this house."

I'd like to go back and play them a videotape of all the times my husband used to rise up in his sleep and beat me, rape me, sodomize me, try to strangle me, try to suffocate me, all the while mumbling, "I'll show you, you stupid b***h. Don't want to f**k, you stupid b***h?? Suck it, you stupid b***h." And et cetera.

The next set of tapes start with me agreeing to move 1,000 miles from everyone I'd ever known, with two requests: I be allowed to visit twice a year, and I be permitted to go home if my father or my grandmothers really, really needed me. Him agreeing to it without reservations.

A tape of me trying to calmly explain that my stepmom had just had a massive stroke, that I needed to go home to be with my dad, who had sobbed as he begged me not to let him have to face this alone. And the wonderful NT says, "Well, I don't think it's necessary." End of discussion.

A tape of me talking to his parents, begging for help to make me leaving for few weeks easier for him, because I hadn't been able to get ahold of my father for almost a week and I really thought I should drive the 1,000 miles to find out what was going on. Hearing, "You are so selfish. It's always me, me, me. Are you going to shut up and do your job, or are my son and I going to raise those kids ourselves?" "But I haven't heard from him in days... This is so unusual for him..." "Did it ever occur to you that maybe he doesn't WANT to talk to you?! Maybe he wishes you'd go away?!"

A tape of me trying to explain about AS to my stepmom's sisters, pleading for permission to see her, while they scream at me, "You have no right! No place! You came home twice a year! He rotted in his bed! Go away, you monster! Just go away!"

Please understand-- this is not a Poor Me Party. I know it's my fault. I understand that. I know it all happened because we don't think the same, don't see the same world, don't have the same needs, because I can't read his mind, because I need too much space, because I can't figure out how to satisfy his needs, need too much breathing room. I understand that those things only happened because I drove him to them, just by being myself.

Those things happened, basically, because I have Asperger's and I'm not good enough at acting normal, making it look natural, and pretending to like it so skillfully that I even convince myself. Because I let my guard down at home. Because I tried to swim in waters I had no business even looking at.

I'd like him to have some safe place, somewhere, especially when he's grown. If that means I have to make home now as unsafe as the outside world, so be it.

It's dangerous enough for me out there-- and darling, he's a boy. Women are more socially skillful, more subtle, and also more needy, more demanding, more vicious, and more vindictive.

What he needs is a mother that can make goddamn good and sure that things like what happened to Molly and what has happened to me-- or even worse things, like ending up on the sex offender registry because she changed her mind mid-coitus and he couldn't process the command fast enough-- don't happen to him.

What he doesn't need is the starry-eyed, love-drunk, tolerant fool that he had for the first five years of his life. The one that hugged him and "talked to him about it" and figured he had years and years and years left to get it all down pat, that he was a genuinely good person and it would come together with enough love, enough learning, enough support, enough repetition, enough time.

That isn't pretty. It's sad, sad, so so so so sad.

Maybe I'm wrong. I would love to be wrong. Please prove me wrong. Show me examples. Show me that something else is possible, and how it is possible, and how and when and where I can get it for him. Show me proof.

I'm not asking for proof that he will have it-- not asking for a crystal ball. Just that it's out there and within reach, within reasonable reach, that the price for being able to have it isn't going to be the price I've paid of living onstage every waking moment. Because the stress level that comes with living onstage every waking moment for the rest of his life is more than I will let him end up bearing. I try and I try and I try and I KNOW it's for naught, that that's too high a load for anyone to bear and that sooner or later I will fail, or snap, and that will be the end.

If that's the price, I'd rather teach him, even if I have to teach him hard, to keep his expectations low.

And I'd rather stay hard, stay mean, stay horrible, than be hopeful sometimes and horrible at others. Cognitive dissonance is more painful that consistent horribleness.

Show me, and the OP. And a lot of other really, really tired, terrified mothers of Aspie sons (most of whom would probably die of guilt if they realized there's a very good chance the defective genes came from their side of the family).

If better is possible, prove it. Show us the examples. Tell us how they got there. Don't give us vague trash-- "Oh, therapy has come so far!" "Oh, we have so many better medications!" "Oh, what a terrible attitude!" "Oh, it's all in how you choose to see it!" NO. NO. NO. If better is possible, at a cost that is humanly sustainable, SHOW US PROOF.

I do have something that might help, maybe. I'm pretty sure this is a terrible thing, or an impossibility, for a neurotypical (if you happen to be one), but it sure does help me.

Don't try to stay positive. Don't try to envision happy futures, or find reasons to justify normal expectations, or any of that stuff.

I'm not saying cling to the negative. I'm not saying force yourself to accept miserable futures, or accept low expectations, or any of that stuff.

I'm saying that our good days-- and we do have good days-- are generally the days that I have NO EXPECTATIONS AT ALL. Not good ones, not bad ones, not high ones, not low ones, not normal ones, not reduced ones, not happy ones, not sad ones. NONE.

I am told this absense of expectations is an AS trait, not a way that normal people think. A trait of the pathology, something I should keep shut up about and try to do away with. A Bad Thing. Normal people have expectations, expectations are normal, having no expectations is the same as not caring.

But I sometimes wonder if it might be a blessing all the same. It isn't not caring-- it's just not investing a whole heaping bundle of emotional energy in wishes and what-ifs.

The good days are the days that it's me and the kid in front of me-- that dancing, laughing, quicksilver, solid-gold-sunshine little boy with the thoughts and ideas that he just can't contain and the clouds that blow up out of nowhere, dump a lot of rain really fast, and then blow away into nowhere again.

We have what we have. We're going to deal with it, even if we don't yet know how, or even what it really is. This is a journey we're on, but there is no destination. We're going along, dealing with trouble as it comes up, trying to become better hikers and enjoy the views and cliff faces and swimming holes and waterfalls along the way.

And in ten years, what will we be looking at? Dunno-- but it will be interesting to see what we see. We'll be more seasoned hikers by then.

In twenty years, what will we be looking at? Dunno-- but it will be interesting to see what we see. We'll be well-seasoned hikers by then.

Days that involve letting my mind get wrapped up in, "When can we expect" and "What can we expect" and "Our expectations are" and "Expectations must be met" and "Do you really expect" and "When I was raising kids, I expected" and "It is expected" and "Can't expect much" and "Don't you expect" and et cetera??

Those are bad f*****g days, man. Bad f*****g days. Forced marches with no end in sight.

My life has been pretty sh***y and it's mostly because of the way I am. True.

Treatment was in its infancy when I was a young adult asking for help, and it did me more harm than good. True.

The idea of our gorgeous little boys going through the same things is sickening. True.

That's the f*****g understatement of the millenium. True.

Things have changed since then. This isn't 1986, this isn't 1999, this isn't 2005. Things have changed since then. There is, if not sensitivity and acceptance, at least growing awareness and budding tolerance. You can get on YouTube now and watch Aspie kids talking about themselves with acceptance and pride. I'm sure they've had their bumps and bruises (and compound fractures, for that matter), but they're walking. Heck, they look like they're flying to me, comparing them to me at that age.

True. All true.

I don't have the proof of happy, well-adjusted square pegs who have successfully found square holes or built round hole adapters for themselves while remaining happily, emotionally-healthily square pegs that my Aspie brain demands before I'll believe it's possible.

True.

I can't have that proof, because the Aspies that are young enough to get the full benefit of here and now are still running around clinging to their stuffed animals, getting flappy-happy over their ten-year-or-less-old obsessions, chattering endlessly about or staring in fascinated silence at whatever captivates their little minds.

The successful products of adaptive training done properly are works in progress. So, for that matter, is adaptive training done right.

We will just have to keep hiking and see.

Every now and again I see glimpses of my hopes for my daughter's future. She attends an opera workshop each week. At the end of each term, there's a show for the parents. She has been attending these classes for over 2 years, so we've been to a lot of little shows. One time, she just crawled about the floor like a dog for 10 mins, then sat beside us, sucking her thumb. Another time, she went up to the back of the stage and talked to some cardboard animals. But, at the last 2 shows, she took my breath away. Last Saturday, her drama performance was streets ahead of the other kids. I think the teachers are stunned. She's gone from being a child that was there in body only to one who can be relied upon to perform on cue and to just go out there and do her stuff. OK, some other things about her may hold her back from being a performer on stage and I'm certainly not pushing her into this, but I'm happy for now.

I can envisage a better future for her than my own life. I'm happily married, financially stable, with a lovely little girl, but I'm not fulfilled career-wise or academically. I'm still working on that. I think and hope that my daughter has a better chance of that than me, partly because she has been identified as being on the spectrum. Her difficulties are recognised and she's not criticised for things she can't help and is still trying to perfect. If she is criticised, by teachers or bosses or whoever, hopefully the diagnosis can help to explain her 'failings'. For now, I'm there to back her up, but in the future, she should be better equipped than I ever was, to deal with the negative views others might have of her.

I also have the benefit of knowing that my daughter is still very confident and I can't envisage that changing. It was dress down day at school today. She went in wearing a black t-shirt with a wolf on it, a pair of jeans and trainers. If it wasn't for the pink hoody (which will end up in her bag), she could be mistaken for being dressed like a boy. She is a tomboy and this is what she chose to wear and I've no objection to it. I asked her what she'll do, if anyone tries to make fun of her, for dressing like a boy. She said, 'I'll just ignore it. I don't care what they think. As long as I have a couple of friends, I'm alright. I like wearing this, so that's what I'm wearing.' She went out so happy and I'm sure she won't give two hoots when anyone does try to make fun of her (and I'm sure someone will say something). I do hope this attitude stays with her, as it will help her immensely.

movik, I've caught up with all your posts. Seems you are in a dark time & place.....maybe reading others' posts will give perspective. As my friend CockneyRebel wrote, '.....people are a product of their environment.' Yes, and why your son deserves a chance - he is more than you know. Let him.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1SoL4UfPNI[/youtube]

As a mother of two teenage boys with aspergers, I think the main thing us mums can do is be loving and supportive, get help if its needed and stay positive.

Its not easy, but then again I can't see the point in behaving any other way.

Without having read the other replies:

My child is my unique child, and he does not have to face all the same things prior generations have had to face, or even some of the things that other kids living in other areas and families have had to face. The simple difference is what I, as a parent know, and what I am willing to do for my son. I look at those outcomes and use them to learn what not to do in raising my child, and to help drive my instincts. I wasn't always so sure I was getting it right, but about 1 1/2 years ago I realized I could let my breath out, and that I really had gotten 90% of it all right. It was like bricks coming off my back.

My son was diagnosed at 7 and is now 15, an honor's student, fully mainstreamed, with a full and active life and a very happy disposition and positive outlook. Very similar stories with the other spectrum kids I first met in my son's elementary school (all mainstreamed at the time; some have gone to private or specialized schools since, but I am still in touch with their parents). This generation is brimming with success stories, if you are willing to keep your eyes open and not focus overly on the more difficult ones. We know so much that was not known even a decade ago.

As with anything, there are no guarantees. Certain co-morbids can make the outlook far more difficult for any one individual. But you can never forget that someone else's story is their story, not your child's, and you can never give up doing your best for your unique child, so that he has the best possible outcome he can for himself.

I spent years upon years head down, focused on getting my son what he needed. I was too busy solving all the small puzzles in front of me to worry too much about outcomes. I did have a timeline in my mind (getting the meltdowns and violence under control before puberty, for example), but other than that ... I stayed focus on my child, his needs, and addressing what was in front of me at that moment. You don't have room for the rest: you can't figure out the puzzle if you aren't laser focused on the child. And, shoot, so many beautiful moments happen along the way ... you can't let anything stop your joy in seeing the world through a child's eyes.

BuyerBeware, ((((((((((((((((((((((((giant hugs)))))))))))))))))))))) and sorry life is so difficult right now.

It wasn't the people who told you things could be better that were wrong.

It is your husband and his abusive family that have destroyed everything that was positive in you.

You are the victim of abuse. Even when abuse is verbal or emotional, it slowly kills off pieces of a person until they doubt everything about themselves and what they say and what they do. In your case, it is even worse, because you have a label to paste over the process, making it more difficult to see what is happening. You are being abused. You are being destroyed as surely as if he were physically flattening you into the ground. ANYONE can fall victim to it; abusers are good at setting their traps. It has nothing to do with AS. Please contact an abused women's service so that you can start to understand what has happened..

My 20 year old Aspie is inches from being in the psyche ward again. His father and I have been through a horrid divorce. My ex poisoning him against me. Although he's back in my life, he's still confused. Then my ex lost his job. He's just found one in India. We're in the States.

My son lives with his father, but will move in with me. We get along really well.

The point here is that due to all the change, and all the negativity, he is becoming lost to the world. The other night he went into a fit of temper that scared me for my safety. He was outside ranting. Apparently, he's been doing this at his father's but I wasn't told.

I didn't take him to the hospital because I want him to finish a trade school he really enjoys. Also, this is so new, I wasn't sure how to react.

He acts like a 5 year-old now. And I'm feeling in such despair today. It's going to take sooooo long to help him get back to happiness. I'm so angry today and so depressed because he needs to much help and I don't want him living with me forever. I want him to have the married life he aspires to. He's just so angry.

I've been the only parent to my son until the divorce. Then, the ex suddenly took an interest. I feel like my ex, who cold care less about our son, just ruined his mental health so hurt me.

Sorry, but I am entitled to a life of my own. I'm OK with him living with me until he's ready. But he is so not ready, and doesn't want to be ready.

I guess I just want to feel sorry for myself a bit today. I worry about him almost 24/7 lately. And the stress is making my hair fall out. The fit he threw last Thursday night scared the living hell out of me. I had no idea! He's lucky a neighbor didn't call the police.

I guess could use some hugs and some hope that he and I, i our different ways, will crawl out of this.

Oh, (((((jennifer54))))) so sorry for your son's situation. You all have had a rough go, yes? So sorry about your bitter divorce and the aftermath.

For those of us on the spectrum, turmoil is just especially hard to deal with as evidenced with your own son. In a sense, he is the 'canary in the coal-mine.' Anyway, now that the hard part is over, your situation will get better. All the best to you and your son.

More than certainly, we have hope for the future - in fact, maybe we are the future.