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mmajesty
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11 Feb 2014, 1:06 am

My name is Mary. And I am new to these forums. I am kind of looking for a little bit of advice on my 17-year-old son. Diagnosed with asperger's since 9 years, I am a bit concerned about unusual behaviors I thought would likely go away but have not. I am also concerned that he may have some sort of multiple personality. Or maybe it is just that he thinks completely different.

What I'm concerned about is my son's secretiveness, I guess. He has always been a withdrawn child, no friends, no girlfriend. He is close to both I and my husband, but only on concrete issues. He communicates well, but often prefers not to. He is emotionally distant, so to speak, can't seem to relate to any emotions really other than excitement or frustration. Maybe he feels more but just can't show it. Things that do spark an emotion seem to frustrate him and can lead to a meltdown. For example, if we begin to talk about how his school day went, he just says okay and not much else, even if something does happen at school. Forget about trying to coach him about the proper way to do an interview for a job. He'll read a book about it. I guess he comprehends it, but he will not talk about it. He just says, I know. If we try to push it further, he gets very frustrated. School says he is fine in group projects, does his work, is cooperative, but offers little of anything other than the ability to do what he is told.

What has me a bit concerned, and maybe I shouldn't be, I don't know, is the fact he enjoys not just being by himself but also talking to himself, and only in private. This has been going on for a long time. We often thought he just likes to vocalize his thoughts, strange because he reads perfectly fine silently. School therapist says not a problem, but I don't know. He doesn't just talk to himself. I have come to find out he tends to hold long conversations by himself, literally, with questions and answers, as if talking to someone else. I had asked him why he does it, and he tells me that he "holds conversations with his environment." He claims to "look at a wall, gets amazed at the lines in the wall and such, asks a question, answers himself back as if the wall talks back to him." I don't know, but this sounds a bit delusional to me. But yet, in public, no talking to himself. A friend of mine told me to have him checked for multiple personality, but she's not a doctor. I talked to school therapist, says it is not and is just a coping mechanism. However, he would rather relate to the world in this way at the expense of any social contact. So if it's a coping mechanism, I'm not sure it's a good one. It's like, we once went out to a baby shower. He often does not talk much in large group settings and instead likes to go outside where nobody is present and talk to himself.



Marybird
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11 Feb 2014, 1:49 am

If he has trouble communicating emotions, try having him to give thumbs up for good, thumbs down for bad and thumbs to the side for neutral. That helps my 17 year old grandson communicate how he feels when he doesn't want to talk about how he feels about something.

Talking to himself isn't delusional or multiple personality. If he enjoys talking to himself it is perfectly harmless. It's normal for autistics to have conversations with themselves. Sometimes its a way of practicing having conversations with other people.

He was very open and communicative with you about the way he holds conversations with his environment. I think it's really cool that he does that.



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11 Feb 2014, 4:13 am

Autists are as differents as are "normal" humans, so I dont know if my experiences are similar to him or not.

In general I CAN talk, and do so, IF there is a cause for it. But its exhausts me slowly. Because of that I avoid doing so, because doing social chitchat out for no reason, means in the end to be maybe to exhauted in the evening to do stuff, that I wanted to do. And if I am already exhausted, by school or whatever, I naturally want to avoid to do things that further exhausts me, so I then dont want to talk and avoid situations that might force me to do so. So if something happened at school, and I knew that mentioning it would led to be forced to talk to someone, mentioning it would have been the last thing on earth I liked to do.

I know that having social conversations is for normal people very easy, so they cannot relate that feelings that I natural have, but for me it feels natural to avoid it, because else I got punished. If I drive to fast, I will get punished, so I will avoid it. If I mention that something special has happened, someone will want to force an conversation on me, and so punish for me for mentioning something special, so I avoid that. I DO KNOW, that the reason why people talk is not about punishing me, but simply to have some exchange, social chitchat, ... and that it means for "normal" people to show interest into each other.

That theoretical knowledge does not help me, just as it does not help you to know, that your dentist is not interested in hurting you, when he is drilling a teeth-root. ^^

About the "learning via talking", so you mentioned you wanted to give him lessons about job interviews. Its a good intention, but actually, because of social exchange and talking being for me more complex, then it is for "normal" people, the time, when I can really pay attention to what is said, is really short. I simply not do anyway so much effort, to simply listen and replying, that I dont have much ressources left for storing heard informations.

I love videogames, so its not about having excuses for stuff I dont want to hear, but always play them with activated subtitles, simply because even normal listening AND storing information about what I heared AND thinking of how I want to use that informations in the same moments, drains/exhausts me too much.

With subtitles? No problem. I can read 150 pages an hour. ^^ So I see nothing bad, about him reading a book about job interviews, it shows that he is interested in the topic, but simply want to avoid talking about topics. One thing that helped me additional (I read as well a book about it, after I failed horrible in my first job interviews.) was as well a physical training. So a coach did an supposed job interview with us, that was taken on video, and that he was talking with me about my body language. Which was actually telling "Oh god, oh god, oh god, please let me get away from here, I dont want to be here, I am afraid, ..." That was as well helping very much, so I really was not aware how defensive and frightened my body language was. ^^ If you maybe have a friend who owns a company, and does job interviews from now and then, maybe he can do that with him.



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11 Feb 2014, 5:28 am

Nothing to worry about.



ASDMommyASDKid
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11 Feb 2014, 7:27 am

Being "secretive" is something that is common for NT teens, so I understand why you use this word. Your son is probably just being non-communicative which is also common among teens but more so with autistic persons b/c it is intrinsically more difficult, often times.

Him acquiring the skills he needs out there in the world, to me, is a completely separate issue than either this or the talking to himself issue. Using this as a coping mechanism (which I agree is probably what this is, probably a form of stim, where he needs to talk or hear noises to calm) is not preventing him from doing other things. If it is calming that he needs, this helps him. He is not getting all his talking out with none left for others. It does not work this way.

As far as gaining concrete skills, does he show interest in this?



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11 Feb 2014, 8:23 am

To me, he sounds like he's very introverted. Not everyone gets a lot of enjoyment out of interacting with others. For many autostic people, interaction is tiring, and they need alone time to recharge.



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11 Feb 2014, 9:09 am

Such a coincidence you should mention self-talk. Just yesterday I noticed that I had a desire to start doing some of that.

For me, I would see it as a positive thing, in that it is a way for me to externalize my thinking. But unlike journal-keeping (which is also helpful) it is via vocalization; I would see a desire to vocalize my thoughts, even if it is into the air or to an inanimate object, as a step toward being able to talk more to (if not with) people.

I recall that as a small child I would sometimes confide things to one of my plush animal toys. This may not be very different.

And oh, as a former teenage guy, I can recall that what may have been perceived as secretiveness by my parents was mainly just the beginning of my individualization into a young adult.

Yesterday I was somewhat taken aback by my interest in talking to myself, out of concern for it being "crazy" behavior. Your posting emboldens me to feel more free to explore that form of externalizing my thinking.

Thanks!


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11 Feb 2014, 9:33 am

I think a lot of autistic people talk to themselves. I certainly do, and it's not due to being delusional. It's just so that I have someone to talk to while in my inner world. A way of vocalising my thoughts.

Quote:
he would rather relate to the world in this way at the expense of any social contact. So if it's a coping mechanism, I'm not sure it's a good one.


It would indeed not be a good coping mechanism for a neurotypical person, but he is not neurotypical. He is autistic. For an autistic person, talking to one's self is typical and normal, and isolation from social contact is necessary in order to be healthy. For a neurotypical, the opposite would be true. Socialisation would be necessary in order to be healthy. You need to stop analysing his behaviours as though they were the behaviours of a neurotypical. What's normal and healthy for a non-autistic person would NOT be normal and healthy for an autist.

Autistic people live in a private inner world. You are misunderstanding him. Being private is NOT the same thing as being secretive. He needs to retreat into the peace and quiet of the privacy of his inner thoughts.

Privacy does not always equal secrecy. Shouting at him and trying to draw him out and force him to talk will cause him great distress and is extremely unfair. The autism is not his fault. He has a different set of needs because of it. His brain is very private, and it needs to be left in peace to think by itself because he is not good at functioning externally. He will be doing a lot of thinking all the time, and having his internal thoughts interrupted and trying to be forced to talk is extremely traumatic and if you continue interrupting his thoughts and talking at him frequently, he will end up having meltdowns. He is NOT the same as a "normal" son would be, so you need to understand that you have to interact with him by a different set of rules.

Do not blame him for being the way he is and having different needs. He needs privacy, he needs acceptance, and he needs to be allowed to behave in ways he instinctively wishes. As long as he is not harming or distressing anybody else, there is no reason to try and stop him from doing things he wishes to do. For example, talking to himself or retreating to his room to be alone for hours on end does not harm anybody else, and if it keeps him happy and healthy, it is not a "coping mechanism," but rather an innate behaviour. So please do not attempt to force him to act like a neurotypical son would, as this will cause him great distress. My family tried to force me into a neurotypical mould and their constant shouting and lecturing and interfering and scolding and blaming caused me to become so ill that I (like many others) cut myself off from them completely as an adult. Being alone I can lead the happy and healthy existence I require, of being allowed to stim and talk to myself and skip and clap and be alone for as long as I need with my brain free to think in peaceful silence, without anyone claiming I'm being "anti-social" or "rude" each time they rudely interrupt my thoughts and I ask them to please leave me alone.



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11 Feb 2014, 11:33 am

I think to myself in conversation form. I always have. Often if it is something I am not sure about, then it is in the form of a debate with different internal voices holding the different sides. I often think to myself, "Let's do this." or Let's do that." This can't just be an autistic thing, or those shoulder angels and shoulder devils wouldn't have been so common on old cartoons. When I was a child, these conversations would often be out loud, especially at night when I thought everyone was asleep, because I required vastly less sleep than an average person. I learned to not vocalize these conversations after my mom heard me one night and got very concerned about it. I decided she was probably checking up on me to see if I was still doing it, so I learned to do it while not moving my mouth.

My oldest son has the same thinking out loud thing, although he would do it when not alone, as in the car or otherwise in the middle of people, and then we'd all know exactly what he was thinking. I've always told him, "Remember if your mouth is moving, then it's talking, not thinking." (Because he can't just move his mouth and have no sound come out, and we've been working on volume control since he was three with very little gain on the issue). My reason for telling him this is that he doesn't need any more reasons for people to know what he is thinking without him knowing why they know (I literally thought my parents could read my mind until I was about fifteen, because I didn't understand that other people could read body language), and I've always tried to share the lessons I've learned the hard way on what the average person finds strange and off-putting. He doesn't always care what average people find strange, but at least he knows.



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11 Feb 2014, 7:32 pm

I am not autistic, but I talk to myself. Have full conversations. Sometimes with other people. Not really with them, of course, but I imagine their responses and now I might respond in return. I do this so much that there have been times that I have thought I had a conversation with someone else, when, indeed, I had not. I think for me it is because I do not necessarily think in verbal form, so sometimes I need to figure out the way to express what I am thinking in verbal form so I can communicate it to someone else. It is easiest to do this if I just talk out loud. Also, I feel more comfortable talking if I have had a chance to think through it and plan. This, of course, is not necessary with every day communication with people I know well. But if I have to have an important conversation with someone I know, or even a rather mundane one with someone I don't know well, I feel better if I have "practiced." Sometimes I practice in my head, and sometimes I do it aloud.

You did mention that he views himself as having conversations with his environment. I still don't know that I would call this "delusional." My son talks to things in his environment sometimes. He is not delusional in the least. I think he just enjoys doing it, and sometimes I think he just has an internal need to talk.

I have worked with individuals who carry the diagnosis of multiple personality disorder, btw, and absolutely nothing you said rings true to any of the experiences I have had. I don't know where your friend got that idea from, but unless you have not told us about some key factors, I can't imagine how what you are describing would be confused with MPD.


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12 Feb 2014, 8:10 am

He sounds fine.

Browse around here and you may start to understand your son better.

For starters, you seem to be viewing him in the context of what you might expect from an NT kid. It will be hard to drop that and look at the kid in front of you, but I encourage you to try.



Sacrieur
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14 Feb 2014, 5:31 am

Hi!

Wow I wish I had a supportive parent like you when I was younger. Anyway, I'll give this a shot.

If there were one thing I would want NTs to know about aspies it's that we're all different. Just like everyone else, we have personalities. It can be hard to see past the autistic qualities, but it's there. So then having said this I can't really say how your son thinks, because I'm not him. I can connect with the superficial stuff like talking to oneself, the need for routine, problems with social situations, and etc., but I can't connect with him on any deeper personal level. We simply don't all think the same way.

Temple Grandin, for instance, thinks in pictures. I honestly cannot relate to this on any more than a basic level because I don't think in pictures. Many people do, even NTs, but I don't. I think in connections -- if that makes any sense to anyone here. As a friend of mine described it I have, "A unique ability to deconstruct ideas as if they were machinery."

The one who best understands how your son thinks is your son.



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14 Feb 2014, 11:55 am

ASDMommyASDKid wrote:
Being "secretive" is something that is common for NT teens, so I understand why you use this word. Your son is probably just being non-communicative which is also common among teens but more so with autistic persons b/c it is intrinsically more difficult, often times.

Him acquiring the skills he needs out there in the world, to me, is a completely separate issue than either this or the talking to himself issue. Using this as a coping mechanism (which I agree is probably what this is, probably a form of stim, where he needs to talk or hear noises to calm) is not preventing him from doing other things. If it is calming that he needs, this helps him. He is not getting all his talking out with none left for others. It does not work this way.


I completely agree. To follow up on one point, if you want to encourage him to talk to others this is possible, but you should consider it more as a skill or muscle that he needs to build over time.

The problem with this is that he needs to be motivated to work on it. You (the OP) have to appreciate that for him, it is probably very difficult to be at a party and engage in conversation with multiple, less familiar people. This is tough enough for many of us NTs, but imagine doing it without the basic conversational skills necessary to pull it off. Layer on top of that any sensory issues that your son might have, and any learning history that may have taught him to be anxious in social situations. Take all of that together and it makes sense that at this point he would want nothing to do with a party like that.

The talking to himself may be a stim, as others have suggested. It may also be practice. He may be trying to develop those social skills by going over the things that he might say in different situations.

So how can you go about helping in this case? One great tool that parents and teachers in general should be familiar with is called "incidental teaching". It's a simple strategy that involves a few steps:
1) Identify the kid's topic of interest
2) Request that they elaborate on the topic
3) Help them elaborate if needed
-Child gives a response
4) Natural reinforcement (give them what they want, or just show some interest, or praise them in some way).

This strategy is typically recommended for younger kids, so if you google it you'll find a lot of instructions on how to do this with young, somewhat verbal kids.

In actuality it can be used on people of all ages, including NT teens. It just looks a bit different.

For a young child with ASD it may look like:
1) Kid is looking at the cars the parent is holding.
2) Mom says "Which car do you like? Red or Blue?"
3) Mom sees the kid looking at the blue car and prompts "Blue"
4) Kid says blue and mom gives him the blue car.

For a teen it may be:
1) "Mom, can I have the car keys?"
2) "Why do you need them?"
3) (often not necessary)
4) Kid says "to go to the store" and mom gives the keys.

So the same basic principle, and the goals are similar, when the teen is actively engaged in speaking with the parent, the parent can use that to get more details and more information out of the teen. This is especially true when the teen is requesting something, but can also happen at other times. For example, watching a baseball game together:

1) Kid just finished watching the game
2) Mom says "who won?"
4) Kid says "Braves" Mom says "Oh they're your favorite right?" (natural social reward, showing some interest in the kid's interests)

Depending on the kid's interest, this can cycle repeatedly, where the conversation and the fact that you're talking about their interests serves as the reinforcement, but the requests for elaboration help to steer the conversation into new areas, forcing the kid to work on new conversational skills.

Incidental teaching is something that most people do automatically, but I spelled it out here because having an awareness of it can help you to emphasize it. The value in incidental teaching comes from trying to do it more often. When you've got his interest (either because he wants something from you, or because he's interested in a topic of conversation), you can start asking him open-ended questions, and getting him to answer in increasing levels of complexity. Over time, this type of practice will help to develop his conversational skills so that regular social interactions aren't as big of a challenge for him.