16 years old autistic son puberty and behavior

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Life got a lot harder for me at puberty because of the sudden changes in social interaction. If your son seems to have "regressed," it may be in response to that stress, and taking away his one source of comfort is not going to improve the situation

What country are you in? From your writing, I assume you are not a native English speaker.

I'm sorry if I was a bit insensitive. I realize it's not you fault there is you don't have bad intentions. I'm sorry if it came out that way. You shouldn't try to deny someone their special interest it might ultimately cause more harm than any good you migh tthink may come out of it.

So, you're using quackery!

You need a professional ABA therapist to come inside your home and teach him how and when not to do this I guess. He is severe and I don't think many of use are trained to help him, and I know ABA therapist can change behaviors and teach things to young children, not sure about teenagers though.

Try to teach him to still with his hands crossed like in a school when he is at the dinner table maybe. You should not take his device away is does not teach anything and only confuses him. Teach him to sit with hands crossed instead.

Maybe play a game of 'charades' or 'improv games' and get into his hobby by copying the same cartoons he watches so you can communicate during a meal by mimicking the cartoons? Aggression can be unmet need, in his case it can be loneliness, so if you learn to communicate with games it may help reduce stress and increase pleasure. Perhaps, try to play a game of matching a part of a cartoon to character and have him guess?

Also, try turning on a metronome App while he is doing it as it can help with tasks. YouTube 'metronome timing therapy'

Honestly though, your son may need to be institutionalized if he is that severe. But it's good you are trying and learning to live with him, but it may not be realistic or easy.

If those things make your son happy, you should let him enjoy them. There is no fixed age to when people should stop watching such things. Age doesn't matter and normal is a setting on the washing machine. Nobody want's to be a setting on a washing machine, even your son. Autistic people need respect, and he's not getting that from you. I think that you should apologize to your son and let him enjoy his favourite things, or else he will end up resenting you in a big way. You don't want your son to give you the silent treatment, do you?

Embracing our son’s special interests has been our greatest tool. Meet him where he is, treat his love of Barney etc like the doorway to communication that it can be.
We found that the more that we did this, the more he trusted us with other interests. Currently it is U.S Presidents and civil rights.

I see this is an oldish thread and I'm not sure if the OP is likely to read but this may be useful for someone. I feel I have a dual perspective on this.

Firstly, I remember my own difficult transition into puberty. I hated it. I felt like I'd finally worked out the rules of being a kid and then suddenly all the rules started changing. It was hugely stressful for me and I too took refuge in childish things because I couldn't keep up with my peers. The things they were excited about, the freedoms they were starting to enjoy and the ideas of rebellion and experimentaion just scared me. I still wanted to play make-believe games. I did get there, but it set a pattern for me that I always seem to be 'younger' than my peers. I don't think there's much you can do to accelerate the process - sorry.

Secondly, I am now a parent to a child I suspect shares my condition. She's not a teen yet but I mention her just to say how completely I can empathise with the urge to restrict access to special interests, especially if they seem inappropriate. It's incredibly wearing to hear about them non-stop for days, weeks on end, when they hold no interest for you, or embarrass you. Kids need their parent to show interest in what they're interested in, it's essential for developing a sense of self-worth. But it's so hard to indulge such intense interest consistently, it's exhausting. I think most kids bore their parents with this stuff to some extent but autistic children take it to another level. His behaviour must be very difficult to live with.

With my daughter, I have great difficulty in getting her to leave the house. I try to take her out into nature, which is something I find fascinating and calming. There's usually a meltdown before we can get outside, and when we get there she starts obsessively talking about whatever she's focussing on at the time, pretending she's a dog and only communicating in barks or describing in great detail a fantasy world that she's recently become obsessed by from a book/film/videogame. It's like she's deliberately blocking out all the external stimulation that I'm desperately trying to get her to take an interest in. In fact, that's exactly what she's doing, and she's doing it because she finds it overwhelming to be outside, so she takes refuge in a constructed world where she has control. Even though I understand this, even though I did, and still do, do this myself, it's infuriating and I don't always manage to behave the way I'd like to towards her.

I wonder if your son is doing something similar with his pretences. I wonder what's causing his anxiety.

And I know it's tempting to think that if you take away the source of information, the fascination will go away. It probably will, after a while and a lot of meltdowns and emotional distress and that's the problem, isn't it? We do a lot of damage by taking this action. And chances are, the interest will be replaced by another one and we may not like that one either, it may be worse.

Ultimately, we walk a very fine line. We understand that much of the behaviour is a coping strategy for anxiety. We don't want to take that away because, well, who wants their child to be anxious about anything? At the same time we have to help these little people learn how to 'be' in a world that has little patience for their idiosyncracies, among people who mostly won't accept their behaviour the way their families do, or make much effort to understand why they are different. It's a tough job. You're probably doing fine. Please at least know that while you're alone with your son's specific interests and behaviours, lots of people understand that the choices you have to make are difficult and have no easy answers.

I think you're making it worse by trying to stop him from watching.
The bad behaviours must be handled in some way.
Have you tried letting him watch what he wants and letting him carry on with the more harmless behaviours?

It's not my special interest, more like a stim, but I constantly whistle or make other melodic sounds if there's background noice or if I'm not feeling too good.
And let me tell you, if someone gets irritated and tells me to stop, it gets WAY worse.

/Mats

Just ran into this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMg-7K03u_Q
It's a (quite long) talk about how librarians should handle kids with autism.
Somewhere half way through the PhD having the talk says pretty much exactly what I said above.

/Mats

It can also be his way of masking. He needs something as a buffer inbetween him and the real world to enable him to cope. I am thinking if there are other ways to give the same effect that are less noticeable, though it really needs to be learned from and by him, as masking is a very personal thing to learn and do.

When my masking went a bit childlike, it was my Dad who put me straight and his stern words corrected me. I then developed more appropiate masking methods instead.

Can others see this as his way of masking? (Am I right or is it turning to his special interest, or is it both?)

Good call.
Yes, masking may very well be a part of it.

/Mats

Oh, he's had ABA?

You probably aren't aware of this, but ABA is considered by many autistic people to be seriously harmful. Many kids who have had ABA come out of it an emotional mess. ABA is basically equivalent to gay conversion therapy - it can cause the desired behaviour changes on a temporary basis, but at a serious cost to the person's mental health over the long term.

A lot of kids who've had ABA "regress" in puberty simply because as they mature, they start thinking more independently, and don't want to be as compliant as ABA encourages. This is actually a positive thing - it's normal and healthy for teens to question what adults tell them to do - but ABA encourages parents to think that children being unquestioningly compliant is a good thing.

It honestly doesn't surprise me that the same parents who put their son through ABA are also parents who are getting into full-on power struggles over a children's cartoon. ABA encourages this kind of frivolous concern for normal-appearing behaviour.

It sounds like you've been focused on trying to treat autism. And in the process, you've harmed him - with good intentions, yes, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Now, to help your son, you need to learn how to love autism, instead of treating it. Because autism is a part of who your son is. If you hate autism, you're hating him, as surely as a homophobic parent hates their gay child.