Mrs. Bradbury
It will ALWAYS be the PeopleMover!
- Joined
- May 11, 2009
- Messages
- 1,049
I am posting here hoping that you guys will have some words of wisdom for me. I have suspected for years that something was different about my youngest (12 year old) son, but I also have just figured he was being himself so I went along with his quirks as best I could. But as he is getting older it’s occurred to me that clearly, I am going to need different strategies with parenting him than I used with my older two.
Backstory - my 2 older children are from a previous marriage. Both are bipolar (recently diagnosed, doing great on meds) and all 3 kids have ADD. My pregnancies with all 3 were completely normal, full term. No developmental delays in any of them. I am divorced from his father and remarried to my soul mate. We have a very happy home.
So, I have written a list of things about my youngest that, if taken separately, you could probably pass off as no big deal, but taken together, to me it makes me suspect Asperger’s. For example:
1. His gait - he walks kind of clumsily, on the outsides of his feet, and is pigeon-toed. He has been to his regular doctor and two different specialists who all said that absolutely nothing was physically wrong - they even did xrays of his hips, legs, feet. He rarely runs and is sedentary by nature and always has been.
2. Preferences for clothing - he has always preferred soft cotton clothing with no extras like collars. Only his love for my husband (his stepdad) will get him into a polo shirt - he wants to dress like him when he “dresses up”.
3. Not wanting to tie shoes - he would still be wearing Velcro shoes if I allowed him, but children can be so cruel I just won’t buy them. We had to force him to learn to tie his shoes at a much later age than normal. With my other two, they wanted to learn how; he couldn’t care less. There does not appear to be any problem with his hand/eye coordination - he has dead aim at the Frontierland shooting gallery, for example. He has to have athletic shoes for PE but otherwise he gravitates toward pull on boots in the winter and flip flops in the summer, as well as Crocs.
4. Food preferences - he has a very short list of things he will eat. My other two were picky (me too) but grew out of it, and he’s picky to the extreme - what kid doesn’t like mashed potatoes? And he is pretty unreasonable about some preferences - he likes Cheetos, cheez-its, goldfish, etc. but would NOT eat actual cheese. Now he will, but is still pretty rigid, for example, he likes only “mild” cheddar cheese so I bought some mild cheddar sticks and he won’t eat them because they’re not the shape he’s used to. Same cheese, just not a slice. Ugh. He has maybe a dozen things he will eat (besides sweets, no problem there) and he’s a bread-a-holic.
5. No friends - he’s never really had friends; I used to try to get him together with classmates, but if they came over once, they didn’t reciprocate. He was more social as a preschooler. I will say also, we live in a small rural town so there’s not as many kids that might “click” with him. Also, he seems to be much more comfortable with adults than kids - I think this may be because adults are more likely to overlook his quirkiness due to politeness.
6. Won’t say I love you - he definitely loves us, but up until recently has not been very demonstrative. In the last few months he has begun hugging again. I remember realizing at about age 3 that he would not cuddle anymore and I thought that was odd. We are a family that says “I love you” often and he just will not. If I ask him if he loves me he will say yes, but “the 3 little words” are not part of his vocabulary. In conversation he said to me “I love Bill” (his stepdad, my husband) and I my jaw dropped - that is the closest he’s ever come. My two older kids totally love him and spoil him, to be honest. He’s got it good.
7. Bright, but underachiever - my former MIL is a piece of work. This child is her only blood grandchild - we call him the Little Prince of that side of the family - and she thinks that he is the most brilliant child in the world; in my reality he’s my 3rd bright child, kwim? She is a social climber with new money and she drives me up the wall, but anyway . . . she wanted to be able to say that her grandchild was in the gifted program and to be honest, he is very bright - he could easily read the headline crawl on the bottom of the CNN screen in kindergarten. His father pushed for him to be tested for the gifted program, and as my daughter was in the gifted program and me too, for that matter, in this same school system, I felt the only advantage to being in the gifted program was smaller class sizes, so I cooperated even though I didn’t think he had the self-motivation of a truly “gifted” child. It took 3 tries before he was admitted. But my son hates school, always has, and does not want to put forth the effort. It’s one of my most frustrating challenges because I don’t know what to do to motivate him. I always did what was expected of me in school; my older son wanted to please so he did well, my daughter is very type A so she did well, and this one? He couldn’t care less about pleasing anyone. I have no idea how to handle it. We’ve tried taking things away, getting very involved with his projects, rewarding good behavior, etc. and none of it works. The only plus to him being in gifted is this is the same group of kids every year, and they take almost all of their classes together, which makes him more comfortable.
8. ADD - as I said, all 3 of my kids have it. He’s on medication that doesn’t work well, but does help.
9. Does not like strangers - He likes staying in his circle of known acquaintances and is most definitely not a joiner - no scouts or 4-H or sports teams. There were other reasons why we stopped attending church, but one of them was that he dreaded going to Sunday school - way beyond dislike - and church services, and with other things going on I gave up that fight.
10. On the other hand - when he does decide to step outside his personal space, the result is kinda weird. For example, one Disney trip a few years back I bought a bunch (100?) of glow bracelets from ebay for us to use on the trip and spread a little pixie dust, too. We talked about it being a nice thing to bring joy to someone or to distract a fussy child, and he would see me and my daughter handing them out every so often and he wanted to do it, too. But he couldn’t just give one to someone and move on. He wanted to talk to them about him giving them the bracelet, to where it was just too much. I really can’t describe it but the result effect was just odd. Another trip he bought a little pin thing that you could program to spell out different things, and once someone noticed it he was obsessed with getting other people to notice it, too. He gets plenty of attention - good attention - so it really perplexed me.
11. Obsessiveness - he has obsessed over different things since he was old enough to talk. These days, he will become interested in one thing and that is all he will think or talk about for varying periods of time, but some are always ongoing - chewing gum is a recurring theme, for example, as well as Nerf and the Northern tool catalog. Last week it was throwing a baseball with my husband; this week it is Old Spice commercials.
12. Sensitive to tastes, smell - I know kids have a more bland palate than adults, but his is in the extreme. Certain smells, too - when he was younger he had to have a stick-up type air freshener held up to his nose when he pooped or he would gag and throw up. I mean, I know it doesn’t smell good, but his poop didn’t smell worse than normal, and he just couldn’t stand it.
13. Doesn’t want to sleep - sleeping has always been a challenge with him. From the time he was about a year old, it’s as if he tries NOT to sleep. He gave up naps very early. I put him to bed at 9PM which I think is an appropriate time for his age (12) and his wake him time for school is 6:30AM. He wakes in the night and stays up, or pretends to go to sleep but doesn’t and stays up an hour or two, and sometimes when I get up at 5 AM he’s already awake. And then he goes around with dark circles and his father blames me. He does not have night terrors, or bad dreams, or an uncomfortable room or bed; I’ve tried varying kinds of night lights/no light/lamps, etc. and none of it seems to make a difference. It’s not as though he has insomnia; he looks sleepy, yawns and so on. When I question him about it, he’s never said he can’t sleep or said anything was paining him or bothering him. He is not allowed to have caffeine when school is in session (Friday nights & Saturday OK).
14. He does not pick up on other people’s feelings - the most recent example of this is that my daughter was a finalist for a 4-yr full scholarship for college. We (me, son, daughter) were on our nightly walk when she got the call that she did not get it. Both she and I were very upset; we both almost cried right there in public, but held it together and just talked about how disappointing it was. He heard all of this but was completely oblivious to our state - chattering about other things, cracking jokes, hanging his head out of the car window like a dog on the way home - but he was the first one in the door and immediately said to my husband, “Gracie didn’t get it.” It’s like there’s a disconnect unless it’s his feelings that are involved - he’s very aware of HIS feelings.
Others of you have much more challenging situations and I feel like a whiny wimp even bringing this up. My biggest question is what can I do to help him? How do I deal with his increasingly challenging school subjects when he doesn’t care? I live in the south, which isn’t on the cutting edge of anything, and as I said we live in a small rural area with a backward school system.
The bright spot is that my son seems entirely comfortable with himself. So I guess he’s not the one with the problem, I am.
Sorry for the long post, and thanks for your help.
Backstory - my 2 older children are from a previous marriage. Both are bipolar (recently diagnosed, doing great on meds) and all 3 kids have ADD. My pregnancies with all 3 were completely normal, full term. No developmental delays in any of them. I am divorced from his father and remarried to my soul mate. We have a very happy home.
So, I have written a list of things about my youngest that, if taken separately, you could probably pass off as no big deal, but taken together, to me it makes me suspect Asperger’s. For example:
1. His gait - he walks kind of clumsily, on the outsides of his feet, and is pigeon-toed. He has been to his regular doctor and two different specialists who all said that absolutely nothing was physically wrong - they even did xrays of his hips, legs, feet. He rarely runs and is sedentary by nature and always has been.
2. Preferences for clothing - he has always preferred soft cotton clothing with no extras like collars. Only his love for my husband (his stepdad) will get him into a polo shirt - he wants to dress like him when he “dresses up”.
3. Not wanting to tie shoes - he would still be wearing Velcro shoes if I allowed him, but children can be so cruel I just won’t buy them. We had to force him to learn to tie his shoes at a much later age than normal. With my other two, they wanted to learn how; he couldn’t care less. There does not appear to be any problem with his hand/eye coordination - he has dead aim at the Frontierland shooting gallery, for example. He has to have athletic shoes for PE but otherwise he gravitates toward pull on boots in the winter and flip flops in the summer, as well as Crocs.
4. Food preferences - he has a very short list of things he will eat. My other two were picky (me too) but grew out of it, and he’s picky to the extreme - what kid doesn’t like mashed potatoes? And he is pretty unreasonable about some preferences - he likes Cheetos, cheez-its, goldfish, etc. but would NOT eat actual cheese. Now he will, but is still pretty rigid, for example, he likes only “mild” cheddar cheese so I bought some mild cheddar sticks and he won’t eat them because they’re not the shape he’s used to. Same cheese, just not a slice. Ugh. He has maybe a dozen things he will eat (besides sweets, no problem there) and he’s a bread-a-holic.
5. No friends - he’s never really had friends; I used to try to get him together with classmates, but if they came over once, they didn’t reciprocate. He was more social as a preschooler. I will say also, we live in a small rural town so there’s not as many kids that might “click” with him. Also, he seems to be much more comfortable with adults than kids - I think this may be because adults are more likely to overlook his quirkiness due to politeness.
6. Won’t say I love you - he definitely loves us, but up until recently has not been very demonstrative. In the last few months he has begun hugging again. I remember realizing at about age 3 that he would not cuddle anymore and I thought that was odd. We are a family that says “I love you” often and he just will not. If I ask him if he loves me he will say yes, but “the 3 little words” are not part of his vocabulary. In conversation he said to me “I love Bill” (his stepdad, my husband) and I my jaw dropped - that is the closest he’s ever come. My two older kids totally love him and spoil him, to be honest. He’s got it good.
7. Bright, but underachiever - my former MIL is a piece of work. This child is her only blood grandchild - we call him the Little Prince of that side of the family - and she thinks that he is the most brilliant child in the world; in my reality he’s my 3rd bright child, kwim? She is a social climber with new money and she drives me up the wall, but anyway . . . she wanted to be able to say that her grandchild was in the gifted program and to be honest, he is very bright - he could easily read the headline crawl on the bottom of the CNN screen in kindergarten. His father pushed for him to be tested for the gifted program, and as my daughter was in the gifted program and me too, for that matter, in this same school system, I felt the only advantage to being in the gifted program was smaller class sizes, so I cooperated even though I didn’t think he had the self-motivation of a truly “gifted” child. It took 3 tries before he was admitted. But my son hates school, always has, and does not want to put forth the effort. It’s one of my most frustrating challenges because I don’t know what to do to motivate him. I always did what was expected of me in school; my older son wanted to please so he did well, my daughter is very type A so she did well, and this one? He couldn’t care less about pleasing anyone. I have no idea how to handle it. We’ve tried taking things away, getting very involved with his projects, rewarding good behavior, etc. and none of it works. The only plus to him being in gifted is this is the same group of kids every year, and they take almost all of their classes together, which makes him more comfortable.
8. ADD - as I said, all 3 of my kids have it. He’s on medication that doesn’t work well, but does help.
9. Does not like strangers - He likes staying in his circle of known acquaintances and is most definitely not a joiner - no scouts or 4-H or sports teams. There were other reasons why we stopped attending church, but one of them was that he dreaded going to Sunday school - way beyond dislike - and church services, and with other things going on I gave up that fight.
10. On the other hand - when he does decide to step outside his personal space, the result is kinda weird. For example, one Disney trip a few years back I bought a bunch (100?) of glow bracelets from ebay for us to use on the trip and spread a little pixie dust, too. We talked about it being a nice thing to bring joy to someone or to distract a fussy child, and he would see me and my daughter handing them out every so often and he wanted to do it, too. But he couldn’t just give one to someone and move on. He wanted to talk to them about him giving them the bracelet, to where it was just too much. I really can’t describe it but the result effect was just odd. Another trip he bought a little pin thing that you could program to spell out different things, and once someone noticed it he was obsessed with getting other people to notice it, too. He gets plenty of attention - good attention - so it really perplexed me.
11. Obsessiveness - he has obsessed over different things since he was old enough to talk. These days, he will become interested in one thing and that is all he will think or talk about for varying periods of time, but some are always ongoing - chewing gum is a recurring theme, for example, as well as Nerf and the Northern tool catalog. Last week it was throwing a baseball with my husband; this week it is Old Spice commercials.
12. Sensitive to tastes, smell - I know kids have a more bland palate than adults, but his is in the extreme. Certain smells, too - when he was younger he had to have a stick-up type air freshener held up to his nose when he pooped or he would gag and throw up. I mean, I know it doesn’t smell good, but his poop didn’t smell worse than normal, and he just couldn’t stand it.
13. Doesn’t want to sleep - sleeping has always been a challenge with him. From the time he was about a year old, it’s as if he tries NOT to sleep. He gave up naps very early. I put him to bed at 9PM which I think is an appropriate time for his age (12) and his wake him time for school is 6:30AM. He wakes in the night and stays up, or pretends to go to sleep but doesn’t and stays up an hour or two, and sometimes when I get up at 5 AM he’s already awake. And then he goes around with dark circles and his father blames me. He does not have night terrors, or bad dreams, or an uncomfortable room or bed; I’ve tried varying kinds of night lights/no light/lamps, etc. and none of it seems to make a difference. It’s not as though he has insomnia; he looks sleepy, yawns and so on. When I question him about it, he’s never said he can’t sleep or said anything was paining him or bothering him. He is not allowed to have caffeine when school is in session (Friday nights & Saturday OK).
14. He does not pick up on other people’s feelings - the most recent example of this is that my daughter was a finalist for a 4-yr full scholarship for college. We (me, son, daughter) were on our nightly walk when she got the call that she did not get it. Both she and I were very upset; we both almost cried right there in public, but held it together and just talked about how disappointing it was. He heard all of this but was completely oblivious to our state - chattering about other things, cracking jokes, hanging his head out of the car window like a dog on the way home - but he was the first one in the door and immediately said to my husband, “Gracie didn’t get it.” It’s like there’s a disconnect unless it’s his feelings that are involved - he’s very aware of HIS feelings.
Others of you have much more challenging situations and I feel like a whiny wimp even bringing this up. My biggest question is what can I do to help him? How do I deal with his increasingly challenging school subjects when he doesn’t care? I live in the south, which isn’t on the cutting edge of anything, and as I said we live in a small rural area with a backward school system.
The bright spot is that my son seems entirely comfortable with himself. So I guess he’s not the one with the problem, I am.
Sorry for the long post, and thanks for your help.
so very much,
