Autism-World

I have an 11 YO son who has been suspected of autism since he was 5 months old. His dad (my ex-husband) is a teacher and resisted a getting a diagnosis, fearing the label would follow our son for life. We were able to tap into the resources we needed for him without a diagnosis and so we went that way. Recently, however, we’ve had problems.

Our son’s only developmental hold-up now is social. He’s “odd”, but intelligent, and thank  goodness he’s cute as a button.

Our son’s biggest problem is in interpreting social situations. He is very good at making social rules. But he makes and applies them globally.

For example, in health class he learned that wet dreams are normal. “Normal” to him means he can talk about it on the playground or in the grocery store with strangers.

He has also learned about the dangers of alcohol and tobacco and came up with this rule. “ALL alcohol is evil. If you drink alcohol, you are always drunk.” (He has never seen anyone drunk. We rarely drink at home.)

Recently, his father had to attend a family event that his ex-stepdad was also at. The ex-stepdad was abusive. I am re-married and our son has a stepdad. After learning about his father’s stepdad, our son has developed a fear of his stepdad. He will back away from him, saying he fears being hit. “Step dads hit kids.”

Recently our son wrote a poem at school called Stepfather. It said “stepfather” is “always drunk” and “always hitting”. Needless to say, we were in some hot water for a while. Saddly, our son has a young, inexperienced teacher who really doesn’t “get” our son’s strange take on the world.

How do we help our son to learn social rules and to apply them appropriately?

Our son no longer has any special resources at school, because he is achieving academically. He will see a child psychiatrist this summer and go back to his pediatrician in the fall (soonest we can get him in) to finally get a diagnosis which I think will be highly-functioning autism.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Thanks for reading.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 31st, 2007 at 8:01 pm and is filed under Parent Resources.