Who is the One with Problems?

One of my favorite films from my youth was Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon.

Part Bruce Lee spoof, part blacksploitation – the film follows the development of a young man on his journey to become The Dragon Master, defeat his evil nemesis (hysterically named:  Sho`nuff the Shogun of Harlem), and win his sweetheart’s love.

If you didn’t see it, check out the recent Kung-Fu Panda – same film only animated and with lots of cool tie-in merchandise.

The climax of both movies is the moment where the learner discovers the ultimate truth to becoming the Grand Poobah of Kung Fu is simply: to believe in yourself.

It’s an old saw, but: “The journey to the greatest discoveries so often lead you right back to your own doorstep.”

I think too often we fail to accept what we already know to be true when it comes to raising our children. Instead of moving forward and making sensible changes, we keep hanging on like some sort of “thrill of discovery” junkie who simply “cannot believe” that boy has “gone and done it again!”

Take for example a recent episode with our NLD son. In the past month he has made it to school less than forty percent of the time, and even then often arriving very late in the day.

It dawned on me that instead of wondering what’s wrong with him that he isn’t motivated to go; perhaps I should be asking myself a different question. “Should it come as any surprise that a child with a super high IQ and with his sensitivities should be able to pick up on the things about this school that drive us crazy?”

This is not to say that his reason for not going is because he hates the school. Until he opens up we will never know what us going on inside his head. But at least remembering the obvious should make it a whole lot easier to tolerate him and not see him as some sort of “problem.”

Another example:

While he is technically our fourth child, in many ways he has become the eldest in our family and, I believe, is suffering from an inability to place himself in any context.

For the last four years his oldest brother has been at a boarding school and only comes home for a total of eighty days a year; hardly enough time to forge a relationship. Not to mention that our firstborn isn’t the type to place a random call to just schmooze with his siblings.

His next most senior brother is our Asperger boy who, though he is probably unaware of the intensity of his comments, emits such waves of hatred towards him that he cannot possibly be the big brother he craves.

Our eldest is a wonderful daughter, but she is pretty “useless” to a Lego digging, Gameboy loving, Tolkien reading self-proclaimed “geek”. She plays a mean game of Banannagrams, but she’s not going to whip your tail in a lightsaber duel anytime soon.

So is it any wonder he feels lost all the time?

And despite knowing all this, I struggle to keep this information front and center. Instead of a heart overflowing with compassion for the tough life this kid has endured, I find myself trigger ready, set on edge waiting for his next obnoxious comment or refusal to cooperate.

Tackling these thoughts head-on does not seem to work. I know what I am supposed to feel, but all the baggage makes it very hard for the message to sink in.

You know what I really need? My own Mr. Myagi to coach me on accepting this child.

I think I need a thousand: “Make his bed” or “Put treat in lunch” to start softening up those hardened attitudes.

LJ

I Read, Therefore I Am

I’ve always suspected I was different; different in that “special” sort of way. Sadly, my superpowers don’t qualify me for even a guest appearance on Heroes, and you won’t catch me saving the world with my talents.

My secret ability? I am part human, part reptile.

Call me The Chameleowenstein.

It seems I’m genetically predisposed (if you know my family, you know exactly where this comes from) to absorb any identity by simply reading about it!

Give me a book on ADD and before the author finishes thanking his wife, dog and publisher, I am convinced I must have the worst case of ADD ever. I mean, did this guy write this book with me in mind? Its so uncanny and unnerving how dead-on every line is.

Same is true for depression, Aspergers and basically any other debilitating condition that explains why, given all my “gifts,” I feel like my life is going nowhere.

Of course, the truth is I have none of the above and all of the above.

Mental health after all is not a point in space, but a dot on a continuum. It is a fragile balance between having just enough anxiety to get out of bed and to work, but not so much that I collapse under the strain of my own imagination.

The trick is knowing when to access a “touch” of a disorder, and when to keep it under wraps.

Sounds straightforward enough on paper, but this simple understanding has taken me the better part of the last twenty years to begin to grasp.

At one point I just stopped reading anything on the subject of personality disorders. You know, that moment when “Self-Help” becomes “Get-Help!”

I had to, since each reading session left me feeling guilty, like I was the sole source of my kids’ problems. Admittedly, this made it very difficult doing the work of reading up on their handicaps and getting them help.

Depression? Me

Sensory Integration? Sigh… Also Me

ADD – (I begin to fidget) That sounds like Me as well

And so on…

I credit the turnaround to my wonderful life partner who is also my best critic. I mean it with the highest level of respect and endearment when I say it takes a lot to impress her (Wow! I must have really been something special at one time to win her heart).

Even as I write this piece and pause to share the “Chameleowenstein” crack, I get a stone-faced: “Is that supposed to be funny?” look.

Boy can she be tough.

But she has saved me from plunging into the deep-end after every trip to the library.

Her mantra? A steady diet of: “There is nothing wrong with you.” And: “This is just some phase; I am sure you will feel better after a hot dinner and a good night’s sleep. Here, have a cookie.”

Meanwhile, sometime in the middle of the night, the book would suddenly vanish.

After twenty years I am finally believing she is right and, as the saying goes: “When the pupil is ready, the master will appear.”

Last week I discovered a great book that we are both finding helpful.  Looks like I’ve laced my superhero boots for the last time.

Finally, an author who doesn’t feel it necessary to devote the first thirty pages to “explaining” what Aspergers is or helpful checklists to see if “your child might have an issue.”

This book is blunt and to the point:

“Hey, if you are reading this, your kid has problems. Face it. You might too, but what’s the point talking about that? It’s the kid we want to help. So sit down, shut up and read.”

Here it is, for anyone else who is looking for straight talk about a whole range of issues.

I especially love the “and More!”  tribute to Billy Mays. Now if there was ever a guy with ADD…

LJ

Our NLD* Son

Its been a while since the whole steroids controversy was the most important subject in the land. While it made absolutely no impact on our family at all (my boys hate sports and everything they stand for), we’ve got our own internal issue with record keeping that has shaken our game to the core.

But first, a brief history:

It was six years ago when his then second grade teacher approached us with her concerns about his classroom behavior. Back then he was the most lovable, mushy boy with a mop of hair and a song always on his lips. He was a ray of sunshine and a bright spot in our lives whose smile would push back some of the dark clouds surrounding our then fourth grade Asperger son.

She began: “I am concerned about A. He’s clearly a bright young man, but his moods swing in all directions.”

“Well, yes” I said, “We’ve been dealing with some challenges with an older brother and I suppose that could impact him in some way.”

She pressed on: “What worries me is how he can be so happy one minute, and its like a storm cloud has rolled in the next. Its like he is two different people.”

“Mrs. S.” I replied, “Are you trying to tell us that you think our son is Bipolar? Because if you are, I don’t know what qualifications you have to be making that assessment.”

Now I was getting annoyed and angry.

Eventually she backed down from some of that language, but did not back away from getting the administration to push us into having him receive a psycho-educational evaluation.

One month and $1500 later our son now had a new label to go along with his name: NLD.

Much as had happened with our older Asperger boy, there simply wasn’t that much the psychologist could recommend about his condition. She gave us a  one page photocopy of ideas and instructions, the most useful of which was to tell his teachers that he needs to sing and mumble in class because this is part of how he teaches the material to himself; which, by the way, they did not happily accept or easily accommodate.

At least I could rub the “no signs of depression” diagnosis in his teacher’s face, and bury that suspicion.

Time and again, when things began to unravel with him, we would dutifully whip out this sheet and consult it for ideas and suggestions. It became somewhat of an oracle. We began to believe if we stared deeply enough at the seven hundred some odd words, the gods would fill our heads with inspiration. Truthfully, it wasn’t at all useful.

We did not have the funds to continue seeing the psychologist; I am still paying her off $25 or so every month, and it was either pride or plain stupidity (what’s the difference?) that kept us from asking our parents to help with the cost.

So we convinced ourselves we knew something about this condition, and tried our best to understand and figure him out on our own.

But we were not alone. Smelling the opportunity to make a buck on someone else’s misery, there finally began to appear books in the library on the subject of NLDs.

About three months ago we checked out what looked like the most promising ones and set aside two days to pour over them together. Not only did we not complete any of these books, we didn’t make it out of the first thirty pages.

Over and over again we began running smack into descriptions that simply did not make any sense.

“Poor fine-motor skills”

“Clumsiness”

“Inability to organize thoughts”

None of these describe our little whiz who transposes his favorite classical piano tunes from major to minor chords with no effort, draws intricate pictures of dragons and cartoon characters and has written between twenty to thirty pages of several books (he loses interest somewhere after the prologue or chapter one) complete with distinct characters and locations.

This time we took the lead to figure out what is really going on with him. He’s in the middle of being re-evaluated, this time by the county on their dime (I have learned a thing or two) and the preliminary reports are turning our lives upside down again.

“He does not have an NLD,” says the chief psychologist who is leading the team.

“He might have a touch of Aspergers” (oy vey) and, get this, “he might actually be depressed.”

Like they say in baseball, “It ain’t over till the fat lady sings.”

Hang on there Mr. Bonds, your name might not be the only one getting tweaked.

LJ

Physically Challenged

Newton’s third law of motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It is bitterly ironic that the latest fight between me and my thirteen year-old NLD boy should have erupted over this fact. He simply could not wrap his head around why this or any law of physics has any relevance to him. As he put it: “I pull on the door and it opens, I throw the ball up in the air and it comes down. Done. What more do I need to know?” And with that, he put down his pen and gave up doing his homework.

Ironic, because this latest confrontation is but another in a whole series of flawlessly executed examples of Newton’s law where the more we push, the more he seems to be pushing back.

Over the last three months or so, really since he began seeing an occupational therapist in earnest, there has been an unnerving parallel drop off in his willingness to do just about anything. He has been operating on a two to three day school week and completing homework and assignments is just not even a question. At least he doesn’t stoop to lying about it; he knows what needs to be done but shrugs us off and tunes us out. You’ve got to always be looking for those positives.

A child with an NLD is a disruption to normal family life. A child with NLD who sits around the house all day is destructive to normal family life. Not a situation that can last long without somebody or something exploding.

All the while that this breakdown is occurring, we are trying every which way to get him back on track.

Knowing how he desperately wants a laptop of his own, we made the following offer:

“From now till your birthday (in April) each day you get up on time will earn you a dollar. Each night you complete your homework and show it to us, you earn another dollar for a total of fifty a month, or about three hundred dollars.  As the ball starts rolling we beg your grandparents for a matching gift (putting my fundraising skills to work for us) and maybe throw in a few extra coins to get you a slightly better system.”

Wow, did his eyes light up when he heard this.

On cue, the following morning he was dressed, sitting on the couch with bag in hand….at 5:45 AM.

On cue, there we were smiling in the doorway as he waved goodbye and marched off to school as if the previous two weeks (or however long it had been since he started this latest shut down) never happened. We smiled to one another, heaved a sigh of relief and went about our business with a lot more optimism than we’d had in a long time.

For the next thirty days it’s one step forward and two back, but he does manage to earn a fairly respectable twenty-nine bucks. Because he can’t think of a safe place to keep his money, he brings it to school where it is, of course, promptly stolen from him.

This sorry encounter upsets the apple cart, and as the first Monday of the new month rolled around, its eight o`clock, he’s still in bed and we are starting all over again. A few more hot and cold days and we decide to modify the program to make it even more appealing.

I bite the bullet and buy him the laptop and lock it up in my wife’s closet (see my earlier post where I write how stealing has become a legitimate way to get what you cant earn). Instead of earning losable money, he now has to earn points each day. With a total possible twelve points a week (he has school on Sunday) we start him out requiring just seven points to unlock to door to paradise.

I may not be the best parent, but I might be the most optimistic.

Once again, the story repeats itself. He makes it through one week with a little fudging (I feel it is critical to start him off with a win, not a loss) but can’t build momentum.

It’s not only getting maddening, its getting expensive. Worse – I am afraid he’s getting comfortable with the notion of failing.

But of course he doesn’t see it that way. To do so would mean he’d have bought into Newton’s first law: A body at rest tends to stay at rest.

LJ

Private Screening

I have written a few times about the screen addiction issues that dominate a good deal of the interactions with our spectrum boys. On any given day the noise in the home is punctuated with some or all of the following:

The annoying – “Can I play?” (Put on a whinny voice, and remember, the questioner is a child with no sense of boundaries who gets right up in your face and whose breath practically shouts – “Hey! I haven’t brushed my teeth in what? A month now?”)

The banal – “Just five more minutes?”

The manipulative – “I’m almost at the end of the level (Translation – I need another 20-30 minutes)”

And the sure-fire tantrum bomb – “It’s not fair! How come he ALWAYS gets to play?”

If you seek a textbook definition of a love/hate relationship; this is the one.

It would probably make for good reading to compose a laundry list of all the pros and cons of “screen time,” and there are quite a few good points to argue in both directions. For today though, I would like to share one of the most pernicious challenges we face, and bring it to light through a conversation with my 13 year-old NLD son, which in itself tells a cool story too.

On a recent day, out of the blue, he got hung up on the disparity he has seen between himself and his older brother. As he correctly noted, the fifteen year old is pretty much given free reign on the computer. Whereas the other children rarely play during the school week and even then, no more than 45 minutes, he plays every night for an hour and a half.

As is his nature [the thirteen year old], he persisted in asking no less than fifty times, with each iteration his voice dropping more into that monotone that tells us he is slowly melting down.

Because he is hyper-sensitive to anything that smells of criticism, I knew that he would react poorly to my pointing out that his older brother is an exceptional student who has learned to strike a balance between play and getting his work done. While a more sensible child would take this as a challenge to do better so he too could earn this right, an NLD boy hears this as a put-down and that this is “all my fault!”

Here is what I told him instead:

“I am going to share with you some personal information about your brother, and you cannot repeat this to him. This is between you and me. While your brother is very smart, he possesses none of the gifts you have. He doesn’t write stories, he cannot draw, he does not play an instrument and he has a difficult time making friends.

Imagine what your life would be like without these outlets. How would you feel? How would you fill up the time without friends or hobbies?”

He sat quietly and listened as I laid this all out to him. Under normal circumstances I should have left off there and made this a pitch for compassion; but sadly, there has been so much bad blood between them, that I felt I needed to up the ante and really drive home the point. I continued:

“When your life is pretty empty, you have to find things to fill in the gaps or else you will go crazy. And what happens when people go crazy? They lash out and hurt people. The computer is your brother’s drug – its what keeps him from whupping the daylights out of you. You may not like it, and really, neither do we, but if he doesn’t have this, he will turn on you in a second and then your life will really be miserable.”

Amazingly, he got it. Since that conversation he has not shared this information with his brother (significant for someone with poor impulse control) and he bought into the concept that the computer is for his brother what Adderall is to him – a tool to assist in maintaining balance and focus.

Beyond this insightful moment is the very real challenge we face dealing with this “drug” addiction. He [the fifteen year old] has such a narrow focus of interests and no hobbies  that it makes it very hard to fight giving in. On the other hand, if it is an addiction, shouldn’t we be doing more to help him overcome it and discover hidden talents (he’s got to have them)?

For another conversation.

Its Your Turn to Share: How do you deal with sibling rivalry? What works best in your home?

LJ

Lets Put That in Writing

So many things in life tend to be a double-edged sword – its all in how you look at it.

I recently stumbled upon an insight that is actually the by-product of a deep seated fear and self-loathing which, now that I think about it, just may be the key to breaking free of some of the unhealthy behavior patterns in our home.

But first, some background history:

I can never forget an eventful dinner in our home shortly after I assumed the position of high school principal. My parents were in town and shared an evening with us and one of the influential couples on our board.  You can write the script for me. If anything could go wrong….

At some point my mother cornered me in the kitchen and asked: “Aren’t you embarrassed to have these people here watching your kids kill each other? How are they supposed to trust you to know what you are doing with their children?”

If I had been more mature, I would have shrugged it off and returned to the mayhem with a song and slight smile dancing across my lips. But as a very insecure, newly-minted professional with people to impress, I took it as a valid question. What is the answer to that one? Who was I fooling? What kind of expert educator can’t get his own children to sit at the table for five minutes? What kind of home is this where nobody has a nice word to say to one another?

I felt naked and exposed, and dove headfirst into a tailspin that had me questioning my whole career path and usefulness to the trade.

Cue an eight-year montage as we fast-forward to last month’s epiphany. Whizzing by us are scenes of unbelievable pain, hurt and anger. Meltdowns that last hours, doors slamming (and breaking) and miles of footage of mom and dad humbly apologizing to teachers and administrators while pledging to keep our child in line so: “it won’t happen again.”

With each mistake, with every heartbreak and disappointment came a ringing reminder that: “You’re no expert. You don’t know what you are doing.” Every trip though the aisles of Barnes and Noble, every new book on Aspergers that I didn’t pick up to read further hammered home the message: “What sort of parent are you anyways?”

It was getting really bad. I felt like running away. I wanted to start all over again. Deep down I wanted to become an expert. No, THE expert; but I just couldn’t see myself as anything but the guy stuck in his habits and poor routines.

One night I was listening to Sportsline and heard an interview with Curt and Shonda Schilling about their son with Aspergers and,….well how about that? They’ve just published a tell-all book. Curt, do you really need this “trophy” to go on your shelf with that famous bloody sock and set of World Series rings?

Don’t get me wrong, I am not begrudging the guy the right to keep his name in the spotlight, but I just know that a guy whose life revolves around a 162 game schedule, has no concept of what I go through every single day. What makes him such an expert any more than me? Because he’s a celebrity?

That is when I decided that my wife and I have got to write a book. On top of everything we’ve had to deal with, we’ve got a perspective shared by a precious few. Most families with ASD children stop having kids once they’ve discovered their lives are about to change. We, on the other hand, took the “road less traveled” and continued to have another four (seven in total).

From the moment I let it slip from my mouth, the most amazing thing happened. I stopped seeing my children from within the trenches. As I explained to my wife: I’ve begun to think of us as scientists who’ve been handed these cases to study and write up reports. At the end of the process there will be a supervisor [G-d] reviewing our performance with the expectation of our uncovering findings to share with the rest of the “scientific” community.

That is all it took. One minute I was hopelessly lost, mired in the daily grind, and the next, vaulted to the heights of professional observer with all the tools I need to Git Er Done. With this small change in perspective I was suddenly able to see just how much I had learned these past fifteen years; how much I had grown through incremental steps.

It was like Pat Morita tapped me on the shoulder and said: “Ahhh but you always knew you were the Dragon Warrior – you just needed to Believe!“

It’s your turn to share: What is your key to maintaining perspective? Where does your confidence come from?

LJ

Missing Inaction

I was recently doing one of my favorite things – rereading old posts – when I noticed an anomaly: My archive section makes a mysterious jump from January to March.

And then it hit me… I had gone the entire month of February without posting an entry! How could that possibly be?

It certainly wasn’t for lack of ideas. With two major snowstorms and the kids out of school for eight days, there were plenty of interactions to share and learn from. Did the shortness of the month suddenly rush up at me and blow by?

As a perfectionist I know this little blot is going to bother me more than most. I am not the sort of person who just shrugs off the little stains of life and says: “Its okay, I can always buy another,” or “nobody will notice anyways.” I began to get anxious and wonder if maybe there was some way to roll back the WordPress calendar so I could cover my tracks.

But no, I don’t have those sort of hacking skills and so the hole will just have to stand – a glaring omission telling the world that I am not as disciplined and as on top of my game as I would hope to be.

I guess that pretty much sums up my parenting experience too (and, I suspect many can relate).

How many “Februarys” have slipped through my fingers as they came and went quickly catching me off-guard or unprepared?  Prime educational moments that I totally blew and will never be able to get back.

How many “Februarys”  have been lost in the time vortex because I chose a course of inaction hoping that maybe the problem will solve itself on its own?

How many “February’s” vanished not because I don’t love my kids, but for a thousand other reasons that have to do with my own personal stuff?

And so on. Its the dad’s lament.

But you know what? Despite my inadequacies and failures, they are really doing great; even the boys with AS and NLD. I think my kids are actually better off for my having been absent or “negligent” with my duties. I know I can be a bit of a control freak (it has to do with that perfectionist thing), so it could be a true gift that their dad is not always there to breathe down their necks at homework time.

And maybe its better this way for me too.

It used to be that every time I walked through the mental health section at Barnes and Noble I would feel uneasy to see another two or three books about families struggling to raise a child on the spectrum. I know they are just trying to help, but it seemed like everybody was doing more to help their child and I felt guilty and terrible. (I suppose that’s why I would often start in the mental health section and wind up in self-help)

People were extolling the merits of special diets and chelation therapies that supposedly “cure” autism; how they triumphed at getting that coveted IEP; tips on how to get big bucks from the government by having your child declared “disabled” (yechh), and so on.  Me? If I can finish up a long day and still have enough in the tank for a smile and a warm remark, that is saying something.

I guess a lot of those feelings are to be expected when we live in a super-programmed generation where every parent is looking for that angle to help their child get an edge on the competition. Which is interesting in itself when you consider that most of the people we consider successful got there by overcoming obstacles, not having them leveled in front of them by someone else.

Its your turn to share: Kids are far more resilient that we tend to give them credit for. Share with us a story where you found you got more by giving less.

LJ

This is going to hurt me more than you

My dear son.

Last week I stood in the doorway watching you and your classmates celebrate the Bar Mitzvah of a friend. I am relieved you did not notice me behind the glass; you would have not understood the tears in my eyes.

The room was filled with light, laughter and excitement. Boys were dancing, singing, screaming, grabbing the microphone from the DJ and belting out the latest tunes – having a roaring good time.

You were not among them. You sat in a chair looking lonesome and forlorn. Your suit was not sharp looking, your tie had a huge grease stain straight down the middle. I would learn later that you were hungry. You couldn’t bring yourself to try the Chinese food, even though it meant causing yourself pain and discomfort.

I observed a classmate come over to you and grab your hands in vain as he tried to pull you into the circle of activity. You quickly and forcefully slammed yourself back down into your seat, rising again only to mope around the room with a sad look on your face.

When the party ended and you sat down in the car, I listened as the other boys chatted excitedly while you heaved one deep sigh after another.

My sweet son. Life is so confusing for you; there is so much you do not understand. My tears were not shed in disappointment; they flowed from a place in my heart that feels the deepest pity and compassion. For your life is like mine, and in your pain I remember my own.

They say that the longer you live, the more you begin sounding like your parents. For me, the more involved in my children’s lives I become, the more I understand why my own childhood was so frustrating and dangerously unfulfilling.

I recall the parties that always ended with a broken heart; the feeling that people were laughing at me and not with me; the envy of those smooth operators who always had something funny to say or knew how to dance and be the life of the party.

Those days were so heavy with meaning and dread that with each failure my world was crashing down around me. The smell of each of your sighs is laced with that same anxiety, the same feelings of hopelessness.

I want to look you in the eyes and tell you: “Do not despair young man. I too didn’t know that what made me so different then would one day put me on a path to finding real meaning and achieving great things.” But I don’t know if, in that tangled NLD mind of yours, if you can really hear me or understand that I am standing here alongside you, crying with you, reliving and tasting the old pain.

I will tell you anyways. You may be angry with me. You might do as you often do when I try to give words of comfort; scream and yell that I don’t understand you or don’t care. Watching you suffer is painful enough; watching you go at it alone would be even worse. One day you will understand.

Love,

Dad

Mother of all Meltdowns

It has now been about a month and a half since IT happened. We’ve had bad experiences before but this was the first time I seriously considered calling 911 for help. I’ve never seen anyone have a nervous breakdown, but I cannot imagine it being far off from our MELTDOWN.

IT began as most things in our home do, as a small incident that most kids would have shrugged off. I don’t really know who started IT and can’t remember if IT was a push, a nasty comment, an annoying noise – whatever IT was; our twelve year old stormed over to the table where we were dining with guests and demanded that we put a stop to IT. We’ve become very focused on helping him disengage from sticky situations before they escalate out of control, so we invited him to join us at the table where his talents would be appreciated by the adults.

I must have blinked because in an instant he was gone again, somewhere in the house, up to no good.

Moments later the happy banter at the table came to a crashing halt as the kitchen exploded with violence. Hidden from view we could only surmise what was transpiring.  We let a full thirty-seconds of punching, screaming and general pandemonium pass by before launching an intervention. A helpful rule of thumb in homes like ours is: “no reaction till blood flows.”

You can never know who threw the first punch, so when in doubt, you always go for the one who was “out of place;” the one who had been told to keep away but, like a fly to vomit, couldn’t hold themselves back.  As I smiled weakly to our guests my wife dragged the twelve year-old kicking and screaming up to his room for a lengthy time-out.

No sooner had she closed the door than his bedroom exploded. We could hear him knocking over bookcases and shredding sheets from his bed as he howled in fury. With a final nod to our company I muttered: “I guess there really isn’t ever a good time to lose your mind,” and hustled off to see what was left to salvage.

I found him in a pile on the floor hyperventilating to the point that I was really scared he was going to stop breathing altogether. His glasses lay in a twisted heap of metal and cracked plastic; an early victim of his rage. A quick survey told me that this was the worst of the damage, save for this poor young man who was writhing uncontrollably, practically seizing with misery.

I held him in my arms for thirty-minutes while he calmed down. As is typical for him, he was unable to see his role in any of this. He kept wailing that nobody loves him, that he is always to blame and that we never punish his older brother for making him so angry in the first place that he has to punch him.

I was really, really scared. Scared that we might need to call an ambulance, scared that he had completely lost his mind, scared that I was to blame for not getting him serious, deep help long ago. I know the worst thing you can do for your child is treat them as if under the watchful eye of the neighbors, but this might be one allowable exception – I am worried what they might think if we didn’t do SOMETHING. Yes, we are turning the wheels to get him and the whole family into some serious therapy.

As we were calming down together I planted a seed in his head which as yet has not shown signs of taking root. I tried to validate how hard it has been for him to live with an older brother who has such a difficult time being nice to him. I almost went as far as to mention the Asperger word, but as we have not yet revealed that to the fourteen year-old, I witheld myself from doing so. I often say about this younger son that as much as he has issues of his own from his NLD, he is also likely suffering from PTSD.  

Its your turn to share: What was your scariest moment with your AS or NLD child? How did it turn out?

LJ

Blockhead!

Our fourteen year old has a problem. Well, many really – but of recent concern is his vast, but now useless Lego empire.

For the better part of the past ten years, every dollar, every ounce of birthday money has been poured into building a one-of-a-kind collection of Star Wars vehicles, Harry Potter play-sets, castles and space-age vehicles cast in those ubiquitous plastic bricks.

Its not an exaggeration to say that an entire room of our home has become a  shrine for his completed pieces and many of the colorful boxes they came in. He wont touch them anymore, nor does he let anyone else get within ten feet of the room – especially siblings. I don’t think he even sits in the room and looks at them with any warm feelings. It is really tragic and weird.

One of the saddest moments in a parent’s life is that day your boy packs up his Legos and trades them in for… well, you fill in the blank. Up go the muscle car pics, the SI spreads and glowing homages to the guitar gods, and away goes the innocence and simplicity of youth.

We watched our eldest NT child make this transition with grace and class. Thanks to his generous spirit and big heart, his room has become a cherished goldmine where younger siblings spend hours sifting, analyzing and claiming new treasures to add to their own hoards.

Not so for our AS son. He has constructed an intricate series of rules and laws about who may touch his Legos and who has been forever banned, it rivals the US Tax Code in complexity. And don’t even bother to engage him in a discussion about what to do with this collection unless you want to relive the Passion (Gibson version).  His mind is so limited by these rules that he simply cannot see a way out. Try this on for size:

Dad: “You could just give them away to your brothers. That would be a nice thing to do”

Son: “They are not touching my stuff. NEVER. And they might break or lose them and I would be angry.”

Dad: “Well then, why don’t you sell them to your brothers at a discounted price? At least you will have gotten paid for them and might not care so much?”

Son: “No, I don’t want their grubby hands on my stuff.”

Dad: “Why don’t we put an ad in the local penny-paper and let some other boy enjoy them?”

Son: “Because I am not sure I would get the best price.”

And so on.  I am not saying he is being completely unreasonable. There is logic to some of what he says. The problem here is a total lack of creativity and willingness to look at all the possibilities and maybe stitch together a composite idea that would satisfy his needs. We know that if left to his own, these Legos will still be sitting on their shelves long after he has moved out of the house and into his own place (please G-d, one day).

There is stubborn, and then there is Aspergers. We want to teach him how to problem solve on his own, but we also want this stuff gone so the room can be useful again.

Its your turn to share: How long to we let him try to work this out before we step in and make a decision for him?

LJ