Our Aspergers Teenage Boy

Dad reports:
Of late everyone has grown increasingly short of patience with Tommy and we’ve used increasingly greater bluntness with him all of which could be contributing to his increased rudeness.

For the next two weeks, there will be a great effort put forth to exude only happiness. No shouting. No cursing. No attacks. No anger. Total forgiveness. Complete happiness. The family as a whole will deal and cope with stress as if there were no such thing as stress.

This will be a challenge but should have an extraordinary impact on the whole family. It would be easier if I could
June Cleaver (amz) our crew by spiking our drinks with Valium.

Dad reports this morning:
Tommy woke this morning with his usually resistence. I try to get his feet on the floor and have him sitting up in bed to at least try to get the blood flowing. If I don’t stand over him he lays down immediately upon my leaving. He comes close to missing the bus everyday and if it wasn’t for Poptarts and Honey Buns Tommy would skip breakfast everyday.

Dad reports yesterday:
We had an M-Team to discuss Tommy’s lack of progress. Basically Tommy has turned from a sweet child (I know, hard to match that up but usually adults say “what a nice boy!” looking beyond his issues..not anymore) to a mean bully. He has been stealing cookies from the LRE kids at lunch (he says, “I just do it to see if they notice then I give them back.”). He tried to unlatch the wheelchair on his bus (he says, “I was trying to tighten it.”). He slings snot at other students (he says, “I just pretend to. I don’t really do it.”) He has done no work (he says, “I did my work in school. I don’t have homework.” and yesterday his agenda said, “homework….” but he had no books.) He throws things at students and teachers (he says, “I don’t.” then prompts for specifics to see how much I know). The gym teacher and he race to the class because if he gets there first he plays with the electrical outlets, opens partitions, and goes to off limit places to play with equipment he is not supposed to touch. He pushes lessor functioning kids around but does nothing to the girl he likes (he says, “I don’t push anyone around.”) He is rude.

It is hard to want to fight for an education for an education for someone behaving this way. Tommy could have been so different by now had he not been discarded early on. From his attendance at KAEC (Knoxville Adaptive Education Center), a place where troubled students go to learn to be institutionalized (my opinion), has a record stating “this child does not belong here” but the system didn’t know where to put Tommy or what to do with him. So instead of teaching him, he was with the behavior students learning to behave and went years without a textbook. You can’t expect someone that was never taught to be a student to instantly become one.

Please don’t give up on Tommy!