Our Aspergers Teenage Boy

Dad reports:
Tommy likes to wait until the last possible moment to get out of bed which sometimes..most of the time..means he is getting dressed after the short bus has arrived and tooted its horn. I used to let him grab a honeybun or poptart and eat it on the bus until the bus owner complained about all the mess Tommy was making.

Plan B. If Tommy was late, I would give him a dollar and let him buy breakfast at school. Not only was this going to get unnecessarily expensive, I felt it reinforced a bad habit and I am not sure that Tommy wasn’t turning it into an under the table allowance by taking the dollar and skipping breakfast anyway. I’m not paying my son $20 a month to sleep in.

Plan C. One day I told Tommy “if you want breakfast at school, reach into your wallet and take one of your dollars.” He didn’t like the idea. I said I wake him with plenty of time to get ready for school and have breakfast before the bus arrives.

Today he comes in the kitchen to grab a poptart on the promise that he would eat it at school and I refused him. I told him to get one of his own dollars and he walked out of the house angry, without breakfast and without money to buy breakfast at school.

It feels like the right thing to do but that doesn’t mean it feels good.

Dad reports:
The brand new, nice looking jeans that Tommy in his hysterics decided to roll around in the mud with are stained badly. Apparently the mud/clay mix we have in our yard is just nasty.

Dad reports this morning:
I think Tommy is starting to be happier. He seems to be waking up easier in the mornings also albeit he still lays in bed until the last minute.

Yesterday I checked Tommy out of school at the very end of the day and took him to STAR. We missed the first two of 6 classes (winter riding is short) due to missing a phone message. We arrived and they declared “There’s Tommy! And he brought hair!” (in response to his longer hair). STAR has a new horse that is perfect for Tommy. It’s huge! I joked that it was a Clydesdale. He had a good session. The instructors said he was his old negative self and they wouldn’t let him get off the horse until he said something positive and he chose “at least we are being rained, snowed, hailed or sleeted on.”

Apparently school went well yesterday too. Tommy’s Dana screen is broken now but they have called in for a repair.