Our Aspergers Teenage Boy

Dad reports:
Easter weekend was hard on Tommy. He had the pleasure of spending both Friday and Saturday night with the grandparents. They say he went to bed at midnight on Friday but I suspect that he stayed up most of the night and rose at 8:30am. He was a terrible grouch. In church on Saturday night he really wanted to work himself up but somehow contained himself. Sunday he was overstimmed and grouchy but, with the exception of my having to remove him from the restaurant where the family was having Sunday brunch, he was manageable and tolerable.

Hopefully this does not represent a downspin.

The holidays are also so hard on Tommy.

Dad reports:
Last night we have a very nice group of people attend the support group meeting. Great discussion was had and amazingly enough we barely touched on the school system.

Cathy attended the meeting which meant we had all 4 kids. We filed in like a scene from a movie or a clown car. “This is my son Tommy.” 2 seconds pass. “Wife Cathy” 2 seconds pass. “That’s Sarah” 2 seconds passes. “Noah” 1 second. “And Amy.” The kids were on fantastic behavior and not the distraction I expected them to be. Another mother brought her 2 children so at the beginning of the meeting the kids out numbered the adults but we got reinforcements.

Tommy’s favorite part of the library is the “Quiet Study.” He takes a book of comic strips, like Garfield, into the room and closes the door so that he can laugh out loud without disturbing anyone. Tommy has been very nice and cooperative lately. He has almost no outbursts and when he does they are very brief. Even the edge on his sharp tongue has dulled.

Dad reports:
Tonight at the West Knox Branch of the Public Library the Knoxville Aspergers Support Group will meet from 6pm-7:30pm. The library is located on Golfview Dr and Kingston Pike. This is across from the PF Chang’s and the Comcast/Papermill sinkhole.

See Yahoo Groups and search for knoxville_aspie_support for more information.

Mom reports: I don’t want to stomp on our good fortune, but Tommy has been in a MUCH better mood lately. Very few tantrums. Just some short outbursts of anger and demands for control that you would expect from a teenage boy. We are getting better at anticpating his rules but mostly it is Tommy choosing to be less grouchy.

Dad reports:
We suspect the creaking and banging we heard was Tommy messing around and keeping himself up. The grouchiness from him this morning supports that he stayed up too late.

Tommy wants desperately to have a power struggle with his sister over the bathroom and I’m not allowing it which further irritates Tommy. He wants to gripe about her monopoly but I make him eat breakfast instead. When he is done with breakfast, coincidentally, she is done with the bathroom and they can switch places.

Dad reports:
Tommy’s fish tank has aquired a slow leak. I suspect that it either was always there and our last cleaning/moving of the tank aggrivated the leak or that when I asked Tommy to put the rocks back in the tank that he just plopped them into the tank. I didn’t specify to be gentle and I didn’t supervise the returning of gravel to the tank.

I was very pleased to find a replacement at Big Al’s Online (found through Froogle) at 1/3 less the price than the manufacturer’s replacement. Tommy will be thrilled when it comes in and so will I!

Mom reports: Tommy was allowed to stay up until 11 last night but was awake, alert and jolly before 8 this morning when he usually sleeps until lunch on the weekends. Why the sudden change? Dad put a working computer in Tommy’s room yesterday. I wonder what will happen when Dad runs the network cable into Tommy’s room. Will Tommy get up eagerly on school mornings to play on the computer before school?

Dad reports:
Mom provided me this link from Wampum on Monday, the same day we were once again told that Tommy may need 24/7 care that could potentially be long term (ie. needs institutionalization for awhile). While we are not totally in disagreement we are not necessarily ready to take that step either. Tommy is making choices. We need to help him make better choices and these past 3 days he has.

In Note to friends, family and near acquaintances of PoAs on Wampum (in all its greatness) MB Williams writes:

It is your duty, no, your God-given right as the parent of a neurologically perfect child (or at least the gleam in the eye of one) to bring [the parent of an autistic child] down to earth and behave sensibly, i.e., understand that the sooner they institutionalize their autistic child, the sooner they can get on with their lives.

Well, don’t do it.

For those of us that are frequently beat down with the words of “give up” MB Williams’ writing is a nice morale booster to which I will return and re-read periodically. Does it mean that we should not get Tommy 24/7 care and help? I don’t have that answer yet. Since Tommy seems to be consciously making choices and more in touch with himself than we’ve ever seen him, if 24/7 care helped bring him around to being a functional, happy person faster and more completely than we can acheive then perhaps that is in his best interest. If we get him 24/7 care to help us, then we are being selfish rather than good parents.

Mom reports: The therapist just found out that we are having a new baby. Now the therapist is convinced that we should look for a long-term care facility for Tommy. Tommy has moments when he is funny, helpful and down-right pleasant. How can I put him away as if he had no potential to ever be a positive contribution to society. I would be sealing his fate because once he is in a group home he will cease to learn and grow as a person. Sure, we would love to have more calm and less tantrum in our home. But Tommy is still a part of our family and he is loved very much. I would feel like I lost a child if I put him in some group home. I wonder if it is time to find a new therapist who hasn’t given up on Tommy or on our family.