B'sMum

My 16 year old son had similar problems when he was younger. At primary school he could barely write and we got him an Alphasmart. He hated using it because it was another thing that made him different to the other kids. His fingers were very bendy and hurt after just a few illegible words. Now he writes pages and pages at a time - not the neatest writing you ever saw but acceptable and though they taught him at school to touch type ready for his exams he is taking his GCSE's this year and doesn't need any special considerations or extra time. When it was suggested by the SENCO of the local secondary school that he might be dyspraxic she recommended some special exercises. We stopped focussing on handwriting and he did all sorts of seemingly ridiculous exercises, like walking heel to toe along a straight line forwards and then backwards. At first he couldn't begin to manage without falling all over the place, and twisting his body and arms like you wouldn't believe and sticking out his tongue. We worked at it five minutes a day for weeks until he could do it easily. There were lots of other exercises introduced including crawling on his belly like a soldier, and holding up both hands palms towards each other but about six inches apart and trying to move just one finger on one hand. It was amazing you could ask him to wiggle his right index finger by pointing to it but NOT touching it and most times he would move the one next to it first then the correct one, and most times the same finger would move on the other hand. By loads of practice at this he gained proper control of his fingers and can write quite well enough. These exercises did far more good than all the years of handwriting practice he was forced to do. The other amazing thing was at primary school he was an avid reader but as well as poor and minimum amounts of writing, his spelling was attrocious despite remedial programs of every type. Now his spelling is really quite good apart from mixing up words that sound alike eg. their & there and throughout secondary school he never had any spelling interventions.

Thanks again all. He is off on a school trip next week - this doesn't seem to phase him at all, he goes away for a week every year with them and behaves better than the rest of the year either at school or home - perhaps there is something I should learn from this!!! Anyway, we are going to work on a reward scheme while he is away for introduction when he gets back. I will keep you posted on success. It is interesting but we bought a dictaphone at the weekend to record his meltdowns, to prove to him that we did actually say what we thought we said, rather than what he thinks we said. Each time he has started something that might usually lead to a meltdown we have started recording, and lo and behold it hasn't materialised. I think it is as much that I am keeping it together and not over-reacting cos I know I'm on tape too, but he seems to be keeping calmer too. I guess who cares so long as it helps. We haven't yet felt the need to play anything back.

scooter

Thanks everyone, some really helpful thoughts. When things are going badly it is sooo easy to fall into the trap of blaming all the behaviour on the AS and forgetting that all teenagers have strops regularly. I will certianly try to turn round my thinking about him blaming me - to feeling safe to explode with me, I really think that will help. Does anyone find reward plans still work at this age? I hadn't realised how long my first post was! Thanks for reading. I know this forum is going to be a regular stop for me.

Hi All, I am the mum of a 14 yearold boy who is having difficulty accepting his diagnosis of Aspergers which we got this time last year. He is convinced we have all ganged up on him just to ruin his life, cos now no one will want to give him a job. I new since he was about 8 that something was not right. He was always in trouble for silly things and they always got blown way out of proportion. He always denied everything he was accused of unless you phrased it just right. Like the time time he threw mud at the teachers car and called the dinner lady a liar cos he didn't do it. Of course when asked what happened he threw mud at Tom who ducked and it hit the car, so the dinnerlady had lied!!! She had his intention wrong. His primary school insisted he was a badly behaved poorly disciplined child and would not back me up when we went for his first assessment to CAMH, where he lined up baby toys on the doctors shelves in the corner of the room where we had to taslk about in his earshot. The doctor said he played nicely!?! and there was no sign of aspergers. He went up to secondary school with no diagnosis and ended up telling the teachers how they were teaching things incorrectly, and he preffered to do things a different way. So after many afterschool detentions they suggested we try again for a diagnosis, and this time they told things like they really were. Of course it is all my fault that he has a wrong diagnosis, if I just accepted that the teachers were wrong and he was right everything would be ok. I am the main focus for his anger. Now he is getting on much better at school and has been put in top set for most subjects, and now that he is about to do GCSE's has been able to drop the subjects that are not in his words "accademically challenging" like art and DT he is happier. But we get the fall out and melt downs at home. In fact last time but one, when we saw his peadeatrician he had a major meltdown and shouted at her she was rubbish, all they ever did was talk and he did not know how she could call herself a doctor - doctors are supposed to fix people and why couldn't she fix him, after all there was nothing wrong with him all he needed was help with anger management and no one would tell him how to control his anger etc etc etc... She decided there was no point us seeing her again as it did not seem to be helping, and she would see about him getting anger management help. He tried one session with another doctor and decided that was no good either. So now we see no-one. Most of the books we have read are aimed at catching things early and working with little kids. B thinks we are talking down to him if we try social stories or reward schemes. Does anyone have any ideas about how to work with disaffected stroppy AS teenagers??? Sorry it's so long but no one seems to understand. Pat