Please help Very sensitive :(

[adamsmum]

My eldest is 14yrs old. He has PDD & DCD. He has been obsessed by other boys bottoms and bits from very young. We hasve tried teaching him about privacy and not touching others bits but he will still act inapropiatly around others. He masterbates in his bedroom with the door open nowing his brothers or me will see. In the past he touched his brothers. We tried following advice from social workers like removing tv if he do's it. Or time out that didnt work Yesterday his little brother said the eldest did it again I called social worker this morning to ask for eldest to get help . Im very upset as im worride we are going to end up in trouble. I dont understand why he keeps doing it as he knows its wrong. I dont know how to help him any more She is coming out next week

[LancsLad]

I think it is important to be open minded about such behaviours. Very often we have very pervasive cultural attitudes embedded in our society. A lot of these attitudes have been generated from a religious platform many centuries ago and we have to recognise them as such. There is another way of looking at humans as highly developed animal species of the planet and we can choose to see things from this perspective. I will be open and say I take this second position but respect the fact that others might not do so.

 

Adamsmum as you highlight your son has a number of diagnosis for various developmental disorders and this will affect how he sees his world, how he relates to it and importantly his systems for exploring and learning more about himself and others around him. As young children we explore our bodies it is a natural thing to do. I am going to be very open and frank here bacause hidding behind political correctness for sensitivities sake often gets us no where. It is important that we understand our bodies and make sure they are in good working order. As an ape it would be pretty stupid for a male of the species to die from scepticemia following on from a bacterial infection of the penis because of dirt and germs held behind a foreskin. As such apes will inspect themselves of both sexes for hygenic reasons and will be hot wired in their brains to do so. What would the benefit be for humans to have lost this natural trait through evolution answer none whatsoever, so it remains in place. I bet there are many doctors out there who wish people would be better at inspecting their own bodies on a more frequent basis rather than feeling it is a 'dirty act'.

 

Your son is now at an age where his body is developing and his sexual organ will possibly be in full working order. As such masturbation is a natural act. Your son will need to explore this new function his body is capable of and to give it meaning in his life, again I think this is natural.

 

I do not think we should be judgemental here about behaviours which are wholly natural and in denying their existence we just create further issues. What I can understand is that the way your son explores such concepts might not be constrained by cultural expectations. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I think it is important that you put down some realistic and appropriate boundaries. I have a 7 year old son and am quite happy at him seeing me naked in the house as is his mother, we are a family. As my son gets older do I think it is right for him to have to deal with issues of puberty all by himself or rely on the judgements of his peers, no I do not. If that means we examine each others penis in explaining things then that is what I will do. Does this have to be done constantly, I do not think so rather once some understanding is there in place I think it is reasonable to say we have crossed that hurdle and don't need to return to it unless there is some future issue, for example later in life my son might want me to have a look at his genital area as he might want advice about a sexual infection and should he see adoctor.

 

I fully appreciate that in the case of your own son this might be a bit more difficult because getting over hurdles and him grasping the concepts might take a few attempts and differing approaches given his abilities. This might be difficult for hin in that his bodily functions have far outstripped his mental capacity to rationalise them, but be patient and persevere.

 

The final area I am going to cover is that of Social Services and working through these issues. Adamsmum if you look at my personal profile you will see that I was involved in foster care, and as such had lots of contact with social services. One of the individuals we worked with was a boy of 14 who had been sexually abused at an early age on a number of occassions and had gone on to sexually abuse another boy in a residential scenario and rape a girl, not easy stuff to deal with. I want to make it clear I am not making any connections here other than they are of similar age and have a fixation with their own genitalia the contexts are otherwise very different. The point I do want to make is ignoring issues is in no ones interest and as such you have to be open and honest about how you go about things.

 

The boy I worked with had a number of beliefs around sexualised behaviour, and these were highly understandable reading through his case notes. Whilst his behaviour was totally unacceptable, he broke some serious laws, what do we do? Like all behavioural modification it is about being open in exploring alternative models of behaviour and reinforcing them. With this child it was about defining appropriate boundaries and presenting conventional thinking of what was right and wrong. In this respect I would have said that masturbation was a natural act, but something which was about self satisfaction and as such a personal thing. It is not a public act and this is supported by public decency laws. Based on such things masturbating in front of a group of peers to demonstrate sexual prowess might be going too far, though some animal species do this and I can understand why he had been caught doing this sort of thing at his residential school. When it comes to other peoples bodies then it is a case of not touching unless invited as a social norm. It would be wrong to say never, because my partner from time to time asks me to do things which is part of a healthy sexual relationship, again it is about being open and putting behaviour into a broad context.

 

If there is a dangerous issue here is bringing in concepts which simply do not exist in the first place adding confusion into the mix. I think my son has quite a cute bum, that does not however make me gay, nor does it make me a paedophile, rather it is an asthetic judgement on my part. I think often when behaviour is in the open there are very little issues with it. For a number of years I played rugby and that would involve being in open environments naked and sharing team baths. I can honestly say there was less homophobia in such environments than in any others I have been in and I have played with gay team mates. Being open challenges predjudice and puts it in its rightfull place as a minority opinion based on a lack of understanding. If your son is looking at his brothers and they do not mind then what is the issue, if they do then they should with your support tell him thye do not like it and could he try not to do so in future. If you are worried about the reaction of your social worker to issues like this I would question the amount of understanding your social worker really has about children. In my experience I have never felt I had to be carefull about anything when dealing with children in our care. That might be down to the nature of the cases we had and as such the social workers attatched to them but I found them to be a very open minded bunch. In my situation I had of course had to document down anything which was discussed of this nature for future security, personally as a parent I do not feel you should ever feel obliged to take such approaches.

 

I am not sure if this helps Adamsmum but it is how I see things. I do appreciate that due to his make up this is a difficult proposition to deal with and without knowing him personally I am not sure what approach I would take. For a number of years as a teacher I would take on the responsibility of delivering sex education in secondary schools along with the community nurse, much to the relief of other members of staff. At times I felt a bit uncomfortable doing this but knew for example I had massive respect from the kids for being open and honest, I always felt sorry that the other teachers passed up on this opportunity. I think it is also the case that many parents pass up on opportunities to build real respect from their children when it comes to anything of a sexual nature. As adults it is our responsibility to provide direction to our younger members of society so that they feel empowered to make their own decisions from a relaxed and well informed opinion. Thats all we can do. Sexual emotions are a really strng force in our lives and come to the forefront of our minds at different times of our lives. We need to recognise the potency of such emotions and understand they, trying to supress them through doctrine in my experience is a massive mistake to make, though it is fair to say that many people might find this sort of behaviour to be highly offensive, you might, but that is one viewpoint there are others to be considered.

 

Just a few thoughts.

[asdinit]

I do sympathise with you - it's not the best situation to have to deal with. I had a couple of issues with this area with my AS son who is now 15yrs - here are a few suggestions that we used and that worked well:

 

Social stories - if you need help with this one just shout, I have loads in my collection

House rules - this is for others just as much as it is for your son with difficulties, such as using the makaton stop sign and verbalising 'stop' if it looks likely another may be inappropriately touched not just running off screaming, keep bedroom doors closed

Social rules - touching xxxx here xxxx (picture of where) is OK, touching xxxx here xxxx is not OK - or as I did, use a cross for no and a tick for yes

Rules for your sons behaviour - if I feel like this xxxxx, that means I can do this xxxxx; don't be afraid to be explicit with this one as your son must be able to understand

Books about what happens when people sexually mature - this may need to be more needs appropriate than age appropriate; I bought my son a book for children his age and he didn't understand a word of it! I had to get one aimed at primary school children for him to comprehend the meanings

 

Good luck

[Special_talent123]

is he very confused about his sexuality. and does he understand right from wrong

[oxgirl]

Oh dear, that's very difficult to deal with, I'm sure. I know that if the behavioiur was in a younger child, the best advice would probably to make a concerted effort to ignore the behaviour. It could be the affect that he is having on those around him that he is enjoying, rather than the actual act itself. Because he knows it gets a big reaction, it could be spurring him on more. Of course, your lad being that much older, it becomes a lot more sensitive and the 'act' becomes more sinister and meaningful in other peoples' eyes, even though it could be that, for you lad, it's just as innocent as a five year old doing it.

 

I think it's very good that you are getting support from social services and I think you really need professional advice about this. Masturbating is, of course, a very normal thing, especially in teenage lads, and it wouldn't be a good idea to afix a sense of shame to the act, it's merely the question of privacy that is the important issue here, I think. My lad is 18 and recently became very worried that he had done himself some harm by masturbating. He was shaking and extremely anxious and, when I asked if he had been masturbating, he said he had but was very ashamed. It took a lot of reassurance from me before he believed that it was a perfectly normal thing for a lad his age to be doing and that he shouldn't worry about it at all. He said that he thought I would be very shocked or disgusted or something and, again, I think it's so important to not let your lad feel that it is a dirty or shameful thing, in the right circumstances, of course; i.e. a time and a place!

 

Hope you get the help that you need to make your lad realize the need for privacy in these things.

 

~ Mel ~

[LancsLad]

I have been very interested to read through the other responses and think there are some very valid points made here. I think an emerging concept is that of rules and what is appropriate.

 

It needs to be understood that a lot of individuals such as myself with AS tend to see things in very black and white terms a lot of the time and that for a rule to be meaninfull there has to be some very good reasons for its existence, and our ideas and at time behaviour needs to be understood from this belief position. I think where some of us have difficultly are rules which are very much wrapped up in hidden social conventions.

 

A lot of the time I am pretty sure that non autistic adults might not be aware exactly what these hidden rules are but they are however aware of grey areas and as such play very safe in such scenarios 'just in case'.

 

Mel makes a good point here in respect to privacy, and what he does in his own space should be far more flexible that what he may be allowed to do in front of other members of the family who will be understanding of his unique personal charectristics. I suspect there are many adults in this country who practice a wide range of sexully orientated behaviours such as cross dressing for example with the full acceptance of members of the houshold who accept them for the person they are, doesn't mean they like it but they have come to accept the behaviour. I think this is the type of question which can only be dealt with on an individual case basis. Some people simply might not be able to accept such behaviours and so relationships might not be sustainable. I will say a lot of these type of behaviours still carry a social taboo and whilst I might not find them a problem I can respect others might find them very challenging and so without doubt compromise postions are taken in respect to what is lawfull and non lawfull behaviour.

 

A very good point is that from Special-Talent about confusion over sexuality but I would not personally associate right or wrong to any thoughts on this.

 

As a general point AS is a developmental condition and I can see looking back on my own life that my maturity has been behind that of my peers in a number of areas, though I will make the point I have continued to develop as a person and am not stuck in my teenage years, I think a lot of perceptions around AS are that we are somehow fixed in time. I think there is a position in life for many of us where physically we are developing but might not as yet developed the skills to rationalise out emotional feelings. I know in my own teenage years my best friend, I didn't have many, told me when we were 15 that he was gay and that he fancied me and what did I think. At the time I believe I made a pretty mature decision and that was I defered the decision over my sexuality to a later date even though I had recently become sexually active with the opposite sex. He then got into a relationship with an older 18 year old and the pressure was off me. If I look back on the previous couple of years there was a lot of anxiety regarding issues of sexuality as I suspect there are with many people. I think we all need to explore this in our own way and from the outside recognise that is what we are trying to do. I know even as young as 13 I was using my talent for art to explore my own feelings and that involved because of my AS a fascination for still life drawings of nudes which I would look at and produce myself. I want to make the point that there was absoloutly nothing explicit in these but my parents found them and destroyed them and I really resented them for it. Some of the better pieces had in fact been supervised in live sittings at the local art college as I had persuaded an art lecturer for me to join the group on two occassions after seeing some of my earlier attemps, my parents thought I was at Boys Brigade. I can see the humor in it looking back. At the time I felt a lot of things were trying to make me feel 'dirty' about what I was doing. Looking back however I can now see how liberal and open minded I was about the whole issue of my sexuality. This does not surprise me as I think it is simply a reflection of my personality. At the time however my personality though there was no where near as strong and as confident as it is today and as such other factors such as my autistic traits were far more dominant.

 

To add some thoughts to Special-Talents comment, discovering our own sexuality is a rights of passage that I feel we need to traverse in our own way. At times we need support to do this and that might simply be respecting our space. Conditions such as AS do not mean we do not have to go through this process, we are humans after all. I think for some people this is a very difficult time in their lives and we need to respect this and in a few cases behavioural patterns might challenge convention. I think the most important thing is we come to our own answers and trying to interupt and delay this process can be counterproductive, rather i think we need to go with it and support the individual in their own thinking.

 

just a few more thoughts on things that were raised.

[oxgirl]

Adamsmum, I think the most important thing to establish is his motive. Is he masturbating in front of people because it feels good and he is actually oblivious to the others around him and is just caught up in what he is doing, or is he doing it deliberately to get a reaction from those around because he knows it is not acceptable and that it winds up his brothers? What kind of reaction does he get from his brother when he does it and how does he react to his brother's reaction? Does he enjoy all the hoohah that ensues? Would it be possible, if he's doing it in his room with door open, to quietly shut the door without making any comment?

 

~ Mel ~

[Special_talent123]

i mean as a child i'd always do things i had no concept of what was right and wrong at the time. i had to be taught. but when im refering to his sexuality because he liked touching boys

[darkshine]

does he understand right from wrong

That's a very important question!