He socializes with all the adults there. It is like he is a different kid.
Again, this fits. I think a big reason for this is, older people are more consistent socially in their behaviours and reactions. I stopped worrying about it when I realised my kids were actually OK with adults; after all, the majority of their lives, they will be needing to interact as adults (with adults, mostly) and not as children. When they need to interact with children later in life, they will be interacting as adults, not as equals.
You're saying he won't do schoolwork at the moment, and from my own experience, trying to force the issue in anything with kids like this, is setting you up for failure. It is better to not try, than to try and fail.
You say he gets on OK with adults, so here's an idea for you to get him to do something constructive - get him to record people (especially older people) and then transcribe their words into a text file. There is a market for this sort of thing; besides, as our older folk die off with things left unsaid, we are losing an irreplaceable resource. If he gets on with older people then this could be a really productive way for him to use his time, as well as a good way for him to hone his social skills. Especially skills at listening. There are so many ways in which he could do this, and improve how he does it.
The first stage in a project like this - find someone with a story to tell. And since everyone has a story to tell, this shouldn't be too difficult. A good person to start with could be a veteran.
Next step - ask their permission formally to record them talking about their experiences. You may need to set up some parameters, perhaps with an organisation that would very much value these memoirs. Perhaps a veteran's association, or a local historic group, or even the person's family. You (or someone in the organisation) could help here by giving him a list of questions he could ask, and perhaps rehearsing it with him to help him know when to shut up and listen, and when to ask the next question.
After this, a skill he needs to learn (and this can come as he transcribes the memoirs - some more questions may occur to him, some bits of information that the person may have left out) is to recognise when to ask a spontaneous question, such as "Can you tell me more about what was happening here?"
This is an important skill in conversation, too. He will learn how to listen well enough to be able to identify valuable information.
About your younger son - the tendency for both boys to have Asperger's is worth considering. Certainly in our family, we say it doesn't just run, it gallops. What you describe with your younger son sounds a lot like difficult child 1 at that age. The pooping problems - boy, does this sound familiar! We would find with difficult child 1 that he would go a week between pooping (when he was 2 years old) and his grandfather had to literally bully the ?&:* out of him when we visited each week.
With difficult child 3, we used bribes and even then it was a huge deal. He wouldn't use a toilet away from home for ANYTHING. As for pooping, I often was called to the school to clean him up. The sensory issues you describe can also flow on to general excretion issues; they don't always recognise the body signals, or they can be hypersensitive to them.
One funny incident I remember from when difficult child 3 was about 8 years old: early morning, we heard him get out of bed and head to the toilet. He hit the door hard as he went in there, we heard the usual early morning impression of Niagara Falls, then we heard an exasperated kid say, "Every morning there's wee!"
As if he felt that it was something he was going to one day grow out of.
Looking at your family - I would strongly recommend you get them all evaluated by a neuropsychologist. Different specialists work in different ways. A good counsellor or therapist is invaluable, but can't themselves diagnose. You often need other experts along the way who have assessed your child, to also have their reports considered. For example with us. difficult child 3 was seen by a Speech Pathologist when he was younger, who formally diagnosed language delay. Her report then was part of the whole submission to a neuropsychologist who was then able to say, "Given the other information provided by other specialists, I can now say with certainty that this child has autism."
So your family - both boys have enough related issues for me to think that assessment for Asperger's would be worth trying. And your daughter also needs to be considered too. Her depression could be related to the other health problems she has, but it is also very much a facet of Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) in its various forms. Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) also presents a bit differently in girls.
Another thing I want to pick you up on - B doesn't like to consider himself to have an illness. Frankly, I support him in this. For him, he feels perfectly well. The idea of mental illness is something that teens especially, teen males especially, don't like to accept. On top of this, Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) kids see themselves as normal and the rest of the world as flawed. In our family, we don't view Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) as a disability (although we do use that word sometimes). We refer to it as different; the brain of someone with Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) learns in a different way, and we need to take this into account when we are teaching them or working with them. At the same time, because this world is unfair and it's a case of majority rule, the kids need to do their best to adapt to working with things as they are. For example, left-handers need to learn how to live in a right-handed world. I am a left-hander, but most scissors have to be used in the right hand because otherwise the blades pull apart slightly instead of push together.
If you asked difficult child 1 about autism and Asperger's, he would tell you that he has Asperger's and it means he needs to write things down in lists so he can keep track of what he needs to do, but it also gives hime a lot of special skills he values in himself.
difficult child 3 doesn't need to write down lists, but he has other needs as well as skills. difficult child 3 and difficult child 1 are both highly distractible; but tey also have considerable gift for fine detail and an ability to focus at a deep level on minutiae, for a lot longer than most people. Their talents are valued. difficult child 1 worked for a furniture company who quickly realised his attention to detail and extreme sensory sensitivity was a godsend, they put him in the sanding booth checking quality control. difficult child 1 could run his fingers over a piece of sanded furniture and rapidly find the flaws still needing to be worked on.
So don't focus on this as an illness or a disability; instead, this is simply a matter of functioning a different way.
The world is a complex, confusing place and the interface between it and our Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) kids is sometimes scary. In some aspects, they take longer to mature and to learn. In other ways, they are bright and they also can skip stages of developmentand surprise you. It is out job as parents, to help our kids find where they need more support and to ease them through this stage. We also have to fiind where their skills lie, to support them in their abilities and make them feel good about what they can do.
Anxiety can be crippling. It also can have many causes. But while you're looking for a cause and also looking for a way to help them deal with life, it is also important to help them cope with each small crisis, to keep that crisis small and not let it get out of hand.
These kids are different. Therefore when we try to force them into the same pigeonhole as others, we're likely to have problems. If we simply let them be who they are and accept them as they are (as long as it's not too disruptive) then we are showing them that we love them unconditionally. We're also reducing their stress and anxiety, because it is hard work to fit in. The less work they have to do, the faster they will adapt where they really must.
For example - both my boys have various stims, or tics, or habits (depending on what you call them). They seem to need these as a coping strategy, but some of them have been disruptive around other people (such as noises). We've also had our problems with toilet training; with other social issues; with raging at times; with sensory problems. If we try to fix it all at the same time, we set them up for failure because it feels like we're constantly picking on them. But if we just work on one or two things and let the rest wait (for now) then they have a better chance of making the change.
I hope you can find the book in the library. But in the meantime, go to the Early Childhood forum and look at the stickies there.
Marg
