my sweet baby boy is acting up more than he ever did before

[JAM2b]

I don't think your son should be held accountable for returning the box because he is a child who was being influenced by an adult you taught him to trust and respect, and he has ASD which makes personal judgement and self-control extremely difficult.

I think it is fine to cut ties with this part of your family, at least for a little while, possibly permanently.

Your focus needs to be on helping your son navigate all the mixed messages and two really huge disappointments that were not his fault and he worked and waited for. You can't change the fact that the box was returned. You can change the patterns that are harming and confusing your son.

 

[Hank77]

If you must know, the "root cause" of the issues with my son is he is on the autism spectrum. By the grace of God my husband and I have been able to manage it very well. However, incidents life a major disruption in regular routine can be very difficult to deal with.

I can relate. My grandson, who is 12, has Asperger's Syndrome. I have talked about him in other threads. Fortunately he is high functioning when it comes to academics but he does have other issues caused by it. He is sensitive, fortunately again he is compassionate towards others pain so that helps him to understand and not be as self-serving as some on the spectrum are. But still he gets very emotional, even panicky, when he doesn't think something is fair and has trouble expressing what he is thinking and feeling.
I know what you mean about difficulties arising when routines are disrupted. My g-son is doing much better dealing with this issue. We helped him by gently introducing breaks in routines to show him that his life won't fall apart when they happen. We can't control even our own lives sometimes let alone what other people do, that's life.
Just a little story that is rather funny, you may want to skip it. When he was little, 5 to about 7 or so, when he would get new clothes he would refuse to wear them. He didn't recognize them so they couldn't be his. For awhile his mom and us would buy him shirts to fit him and the next size larger. Others she would leave in his room where he could see them and after a few weeks, or months, he would decide that they really were his.
This mess with your family has to have your son turned inside out. People who have never experienced raising or teaching a child on the spectrum don't understand the special care and patience that it takes to help such a child. Teachers have to receive special training to teach them and discipline them, they are special needs children and each one can be so different from another it is hard to get the formula just right. We all struggle to do that and it's not easy. My heart goes out to you and your family.
I agree with both @A_Thinker and @JAM2b both are very important. He needs to be able to trust you and God again, and he needs to have other friends.
Is he able to participate in sports, 4-H, or some other outside interests?
As a rule, Aspie kids love video games and computers. We were concerned because video games were becoming too much of a desire for my g-son. I found a class on Khan Academy that has interactive lessons in creating animation as they do at Pixar. The first couple of lessons talk about the rather advanced math that is involved in creating with a computer but soon it gets into the interactive creating part, so we just had to do the best we could to understand the math part of it. My g-son is loving it. Oh, and all the Khan Academy classes are completely free. We've been homeschooling since third grade, that's another story, so we are always on the lookout for interesting and educational things to do. We don't have money either so what we do has to be free or reasonably priced.
My prayers are with you and your family. May God bless all of you.

 

[worriedmommie]

I don't think your son should be held accountable for returning the box because he is a child who was being influenced by an adult you taught him to trust and respect, and he has ASD which makes personal judgement and self-control extremely difficult.

I think it is fine to cut ties with this part of your family, at least for a little while, possibly permanently.

Your focus needs to be on helping your son navigate all the mixed messages and two really huge disappointments that were not his fault and he worked and waited for. You can't change the fact that the box was returned. You can change the patterns that are harming and confusing your son.

Of course we are not holding our son responsible for what his uncle did. But be that as it may we are not allowing them to spend time together any longer.

 

[~Anastasia~]

If you must know, the "root cause" of the issues with my son is he is on the autism spectrum. By the grace of God my husband and I have been able to manage it very well. However, incidents life a major disruption in regular routine can be very difficult to deal with.

Ah, then I would think all the more you need to back up and address the "deal" you made, where he fulfilled his part, and you did not. It may be more difficult to explain the "whys" ... you of course know your son and we do not.

But if he's acting out of perceived unfairness, and he really did fulfill his side of a major bargain, and you didn't ... that somehow needs to be made understandable and/or restored for him. I am thinking that you don't want a scenario where he doesn't trust you, or sees you as hypocritical regarding your values, if you hope to instill those values in him.

 

[Larniavc]

I don't think there is any flexibility in thou shall not steal

I'm not saying that there is.

But this situation will most likely happen again and again with your current stance.

Nothing's going to stop a teen being frustrated and irritable than a perceived inequality between themselves and their peers.

 

[worriedmommie]

I'm not saying that there is.

But this situation will most likely happen again and again with your current stance.

Nothing's going to stop a teen being frustrated and irritable than a perceived inequality between themselves and their peers.

I understand that, sometimes it is just impossible to take the easy way out. My stance against the Walmart switch is not just ethical it is practical too. In the state I live in that is considered retail fraud and could be prosecuted as commercial burglary if the DA was having a bad day. So even if one could make that argument that by doing what the uncle did was "fair" what would have happened if the person working the return counter decided to be diligent and open the box. Would a DA really accept that this happened to me so I am just doing it back?
This is one of the reasons I don't want my son spending anymore time with his cousin and uncle since they do not seem to think that such a thing is a serious issue.
So my son may be difficult and irritable due to this but this is a better alternative to potential criminal charges that could arise if we continueto allow him to spend time with criminals.

 

[worriedmommie]

Ah, then I would think all the more you need to back up and address the "deal" you made, where he fulfilled his part, and you did not. It may be more difficult to explain the "whys" ... you of course know your son and we do not.

This is much more difficult than it sounds especially with a child with ASD. We have found over the years that in our son's case this in lieu of that does not register. And it can be something as trivial as the flavor of the Gummi vitimines he takes (we buy the kind that look like fruit chews and they come in three different flavors in the bottle but they are the same vitimine. It doesn't matter to my son though, he would only take them if he got one of each). So believe me we have been trying to negotiate with him for what he wants to replace the fishing trip it is just we haven't found anything that would do yet. As for the swapped DS system we did not take it away from him. We did explain to him how what his uncle did was wrong. We did explain to him that we are disappointed with him that he went along with what his uncle did knowing how he felt when he got the stuffed box but that was it. We allowed him to keep it.
Also one of our realities is that we are not well off. My husband lost his job when Gander Mountain went under and I am now a sole provider with a retail job. We are very blessed that my in laws are the most generous people and they subsidies our living but that doesn't leave much of anything for entertainment. The truth is the only time our son got to enjoy things like fishing trips, amusement parks, Chuck e cheese, etc is when he spent time with his cousin and her family. So although it is not his fault the deal fell through it really is not ours as parents either. We tried, we really did.

 

[worriedmommie]

I can relate. My grandson, who is 12, has Asperger's Syndrome. I have talked about him in other threads. Fortunately he is high functioning when it comes to academics but he does have other issues caused by it. He is sensitive, fortunately again he is compassionate towards others pain so that helps him to understand and not be as self-serving as some on the spectrum are. But still he gets very emotional, even panicky, when he doesn't think something is fair and has trouble expressing what he is thinking and feeling.
I know what you mean about difficulties arising when routines are disrupted. My g-son is doing much better dealing with this issue. We helped him by gently introducing breaks in routines to show him that his life won't fall apart when they happen. We can't control even our own lives sometimes let alone what other people do, that's life.
Just a little story that is rather funny, you may want to skip it. When he was little, 5 to about 7 or so, when he would get new clothes he would refuse to wear them. He didn't recognize them so they couldn't be his. For awhile his mom and us would buy him shirts to fit him and the next size larger. Others she would leave in his room where he could see them and after a few weeks, or months, he would decide that they really were his.
This mess with your family has to have your son turned inside out. People who have never experienced raising or teaching a child on the spectrum don't understand the special care and patience that it takes to help such a child. Teachers have to receive special training to teach them and discipline them, they are special needs children and each one can be so different from another it is hard to get the formula just right. We all struggle to do that and it's not easy. My heart goes out to you and your family.
I agree with both @A_Thinker and @JAM2b both are very important. He needs to be able to trust you and God again, and he needs to have other friends.
Is he able to participate in sports, 4-H, or some other outside interests?
As a rule, Aspie kids love video games and computers. We were concerned because video games were becoming too much of a desire for my g-son. I found a class on Khan Academy that has interactive lessons in creating animation as they do at Pixar. The first couple of lessons talk about the rather advanced math that is involved in creating with a computer but soon it gets into the interactive creating part, so we just had to do the best we could to understand the math part of it. My g-son is loving it. Oh, and all the Khan Academy classes are completely free. We've been homeschooling since third grade, that's another story, so we are always on the lookout for interesting and educational things to do. We don't have money either so what we do has to be free or reasonably priced.
My prayers are with you and your family. May God bless all of you.

We are very blessed and lucky that our public school district is very very supportive of special needs children. We have a very good relationship with the guidance counselor and his teachers. They have been very helpful through the years.
However, due to the nature of our son's special needs, things like athletics, 4H, Science Olympiad are out right now. The school did is best to accommodate but just had to accept that there has to be much more work they have to do with him before he can participate, the counselor and his teacher think he would be ready next year. You are correct that he needs other friends but he has a hard time connecting with other children. It is very unfortunate what happened because his cousin seemed to be the only one who he really connected with as a peer.

 

[~Anastasia~]

Given the situation, I would wonder if it is not possible to discuss with your sister in law and her husband, as adults, what all of your concerns are.

Their cooperation may be easier to secure than your son's understanding. Especially if they do care for him and understand your particular challenges.

Otherwise ... or in either case anyway ... if I were you, I would start looking for ways to provide more rewarding interaction. I know we tend to think of special trips and things we can buy for our children, but those pale in comparison to real interaction. I'm NOT saying that you and your husband don't have that interaction and bond. I'm saying that by discovering more of these kinds of things, you have more "tools in your toolbox" and things to offer him.

I don't know what that would be in his particular case. We used to have great fun with Mad Libs, which can be made up around the child's own interests/experience or found free online. We also used to type out poems and songs my daughter knew, put them through a translator (Chinese was the most fun) then back into English, and laugh uncontrollably at the results. She enjoyed little painting projects as long as they were free form or had a good deal of control (a bit of a perfectionist so something demanding wasn't good). Two-player video games, sometimes played in unconventional ways (racing games turned into crash derbies). Searching for unusual rocks, seashells, etc, then doing something fun with them, or even sorting/categorizing them. Feeding ducks at the hospital pond. Flying an unusual kite. A thousand other fun things ... I'm not sure what your local area offers or what your son's interests are. But perhaps you can stumble on some things that are special to him. It may not help the current situation but it will give you more options in the future.



Honestly, I'm not going to pretend I know what you should do. But I would be thinking hard about the son's level of understanding, the whole situation, and weighing any danger of him learning bad things from the uncle (especially given that it's already happened, and can't be undone ... but whether it could be prevented in future with cooperation of the family members) ... and weighing that against the message you send by defaulting on your part of the promise, and how likely you are to be able to make up for that and/or make him understand.

Teaching him to return an item fraudulently was bad. But if you lose any credibility in your son's eye to guide him in morality in the future, that's going to be bad too. Maybe much worse, since how will he get any formation in that case? And you can't undo what he's already been taught.

I have compassion that it IS a difficult situation for you. But it's going to take creative and careful thinking to try to move forward in the best way possible. Do you happen to have access to a specialized counselor who might be able to help you, and who could fully understand your particular situation?

Prayers for you.

 

[worriedmommie]

Given the situation, I would wonder if it is not possible to discuss with your sister in law and her husband, as adults, what all of your concerns are.

Their cooperation may be easier to secure than your son's understanding. Especially if they do care for him and understand your particular challenges.

This was actually the very first thing we tried, I tried speaking to my sister in law directly when that failed we asked my father in law to mediate. That completely and utterly failed. The sister's husband is some one who doesn't like being told what to do. My husband's family practices very strong conservative Christian morals and we have noticed from the beginning that his sister's husband has always chafed when he was expected to adopt the family's discipline. However we accepted him and tried or best best not to judge him since my husband's sister decided to marry him and we recognize he comes from a different environment. This situation had staged all the simmering resentment out into the open. We always felt that he didn't respect my husband and I now he has made it painfully clear that he doesn't care about us our son. This is not hyperbole either, when he was told that in order for him to have a relationship with our son he must respect our ethics, his response was that it was my son's loss. This by the way is the opinion of the cousin too. The sister isn't much better. When my father in law spoke to her about reining in her husband she flipped it onto us that she felt it was unfair that our lives are subsidized. She made it known that she resents how my husband (her brother) and I live rent free in her parents' rental home and how we get help with groceries and car payments. She parrots what her husband's says about how they don't receive benefits so they aren't subject to family discipline

Otherwise ... or in either case anyway ... if I were you, I would start looking for ways to provide more rewarding interaction. I know we tend to think of special trips and things we can buy for our children, but those pale in comparison to real interaction. I'm NOT saying that you and your husband don't have that interaction and bond. I

This is something we are consistently trying to do. Whenever we can we take him to movies in the park, the free concerts in Hermann park, free days at the zoo. Some one else suggested a project with his dad and that is one thing we just started. My husband found a plan for something called a one sheet skiff. Supposedly you can build a small row boat out of 1 sheet of 1/4 plywood and a few 2 x 4's. We may not be able to afford a bay boat line his uncle has but this would be a fun experience for him.

Do you happen to have access to a specialized counselor who might be able to help you, and who could fully understand your particular situation?

Yes we do, the school and or church have been very very supportive and so had his special ed teacher.
We did sit down with our son to discuss what he would want in lieu of the canceled fishing trip and we haven't gotten anywhere. He says that he wants to quit Sunday school /church and Kumon in exchange for not getting to go on the trip. We are having a very hard time with this request. This is because the Kumon was prescribed by the school counselor as part of his special needs therapy and the church thing just doesn't seem right.
Furthermore he is crushed because he doesn't understand why his cousin doesn't value their friendship enough to keep a lid on things so she could spend time with him.

 

[~Anastasia~]

This was actually the very first thing we tried, I tried speaking to my sister in law directly when that failed we asked my father in law to mediate. That completely and utterly failed. The sister's husband is some one who doesn't like being told what to do. My husband's family practices very strong conservative Christian morals and we have noticed from the beginning that his sister's husband has always chafed when he was expected to adopt the family's discipline. However we accepted him and tried or best best not to judge him since my husband's sister decided to marry him and we recognize he comes from a different environment. This situation had staged all the simmering resentment out into the open. We always felt that he didn't respect my husband and I now he has made it painfully clear that he doesn't care about us our son. This is not hyperbole either, when he was told that in order for him to have a relationship with our son he must respect our ethics, his response was that it was my son's loss. This by the way is the opinion of the cousin too. The sister isn't much better. When my father in law spoke to her about reining in her husband she flipped it onto us that she felt it was unfair that our lives are subsidized. She made it known that she resents how my husband (her brother) and I live rent free in her parents' rental home and how we get help with groceries and car payments. She parrots what her husband's says about how they don't receive benefits so they aren't subject to family discipline

This is something we are consistently trying to do. Whenever we can we take him to movies in the park, the free concerts in Hermann park, free days at the zoo. Some one else suggested a project with his dad and that is one thing we just started. My husband found a plan for something called a one sheet skiff. Supposedly you can build a small row boat out of 1 sheet of 1/4 plywood and a few 2 x 4's. We may not be able to afford a bay boat line his uncle has but this would be a fun experience for him.

Yes we do, the school and or church have been very very supportive and so had his special ed teacher.
We did sit down with our son to discuss what he would want in lieu of the canceled fishing trip and we haven't gotten anywhere. He says that he wants to quit Sunday school /church and Kumon in exchange for not getting to go on the trip. We are having a very hard time with this request. This is because the Kumon was prescribed by the school counselor as part of his special needs therapy and the church thing just doesn't seem right.
Furthermore he is crushed because he doesn't understand why his cousin doesn't value their friendship enough to keep a lid on things so she could spend time with him.

Prayers for you.

It is an unfortunate family situation but it happens.

I can understand your son's reaction of thinking it's fair to remove the thing he didn't get rewarded for. That probably makes the best sense to him. If it were me, I would try to make him see that these things are for his good, so tossing them out is not a good reward. Maybe the counselor can help you work through this for him.

It might also be a bit of a red flag helping you to arrange any future deals in a different way. I don't have immediate answers for that. If he can understand a process, maybe the reward needs to be for attaining certain goals in math, and Kumon being the tool to get him there, for example. That's more how the world really works, but is difficult to make effective without a degree of understanding and maturity.

I hope the counselor can help you then.

Prayers for your family.

 

[~Anastasia~]

And the boat project sounds like a really excellent idea!

 

[worriedmommie]

And the boat project sounds like a really excellent idea!

This is it if any one else is interested
Boats can be built using one sheet of plywood. Building a one sheet boat and many free plan links.

I can understand your son's reaction of thinking it's fair to remove the thing he didn't get rewarded for. That probably makes the best sense to him. If it were me, I would try to make him see that these things are for his good, so tossing them out is not a good reward. Maybe the counselor can help you work through this for him.

This is my exact feeling. Again, we are very very blessed to have the counselor and special ed teacher we have. In our district, Sylvan learning centers is where most of the remedial and special ed students are funneled as a result or son was worried about being put in with the "dumb kids" the counselor made a deal for him to go to Kumon instead because Kumon is for "smart kids ". I know this feeds of a lot of irrational prejudice but ASD children don't think like the rest of us do. When our son told us he wanted to quit he made a quip about how even the face on the sign isn't a happy face. He said that at least their advertising is honest because they show you exactly the "[bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse] face your child would make when you tell him he has to go to Kumon ". When we asked him where did he last something like that, surprise surprise he heard his cousin say it to her dad when he told them he was going to Kumon.

 

[~Anastasia~]

Well if Kumon is idealized for him already then you have one point in your favor, st least.

I hope the counselor can help you sort it out.

I know as such children get older, parents often have to be very "on their toes" to keep things going as much in the right direction as possible. Although it's a difficult situation now, I hope working through it will be a great help to you in the future. I know it's not easy.

God be with you.

 

[Hank77]

Furthermore he is crushed because he doesn't understand why his cousin doesn't value their friendship enough to keep a lid on things so she could spend time with him.

He can probably understand, if it were explained to him, that his cousin is a kid too and doesn't have anymore control over the situation than he has. She doesn't have the power to keep the lid on this situation no matter how much she may want to.
How heartbreaking this must be for him to think that his cousin doesn't really care for him.

 

[worriedmommie]

He can probably understand, if it were explained to him, that his cousin is a kid too and doesn't have anymore control over the situation than he has. She doesn't have the power to keep the lid on this situation no matter how much she may want to.
How heartbreaking this must be for him to think that his cousin doesn't really care for him.

She doesn't, we have told her that she is welcome over to see her cousin if she respects our rules. She told me her dad says that she doesn't have to listen to me or my husband. When my husband told her that isn't very nice she told him to "suck it" and that her mom told her "ever thus unto deadbeats".

 

[Hank77]

She doesn't, we have told her that she is welcome over to see her cousin if she respects our rules. She told me her dad says that she doesn't have to listen to me or my husband. When my husband told her that isn't very nice she told him to "suck it" and that her mom told her "ever thus unto deadbeats".

Yup, she is parroting her parents. This is very sad, both for her and your son.
It sounds as though she is blaming you and your husband for what's happened otherwise she would have to at least partially blame her parents.

 

[~Anastasia~]

It really makes me a bit angry when adults aren't mature enough to keep from involving and hurting children in the pursuit of their own petty disputes. Probably because my daughter suffered immeasurably by people doing this (and in a way I might have added to the situation by trying to take the high road when perhaps I should have exposed wrongdoing). But mine was a very different scenario, and I'm not saying any of this to reflect on you.

But it does make me upset when adults allow children to be caught in silly crossfire (and I'm talking about the cousin's parents).

 

[Larniavc]

So my son may be difficult and irritable due to this but this is a better alternative to potential criminal charges that could arise if we continueto allow him to spend time with criminals.

Fair enough.

 

[worriedmommie]

It really makes me a bit angry when adults aren't mature enough to keep from involving and hurting children in the pursuit of their own petty disputes. Probably because my daughter suffered immeasurably by people doing this (and in a way I might have added to the situation by trying to take the high road when perhaps I should have exposed wrongdoing). But mine was a very different scenario, and I'm not saying any of this to reflect on you.

But it does make me upset when adults allow children to be caught in silly crossfire (and I'm talking about the cousin's parents).

Yeah, it is always terrible when parents let petty squabbles affect the children. I have always felt that my husband's sister disliked me but she was never overly hostile. She became much more resentful when my son was born partially because she feels that my in laws (her parents ) help us with expenses when they didn't when her child was born. The truth is we wish we didn't need help, her husband has a really good job and her child enjoys do many more opportunities and luxuries than ours does but all she sees is that we receive a lot of "hand outs " where as they receive none. Her husband however had always been outwardly disrespectful of my husband and I. In the past he would keep it away from our son but still he would make very dismissive comments about us both behind our backs and to our faces.
And I totally know what you mean about taking the high road in lieu of exposing wrong doing. I have known for a while that my sister in law and her husband don't really care about my son, even as a nephew. My husband and I agonized over if we should explain to our son that his aunt and uncle aren't really how they appears and that they doesn't care for him like they should. But we thought that would be too crushing so we never broached the subject. I am not just saying this due to this incident either. In the past his aunt and uncle would get him nice gifts, take him along when they did fun things with their daughter but the truth is they only did those things in order to purchase a playmate for their daughter. We knew that they really don't because in the past we had to ask them to borrow money for our son's schooling and therapy, they told us flat out no, but at Christmas they gifted him an expensive 10 speed so that their daughter could ride bikes with some one (this was when he was 10 and the ASD was really becoming an issue at school). We agonized over telling him the truth about his aunt and uncle but on advice of the school counselor, decided against it because such a subject would be too complex of an issue for a special needs child his age.