Re: Re: I am new and am looking for ideas for my 15 year old son

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Yep. Sounds exactly like him. He will not wear shorts, he wears a coat all summer. We have a pool at our cabin and he will not go swimming in it. I think because he likes to be fully clothed. I cant even get him to wear pajamas, he has to wear his clothes to bed, which consist soley of jeans, and a metal band shirt from the 80's. Jackets he will only where his leather coat, jean jacket, or flannel, and they can NEVER be zipped up even when it is -30.

Oviously his "thing" right now is everything 80's.

He does not believe he is bullied, when I ask him he says no. The teachers saw some kids throwing paper at him one day and he confronted them with "Hey, were you trying to throw those at me because its wasn't cool" , they said " we were just kidding around", then he said "ok, thats cool". So I am not sure he knows when he is really getting teased or not?

He has mention that he cannot keep up with the teachers at school, but he does not want to be in the smaller classes, because he is not a "retard" is what he says. He failed a couple of classes earlier this year but the school let him make it up. He has only been attacked once and he fought back, now him and that kid are friends :/. My son also suffers from Anxiety (hereditary), but we have not been successful at treating it yet, right now he is on Welbutrin. Noises have always been an issue with him, but I have never asked him about how it is at school.

Thanks for letting me know what worked for you, I may be putting some of it to use.Kendra

From: <tamaoki_s@...>Subject: ( ) Re: I am new and am looking for ideas for my 15 year old son Date: Thursday, March 31, 2011, 5:13 PM

My son was awful at 15, but is really great at 19. At 15 he was cruel to his little sister to the point where I worried about leaving them alone together in the house for fear he might lose his temper and hurt her or maybe hurt himself. He punched the walls and yelled. He grunted instead of talked. He refused to do work in some of his classes and so was failing some classes. He refused to do chores at home. He refused to get haircuts and wore his winter coat whenever he left the house, even during the summer. He was physically attacked by another student during a class at the beginning of the school year. Eventually he just he refused to go to school anymore and barely left his room. I tried everything I could think of to help.Turns out that his anxiety levels were off the chart. He was being bullied at school and was afraid for his life. He couldn't follow the social interactions with his peers. He couldn't follow homework instructions if

they weren't in writing. He could not handle the noise and strong smells in the lunch room or the school restrooms. We moved him to a new school with small classes where he got the right services and got our funny, caring son back.The first step for turning this around was getting an advocate to help us get an IEP with the right services. She helped us get the school to do a more thorough diagnosis. And she got the district to have him observed at school for a couple of days. The report was a real eye opener for everyone. Our public school said that they had no services for him. I found a Christian homeschooling group, but they did not want to work with him. Then I found a private school that worked with AS kids that said they would work with him. Then I got a lawyer to help place him at the private school. We tried medication, but had to drop it after a while. As soon as he was in a different school, the change in him was almost immediate. He

felt safe. He was calmer. He had real friends. He was smiling. By his senior year he was a straight A student. So my advice to you is to look for the things in his environment that are triggering his negative behavior, especially at school.