i need somebody elses view on this please

[thriftychic]

ds2 is 14 , from the age of 11 his behaviour got difficult to manage , massive meltdowns everytime he didnt get his own way . in the end diagnosed with AS . the only AS like behaviour i can see is that he is controlling and gets far too into one particular hobby .

I think that alot of the problems ive had with him have been more low self esteem and teenage than AS . he has been manipulative , lies , aggressive (have called police ) etc and have had some good advice from maryz on the teen board .

the current problem is that he is mad into bmx bike riding . there is a bmx track in the park not far from where i live and hes been meeting friends there to ride . he has only recently seemed to get into a proper circle of friends and being part of a group and liked is as addictive to him as the bike riding now appears to be . They dont stay at the track all the time and i have told ds2 where he is allowed to ride , given him the boundaries in our small town . I did this trying to give him some freedom but really i just wish i had my eyes on him all the time . hes already gone where he isnt allowed twice .
I think sooner or later hes going to be up to no good . he loves to be the clown , the cool one etc and one of his friends has already been smoking . i dont feel confident that he will make the right choices even tho he assures me he will!

Thing is , he is just obessed with it . he wants to be out ALL the time . He causes a big stress when he has to go somewhere else, doesnt want to go and ruins it anyway and then he is moaning to get back home to go back out .
ive tried limiting it to a few hours but then he can see no reason why for example he cant go out again after tea and the kick off and the moaning is worse . I feel uncomfortable allowing him to be out from morning till night , i cant even stop him going where hes not supposed to can i .
i know hes a teen and i have to let him go a bit but while hes out im worried and its the sheer obsessiveness of being out the whole time thats doing my head in .
if i let him out whenever he wants , he sort of then thinks thats his right and being out will become the norm .its very hard to back track with him . once i let him do something its very hard to change it .
i dont know if anyone understands this , my mum has just made out like i am crazy , that i should just let him go and get on with what i want to do and i cant explain why i am stressing so much .
i am feeling horrible at the moment anyway and intend to go to the doctors for antidepressants .
am i just going crazy . hes 14
talk to me please

very hard, no 'advice' other than to ignore the naysayers,

you sound like you're very sensibly striving for a balance between letting him do some stuff, and giving some boundaries

and it's generally a lot easier to start strict and soften up, than vice versa

Bumping for you

thanks for your reply mareeyadolores

Hi thrifty, I had some issues with Dd1 when she was a teen, mainly that she simply didnt think that she needed to phone me to let me know where she was. She would often end up in places where she wasnt supposed to be and sometimes wasnt able to get herself home again.

It was difficult to decide what was normal teen stuff and what was AS [she doesnt have a dx but I am 99% certain she has AS]
Alot of her problems are caused by her lack of empathy and poor understanding of others. She genuinely doesnt get what I am upset/angry about and is pretty much certain that if she knows she ok then so should everyone else. [poor theory of mind].

I had to be really firm with her and very clear about boundaries, I also steered her towards clubs such as Air Cadets, Orchestra, Swimming Club, Netball. Just about anything really to reduce the amount of wandering time she had.

If she broke my rules she was punished by losing a gadget or something similar.

It is really hard I dont envy you at all and I am not looking forward to the same age with Dd3 although she doesnt push boundaries like Dd1 did but who knows what hormones will do

Good luck and trust your instict, he is your Ds not your mum's

Sounds as if he's addicted as much to the sense of belonging to a group at last after a lifetime of feeling like the outsider.

Riding for the disabled does a wicked volunteer scheme for teens (ALL teens, not just those with special needs). Ours gets teens involved in all sorts of activities from assisting younger children to ride (big boost to a boys self-esteem) to organizing fundraising activities. I've watched em and the teens on the scheme quickly form a tight knit group of supportive buddies despite some being super achievers from private schools and some being quite disabled from sink estates.

It's really impressed me tbh as this is the age where social mobility and peer groups normally creates huge divides. I also love the way they seem to develop a strong sense of personal responsibility & maturity without realising it's happening ; ) It's much more autonomous than things like cadets, with more free choice as to what specific activities they do to help.

It's outdoorsy, the horses themselves are very therapeutic, there will be girls there to impress. Best of all it's reasonably structured and they can earn recognised qualifications that are worth showing to future employers. Gotta be better than the usual year 10 tea boy work experience nonsense which means nothing to the real world.

Dunno if steering him in the direction of RDA would help?

That sounds great Bochead.
Thrifty, I'd be pleased that he is doing something that gets him out, exercising and in the fresh air with a group of others. He's not rotting in front of a swcreen as so many people are.
Of course there will be temptations and dodgy stuff but that is life.

Thanks , this is difficult . until recently ds2 did everything with dh at weekends , fishing , biking etc and went to work with him in the holidays (truck driver) but hes suddenly not interested anymore . Hes also dropped his music lessons ( big drum kit i dont have much room for sitting idle )
He was excessive with his xbox until this and i had to limit it , think i should have been glad that i knew where he was

I am finding it really hard to let go of him and not even sure i should .

ds2 has viewed me as the bad guy for a while now . He makes no bones of the fact that he hates me and according to him i bring him nothing but misery . Its because i am the one always making sure he does what he should . Fine with dh because its all the fun stuff and shared interests with them. So this isnt helping !
He got a blackberry for his birthday and hes NEVER off it , i know hes talking to girls and i read one conversation where he was lying about himself ( has done that loads before and was the reason i stopped facebook) told her that dh has left us , tries to get the sympathy vote ! He has since been deleting all conversations . he is either out with friends or on the phone to friends . i know teens do that , have a 17 year old but he seems excessive to me .

will check out the rda