I've had enough of my boy

[Skylar123]

I don't knwk why I'm posting on here but I know you all probably have the same things going on at home. My Ds is driving me crazy , he talks in stop about Star Wars, I mean non stop, we went out for dinner he talked non stop to me about star wars I couldn't have a conversation with my daughter i couldn't chose my food from the menu I couldn't even order it when the waiter came over as he was in my face telling me about Star Wars. We get home and he's still going on we get to bed and he's still going on, 4 bloody hours of it. I had to walk out of his room as part way through I broke down and cried I just can't take him anymore, it's sounds silly but he just won't shut up. I ignore him he starts again he gets angry he swears at me he swears at me Inpublic and with family he listens to no one he Doesn't care what anyone else thinks.
He has to do what he wants to do and that's all he sees he won't stop building his lego or rewinding tv if he has too he is so hard to bare. Sorry to rant i will be ok soon .

oh darling, (((hugs)))

Someone more knowledgeable will be along soon, but I didn't want you to feel alone. That sounds so hard. Personally, I think you're amazing to have stuck Star Wars for four hours. I don't think I could have lasted half as long.

Oh Skylar123 you poor, poor thing all I can think of is this : is your son needing to do this to balance out his anxiety re school??

There are workbooks out there for your son to help you negotiate time for 'special interest' alongside other stuff. I need to think which one it is. Polter will no doubt know.

Meantime here's a great big squeezy(((hug))) and more

I know how you feel. Some weeks it's just normal, some weeks I can laugh, some weeks I just want to scream "why me!!!"

Last week it was very much why me, why do I with a high iq and a degree have two sn kids? Why is my eldest so bloody clever when the other two are so bloody strange? Why? How?

Feel it, don't try to hold it back. Next week it will be a bit better. As I think " it doesn't matter why me, it is me, that's my life, all I can do is get on".

But just some days it really does stink

Today ds2 talked so much and so loudly, that I felt like bursting into tears. Then he saw me looking sad, and stopped and said Mum I don't want to upset you.
We had a family visitor for lunch and he was loads better then after lunch it deterioated again. Definitely anxiety related, as ds was worrying about his homework in the afternoon. We had non-stop ranting and peseveration or whatchamtachallit about Montserrat volcano...

It's better when he is walking and out and about, then he seems to calm down much more easily. And routines help.

I've read one of those workbook thingies about how to stop them going on and on! Will have to refresh myself on technique, as i need it desperately!

Some days I think I can't stand another minute of ds noise and repeatedly slamming his ball on the floor. Other days I seem to not notice it as it is the norm. I know how you feel. My ds has had numerous very annoying and hard to cope with phases. There have been many times when I have felt it has been intolerable, but usually things get better for a while or change into something less irritating for a bit. Sorry to behave no advice but I do know how you feel.

Thank you everyone for taking the time to write it means so much, I hate constantly moaning to my family who know how I feel but reall can't properly understand what it's like to live with 24/7. I'm sure to some
People who don't understand it all sounds a bit silly, you can't understand how awful it is until you live it.
I feel a bit better now but he has zapped all my energy to do anything else before my bedtime. He has just gone off about 20 mins ago thank goodness .
He has asked me about school a couple of times today so maybe related to anxiety around school but at school they say he is fine.
He was talking to himself for a while as I just lay there and pretended to be asleep as much as I could he was muttering on about Star Wars then said what must have been a joke although it didn't sound like one and then he would do a fake laughing sound and tell me to laugh too , repeatedly until I also did a fake laughing sound, he must have done this 5 times in a row. I just kept telling him to go to sleep very calmly. I took a walk round the block when I posted last as I felt as it I was going to do something I might regret. What's up with my boy? So sad for him. I hate getting cross with him now I keep shouting at him and I know I shouldn't. He calls me a ffffing bitch all the time.
I know some mothers have a lot worse than me and my Ds asd is not severe, that's if it is asd. We will see what the nhs dx prevails on Wednesday. Xxx thank you xxx

Love the emoticon zzzz that was so me an hour ago!

The workbooks sound worth a try - thank you handyand zzzz what a great idea re writing it all out that's worth a rye too

We did laugh too at the meal .... I looked at my elder dd and said 'kill me now' jokingly and we chuckled..Ds meanwhile carried on explaining the deep and meaningful ways to use the force, hold a lightsaber and how many heads a sith has, who's on the dark side and what he needs to do to conquer the world!

Get him together with my eldest son - sounds like my ds would love him.

Oh skylar you poor thing. I hope you are coping better today ((hugs)).
It isn't silly at all to feel like you do :(. My DS is the same - verbal diarrhoea about whatever his latest fad is. He talks about it from the moment he wakes up until the moment he goes to sleep - he never stops talking. And yes it is hard.

However my DS went through a really difficult time at school this year and I realised that out of school, he probably needs to do this to help with his anxiety. He was trying to cope at school and I was trying to modify his behaviours at home (I thought I was helping him) and he had so much anxiety he stopped eating :(. So I no longer try to control him or modify this - I just grit my teeth. And yes, we do a lot of those things that Polter suggested. Angry Birds (his current addiction) is now deeply woven into all aspects of our lives! lol.

For me, the worst of it is the car journeys. When school anxiety was at it's highest I started telling him Angry Bird stories in the car on the way to school - to keep his mind occupied and de stress him. This has now turned into "mum, can I have an angry bird story?" for each and every car journey. That's 10 bloody angry bird stories every week that I have to make up and tell. Not to mention the 1.5 hour car journeys to (and from) his occupational therapy sessions!! When I complained bitterly that one and a half hours was far to long for me to be telling stories for he said "that's OK mum, you can break it up into chapters"! Aaarrrgh!!

On the positive side, we went out for lunch with friends yesterday (and yes DS was on angry bird mode as usual!). But then, all of a sudden, when we sat at the table to eat he turned to one of our friends and said " You know that old car we had" "well it broke down last year and now we have a new one" "it's a blah blah blah" "you'll have to come and see it". Nothing unusual to most people, but those of you who have DC's who don't do conversation, or who only do conversation about themselves or their chosen obsession, will understand my astonishment and elation! :). I have to remind, cajole and coach DS to try and have a proper conversation with people. So for him to do this, by himself, and give the other person time and space to answer, was amazing. True he did go back to talking non stop about angry birds for the rest of the meal - sigh -, but it meant so much to me that he did this one thing completely unprompted. It was so normal - IYSWIM :D

((hugs)).
Life became a little easier for us when ds (now 14) learnt to use a Nintendo ds. We can go out for a (restricted) meal, attend appointments and have hair cut! I know it is a bit rude but so is what would happen without it. It has meant we can eat and talk! Slowly over the years he has learnt to come somewhat into line on social expectations - with the nintendo for when he cannot manage - for instance waiting to be served ( or any other kind of waiting). So it does get better.
But I do understand! Ds also does the stopping and starting completely from the beginning if you do not stand still and fully part take in what he is doing. Why he is so sensitive to the slightest hint of glazed eyes or wandering concentration, but completely unable to notice how upsetting the behaviours are to others is mystifying! There is no doubt that the inflexibility, ritualistic behaviour and monologues gets worse towards the end of term, doing something new or away from familiar things.
I have found it helpful to tell him clearly what social niceties are needed in each situation before we go. Start simple, and add extra points at later dates. Learning to leave space for others to chat is very hard! Ds has some set phrases he has learnt to help queue him into appropriate conversation - we practice these at home. For instance asking others questions (did you have a good day today?) and waiting for the answer.
Step by tiny step - it will get better.

Thank you for all your comments, tips and advice. Its invaluable and so appreciated. Thank goodness for this board. I'm feeling better today.

Whilst I totally get and understand the frustration, I am totally in awe of you all for putting up with anobession for so long at a time. ( 4hours!!! WOW)

Some time ago, I explained to DS that there is only so long I can cope with a subject at a time and that my mind wanders off the topic after a bit. I also explained how being talked "AT" rather than having an interactive conversation did the same thing, then if it carried on too long, over dinner I would demonstrate to him what it was like, by finding a very dry conversational topic and talking at him without pausing, nagging him to see if he was still listening at intervals.
I know it sounds cruel, but he now understands that you need a bit of give and take in a conversation, and that I just can't cope with hours of the same topic unless it is something I know about or am interested in.
It was a way of showing him what it was like for me- and then making that point when he told me that he wasn't interested.
So I can now say truthfully that I'm getting a bit bored of XYZ (Minecraft or other civilisation games mainly now) and can we talk about something else for a bit. It mainly works, - the topics maight be a bit limited at times but improving hugely as he gets older.
It has taken some time to get to this point. ( DS is now 13 BTW)

Poltergoose at death throes.
I have done similar too - head on table snoring....
I also find myself constantly saying "look at me I want to show you something" when I am demonstrating with my hands, and I do very eggagerated hand gestures. We also sometimes have conversations without words to force DS to look. He's surprisingly good at getting what I mean when he needs to do it without words ( for such a pedant)

ZZZZZ I would be broke if I did that. DS is very £££ driven and I couldn't cope with the staring it would entail. - It would be one extreme to the other!

But then I need it to be fair, so would need to thing of something similar for dyslexic DD

(((Sky))) I am not a parent with a SN child but my late sister had SN and was prone to obsessions.

Most of them were about people she felt had slighted her in some way. She would talk about them constantly and I mean constantly. She wasn't able to understand why people can be annoying but that it doesn't make them 'bad' if you see what I mean.

For example, she was in a nursing home for the last years of her life. It wasn't the right place for her at all. She developed an obsession about an old man who was senile and had the room next to hers. She believed he was banging about at night and keeping her awake. She would constantly complain about him - she had 'stuck record thinking' where the thought would just replay itself endlessly until it drove her into a state of great distress.

As a family, it was very difficult to keep calm when she was obsessing. Trying to reason with her was pointless. It made no difference. If I'm honest, it was hard not to resent her as it just monopolised everything.

The Star Wars fixation must be very wearing :( Even if you know he can't help it, you are only human and it must wind you up.

I could have written this... DS' obsession with SW lasted for 6 years, sorry, not what you wanted to hear. I just wanted to make contact and say that I know how bloody awful it is... DS is now in Y11, doing 1 GCSE. It breaks me when I hear other people talking about their children's plans for the future. I sometimes feel that I can no longer bear another second of him and then I think, we're all he's got. It's gutting and is eating me up. I have to pretend to be coping, but I'm not. I am the worst parent in the world for him, I have no patience or interest in what he wants to talk about. Sorry you're living through this hell too.