15 year old son with some issues

[Daisymay67]

My son is 15. He was referred to camhs last year but they only saw him once. They said he was fine and to continue to see councillor at school. He was referred because he’d been getting bullied on and off over the years by different people. It had all got on top of him and he talked about suicide to councillor at school. Going for counselling helped him a lot.
But when we were in camhs I couldn’t talk to them about my son in front of him. They wanted to know stuff that I didn’t like to talk about in front of him. I thought it might make him feel awful knowing I thought some things he did were strange.
Since he was about 5 he hasn’t liked food touching each other on his plate. He doesn’t like to get anything on his hands..even a splash of water will irritate him. He can wash his hands, but if I ask him to wash the dishes, he will try doing it without actually getting his hands in the water. He sometimes doesn’t like being touched, especially if it’s not expected..if I go up to him and touch his arm when talking he will pull it away in a flash...or shrug me off.
He can’t stand having anything on his clothes like a splash of water..he will have to get changed. Like he does this strange head wobble and makes an owl screech type noise now and again. He sometimes won’t speak and uses hand signals 😑 he does only do this in the house I’ve noticed. He will do it in front of siblings or relatives.but he says he doesn’t do it at school...and he doesn’t do it at basketball training.
He has no close friends, other than one boy he goes to school with but they’re not close. But they have each other’s backs as my son puts it.
He had one good friend who then turned into a bully. So he doesn’t see him any more. He says some peers at school call him autistic.
I’ve wondered if it is mild, and that he is on the spectrum. But I don’t know what to do or if I’m barking up the wrong tree totally.
His birth wasn’t straight forward.He was resuscitated.
I don’t know if it’s all just behavioural and he will eventually grow out of it, I don’t think waiting to see what will happen as he gets older will hurt. Just want to get him some help if it is something.I’m being patient and only do things he is happy with and don’t make a big thing out of any of it.
Now the food thing Ive always put down to him being a picky eater, that I thought he’d grow out of. But at 15 it’s still going on. That’s what made me come here and ask for any advice on what to do.
We have just eaten Sunday dinner...and he has started liking chicken casserole, which I made today. He wouldn’t eat the cooked peppers in it, he does t like the texture of cooked pepper, but will eat them raw. But he asked me to add some of the sauce/gravy to his plate..but not too much.
Anyway the sauce touched a couple of his smiley face chips...yes he still eats those, prefers them to ordinary chips...he will not eat potato in any other form. So the sauce touched other food...so he didn’t eat much..just the bits the sauce hadn’t touched.
He prefers to eat with his fingers too, but dry foods like chips or raw carrot, raw pepper or pizza.
He is very clever at school when it comes to maths and physics but he won’t revise for exams..his class work is excellent compared to his exams.
I don’t know what to do really. My oldest lad has dyspraxia, he was a picky eater in that he only liked eating stuff he could manage just holding a fork or a spoon. He’s 24 now and over the years has learnt how to eat properly and eat more variety of things.
I keep thinking my youngest will just grow out of this, but it just goes on and on.
We got him a dog at his request, about 6 years ago. Now he has never liked the dog, he won’t stroke it...if it goes near him he tells it to go and lie down. If it’s in the same room as us when we are eating he will position himself so the dog cannot see him eating and put a chair beside him so the dog can’t go to the other side.
I don’t make a thing out of any of this. Occasionally I will out of frustration say something, but I don’t get angry or make a big thing of it.
But it’s still goes on and it’s worrying and driving me mad.
Any one know what I should do...if anything

Has no one at school suggested he maybe ASD? It's a very wide and varied spectrum but several of the things you mention are similar to my ASD DS - eating with hands, very sensitive to textures, far better at classwork than under exam pressure (drops from 85-90% to 35 in most subjects because exams freak him out.)

In DSs case, the school alerted us. They have given him a huge amount of support and he has become much more contented and socially at ease. Right now he's off with a gang of friends in town at the bowling alley and then they're all off for pizza together. A few years agom he'd have been considered 'too weird' for this to happen, but he;s been taught a lot of emotional intelligence and social skills by the school SEN.
It's never too late to intervene. It's exhausting and bewildering for ASD people to go undiagnosed. I am not saying he has autism, but if he has, he'll benefit from help. Incidentally, if people at school call him autistic as an insult, whether he is or not, the staff should be informed. That's not OK.

No, no one at school has ever mentioned anything. I remember when he was at primary at meal times. He was too shy to ask them not to put gravy on his food...so he was going all day with out eating.
I got called into the school for three day over lunch time. They asked me to sit with him and encourage him to eat. I said to them, all you have to do is stop putting gravy on his meals. Let him wear a ‘no gravy sticker’...or tell the dinner ladies not to put gravy on. But I was told he was a fussy eater and I shouldn’t pander to him. I said to them, it will be like me pouring washing up liquid over your food and telling you to eat it.....he just doesn’t want gravy on his meals. But they didn’t get it..so he ended up on packed lunch. With only dry things he liked in his box...and it’s still like that today.
I only went 2 days and sat with him. It didn’t help, but made him stick out in the crowd.
I sometimes want to sit ds down and ask him if he thinks he is different, does he feel different from his peers etc.
But I don’t want him to think I think he’s weird. Because to other people he does come across as being a little weird and socially anxious

Just had a convo with my son.
He says he just feels different to everyone else. Doesn’t know what it is or why. He says where his peers stand and chat at school he spends all the time mostly alone.
He says he isn’t bothered about seeing a doctor to find out if he has aspergers or not.
I don’t know what to do.

Do you or your partner (or other family) have Aspergers?

FwIW a lot of teens feel "different to the rest", that is normal teenage angst.

If he is unhappy within himself, I'd ask the school to see an ed. Psych. Maybe (or go through GP)

I'd suggest you going alone to your GP and telling them all this. From what I read it does sound like a possible autism spectrum thing, but may be other things I don't know about.

Feeling different is normal, but the other behaviors are kind of strange, IF we say there's a "normal".

My DP has Aspergers and it was undiagnosed until he was an adult. In the diagnosis, he suddenly was able to make sense of situations he didn't understand but stood out to him during his adolescence. Do the only reason I'm suggesting a discussion with the GP is because while your DS doesn't seem to mind how things are, he also doesn't have anything much to compare with. If he understands his behaviors and, perhaps more importantly that other people's brains work differently and how they work, then he could perhaps make more of a friendship with some others. Thinking ahead to uni especially. And Ashe gets older and other kids have romantic partners.

But just to be very clear, I don't know what's going on and what I'm saying above is just an example. Labels and diagnoses aren't necessarily needed. Not always helpful either. But there are also circumstances where they can be. You won't lose anything by talking to your GP.

btw only suggesting GP as they have training. A psychologist would too (child or educational). Not because there's anything "wrong" with DS.

Hi. Sorry I’ve been to work lol.
My oldest son is 24, he was diagnosed with dyspraxia when he was 10. That has had a massive impact on him. He is on waiting list for adults to be assessed for austistic spectrum diagnosis. He has struggled for a year at uni and has quit and come home. He has lots of social and other issues going on that suggests he could be on the spectrum too.
My husbands sister, has a boy that is autistic...and I have nephews..my brothers kids who are both autistic. So we do have some in the family.
I was considering going alone to see Gp without my son, but I didn’t know if it was allowed..and with him being nearly 16.
My son was at camhs last year for one appointment. When I started telling her about his food habit etc, she said that’s very interesting...but then didn’t expand on that and they just said he was fine and he didn’t need to go back. There was much more I could have told her, but I didn’t want to say in front of my son.
I was going to try and talk to his councillor at school and see if she can have an assessment done through a referral from her.

Daisy, the thing we found helpful was having support and info about ASD. DS did feel 'different' from other people. but th emore he's learned about ASD, the more he's realised that difference is its own kind of normal, with loads of its own strengths and benefits. he chooses to fit in - it's important to him, so he's benefited massively from EI workshops at school and has applied what he's learned there so well that his main group of friends are NT and don't even know he has a diagnosis. Ironically his NT brother mainly hangs out with HFA people as he gets on well with them.
We've found diagnosis more helpful than I'd have imagined. It's not a label, it's a starting point for lots of help, advice and information that can only empower him.

Thank you Minapaws

OP, sorry your going through a rough time. I totally get what you mean by finding it akward discussing certain things with CAMHs infront of DS. What i do is i ring up before hand and explain, recently i was able to have an appointment alone to fully discuss my worries, then the following week we had an appt, with DS present. CAMHS were brilliant and didnt divulge the details of what i had told them about ds's behaviour although they did let him know we'd had a mtg beforehand.

I didn’t know I can do that.
if I can get him another referral I will do that! Thank you