Autistic son never wants to go anywhere without me

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My son is autistic, he is 14, he never ever wants to do anything alone and won’t leave the house without me. He won’t even go to the library across the road without me. He said a new movie is coming out soon he wants to watch, I offered to drop him and his brother there and collect him and he suddenly doesn’t want to watch it! Has anyone had this before?

Yes my ASD son was like this for ages. He was attached by invisible thread when outdoors. Also still wanted to sit on my lap For a cuddle at 15 which I had to gently discourage as he was a couple of stone heavier and nearly a foot taller than me!
i tackled the clinginess as above quoted but I started when he was younger, at about age 11, and it took 4 years to get him to the point of travelling independently to school but he still followed me in shops or freaked out if he lost sight of me.

he is now much older and has moved out and now has a girlfriend - I never expected either to happen going by how he was at 15.

it’s hard especially when you see what their peers are doing. Great advice from quoted poster.

I have to say that even now if I am out with son he is constantly mapping where I am in relation to him. I tell myself he is concerned for his old mum’s welfare :-)

Have a look at the book I suggested - it's got lots of suggestions.

Yes. Thats what i mean. You go out of the house wirh him and stay wirh him but very slowly over time you sit slightly further away from him or walk slightly further away from him and then when he can manage that you mighy go out of sight for 5 seconds.

I have to laugh at the idea of mysterious 'services' that would be involved with every autistic child in the country.

My 12 year old autistic daughter is like this - I know she is younger but at the moment I worry she is not at all on a path to doing anything like her friends - ie. they all walk about town together/ they walk to each others houses alone - they get buses alone. She would not consider any of this.

I don't really have advice other than - yes they do need some tough love on the pathway to being an adult - perhaps you need to arrange to be absent sometimes and he has to go out with his brother?

Could you sit with him and make a list of challenges and just be honest he needs to try them - would bribery work? step by step for each challenge?

Thank you, yes I have no idea what services were being referred to, he was discharged as soon as he was diagnosed and even his autism assessment was all virtual anyway he didn’t meet any of the people involved including the educational psychologist who did his ehcp, that was just a phone call, any help is through the school now and they are practically useless don’t even follow his ehcp which I applied for myself because they wouldn’t.

I can really sympathise. My 17 y o dd is the same and has never been out alone ever. It’s really hard sometimes to even get her out with me.