Struggling to Connect-- Fatherhood with My Asperger's Child. Chapter 7-- Taking Time to Understand. I'm Lucas, and my son is Thomas. He is 22 and has Asperger's. He was diagnosed in 2002, when he was just about five. It was interesting.

We looked into getting a diagnosis because he was just doing things that were a little different than everyone else. He was first tested when he was five, but I would say the official diagnosis came two years later, when he was seven and in first grade because that's when we started noticing the little bits of stimming that he would do.

His teacher would tell us that he would walk all the way around at recess, not interact with other kids. And yet, he could tell the teacher everything that everyone was doing. My wife was also a school teacher. That was her training. So she started recognizing some of the signs before I did.

When we were first told the diagnosis and everything, it didn't really hit me because he was still kind of doing everything that a kid would do. He was playing tee ball. He would play soccer. He wasn't the greatest at it, but that was no big deal. He had some friends, and he would play with his animals at home. When it's your first kid, you don't really see those differences.

My wife related to the diagnosis, as she had bouts with anxiety. Even though she never herself got tested, she always kind of related. She would say things like, that's my kid. He's like me. So it wasn't a surprise, I guess.

Part of what got me going before I even found Asperger Experts was that I had listened to an audiobook called My Strange Son. And it was about a lady from India, who taught her son to communicate with her via a machine that they made. Because of the machine, her son was able to explain to her what was going on in his mind, that he was having sensory overload. So many things were coming at him so fast that he couldn't process everything.

One of the things that she talks about was where he looks up, sees an airplane. But by the time he recognizes that in his mind, someone is showing him a banana, and now the two things don't match. That was frustrating to him. He couldn't absorb the information in time before it disappeared.

Once I understood that, I was able to start to relate more with Thomas to understand that that's what was going on. Things were coming at him too fast. And when there was too much stimulation, he would shut down.

It wasn't until I listened to Asperger Experts that I really realized that he's in defense mode. And it's like if you had a million people touching you and listening to loud noises at the same time while there were extreme temperature changes and everything going on. So I had to learn about defense mode and develop some empathy and understand more about what was going on with my son.

School and young adult challenges-- early on, there were no real school challenges. All throughout, he never had an IEP or anything. His real challenge was, after a while, he got really used to having headphones on, and some teachers didn't like that. But he did it because it was his way of controlling the noise around him.

We would wait a week or two after school started to let the teachers see him without any bias and see him as he is. And then we would sit down and talk with the teachers and explain, hey, this is how he is. This is how he reacts. So let him do his thing. With the exception of maybe one or two teachers, they were all very accepting and understanding.

For example, if he had to make a movie for a project, he didn't want other people to see it, other than the teacher. He didn't even want to see his own movie. He didn't want other people there. We were always able to make accommodations. So I guess we were just fortunate that our school system had teachers that were very understanding, and he did really well. There were only a couple of teachers that he just didn't get along with that didn't want him wearing his headphones or things like that.

The big challenge now is driving. He wants to drive, but he can't really go more than maybe 15 or 20 minutes. It's just too much coming at him. I've never, ever wanted to tell him there's nothing he can't do, but I just don't feel comfortable with him driving because the minute he makes the slightest mistake and you have to correct him, he starts to shut down, and then it becomes even more unsafe. So he has to rely on public transportation, which, where we live, is just horrible. Or he'll take an Uber, but even that can become cost prohibitive.

There's a local community college, and he went there for two years. Now he's going to a major university. I give him a ride in the morning, and then my daughter goes and picks him up at night or in the afternoon. So he gets by with that.

He only has one in-person friend. They've known each other for, like, five or six years now, and they talk almost every day on the phone and over the internet. They have similar interests. He has different groups that he meets with online all the time. So he has a circle of friends. They're just not here. He doesn't go to the mall or do things like that. That's just not him. He'll go online and meet up with his film group, stuff like that.

Moving forward-- he won't get a job because he can only do school or get a job, one or the other. He's also never gotten a job, so that's going to be interesting for him to have to go out and do that. He worries a lot for me because I'm his main provider now, and so he gets worried.

The thing that I've got to get him working towards is an independent life. He knows that once he turns 26, he's going to be off my insurance, and he's going to have to get his own. So he knows that time is coming and that he's going to have to work towards that. But he can't think that far ahead because then he starts getting anxious.

So to make that change, I have to slowly get him to start thinking. For example, hey, this is what it will be like if I go away for a week. He does his own laundry, and he cooks for himself. He cleans up after himself for the most part, so he can do it. It's just that he's scared to go and do it. The rapid change is hard.

So if I have to travel for work, I let him know in advance that I've got to leave and go out of town. So I can tell him, hey, this is what's happening. This is where I'm going to be. This is what's going on. And so he understands those changes. That's kind of how we've been progressing. So I try to anticipate that there could be challenges and try to give him as long a lead time as possible.

In terms of growing up, it's just like dealing with anyone else. If you don't agree on where you're going, where the path is, then you're not going to push him, because the more you push, the more they're going to push back. So I just work slowly with him without trying to make it a fight.

For example, maybe he's not doing his own laundry, so I just say, listen, if you want clean clothes for school, here's what you're going to need. And I show him how to do the laundry. Every day, I'd walk down there and say to him, this is how you do it. This is how you start it. This is what you've got to do. And then after a while, he learned that he has to do his laundry.

It was a similar situation with cat litter. There was just a way of working with him to get him to see that if he did the cat litter yesterday, he was capable of doing it today too. Now he does it every day.

I think one thing that's really important for parents to understand is to know when things are overwhelming. That was a big key for me because once I learned that, I could see the trigger coming. That was kind of our big breakthrough. Once he realized that I knew he wasn't angry but just extremely overwhelmed and looking like he was angry, there was a lot more trust.

So I try to tell people that. He's not angry. He's just frustrated. And if we let him go a minute, then he'll come back, and it'll be like nothing happened. That has been an incredible way for him and I to communicate because he knows that I understand.

So I think that's what I would tell parents-- understand what those triggers are, look for them, try to prevent them if you can. Just let your child know that you understand they're overwhelmed and they're in defense mode, and you'll work with them in their own time.