TheBanyanTree: This morning's news

[PJMoney]

I'm supposed to be doing something ... work ... get ready for Sunday ...
something ... but all I can think about is what the man said this morning.

See now, my youngest has always been what we've always thought of as an
interesting, complex person with some very endearing, and some very
frustrating, personality traits.  Unlike his older brother who basically
ate, slept and chortled all through his infancy, this boy was a fairly
cranky baby.  But also unlike his brother who never went in much for
cuddles, this boy loved to be touched and held.  Sit on the floor when he
was around and he'd be climbing on you.  In fact we kept him back a year
from starting school because the pre-school teacher said he was the only one
who still wanted to sit on her lap at story time.

He had trouble at school when he started because his brother's school
friends would tease him and call him by his brother's name.  First it drove
him wild then it drove him to depression.  I can tell you that when a 7 year
old starts expressing suicidal thoughts you take notice and then take
action.  We went to the school and asked for the teasing to be stopped and
then we bought our boy a rabbit.  Somehow or other having the rabbit made
life good again for him.  Sort of.

He was a kid who, if one bad thing happened during the day, then it was the
only thing that counted.  That went on for years.   "How was your day?" I'd
ask him.  And he'd tell me all about the one bad thing that happened that
had made his whole day rotten.  So I'd say that surely something good must
have happened and that might or might not work to help alleviate his funk.

As he got older he seemed to grow out of that.  But he had other problems.
He couldn't seem to get on with kids his own age.  He could sit and have
quite an adult conversation with adults (which some adults in the teaching
profession sometimes found a bit confronting) and he could have a great time
playing with little kids.  But kids his own age didn't understand his
language - they didn't have his verbal facility (or so it seemed to me from
his reports) - and so he had trouble making friends and was never "popular".

Then it was time to go to senior high school.  We wanted him to go to the
local senior college because it offered many more opportunities than the
school he'd been attending since 3rd grade.  Eventually he agreed that it
had been a good move but at first he was deeply uncomfortable and anxious in
his new school.  In fact he became so miserable that we gave him a try on
anti-depressants and since that seemed to help him very well (though they
didn't stop the migraines) he stayed on them until after he'd finished his
final exams.  He passed with flying colours, gaining a tertiary entrance
rank in the 94th percentile and a place at a first rank university.

He went off the pills and took a gap year getting a job as a casual banquet
waiter for a hotel chain.  That job gave him so much running around to do
that he lost his adolescent pudginess and became almost buff.  So he started
working out, running and doing push ups and hangs, to try and become truly
buff.  But he hated the job.  The kitchen staff were obnoxious.  The
supervisor was a trial.  The customers too often were rude and abusive.
Three months before the end of the year he quit and started writing a film
script.

A month before it was time for him to head south to university he was just
himself.  Two weeks before the time came he started showing signs of anxiety
and irritability but he pushed himself along by just doing what he had to do
one thing at a time.  It got worse on the trip down.  It got even worse
after he was left behind down there to get on with this phase of his life.
It got to the point where I didn't know how to talk to him anymore.  How
could he not want something he'd chosen for himself?  How could he get into
such a mess so quickly?  

Last night he rang and asked us both to listen in.  He said he'd been to a
counsellor but he was having such difficulty concentrating that he couldn't
recall very much of what was said.  Except that the counsellor said he
should find other accommodation.  The place is too rowdy for him.  It's full
of drunks.  They play sport up and down the corridors.  And maybe he should
change his course.  And he can't sleep.  And he can't get up.  And would I
ring the counsellor to hear what he thinks?  It all came in dribs and drabs
punctuated by harsh sighs.  It was deeply alarming.

This morning I rang the counsellor and he told me his assessment of my son.
He's a quiet, conscientious student.  He's probably missing home badly.
He's anxious, tentative and confused.  He feels cut off from all support.
He wants very badly to do the right thing but he can't work out what that
is.  There was more along those lines and then he dropped the big one.  He
started off by stressing that he was not making a diagnosis, that he can't
make the diagnosis and that he could be wrong, BUT, having worked with
several other young fellows like my son he believes that he is displaying
features of Asperger's Syndrome.

I would have thought my boy's love of being touched and held would have
ruled that out, but no.  Apparently that's not necessarily the case.  And
the more I think about it the more it seems to explain so many things I've
had trouble understanding about my son's behaviour over the years.  It's the
fact that he's down there without close family support that causing him to
unravel.

So now it's one step at a time as quickly as possible.  First, see if it's
true or not.  I suspect it probably is, because it fits.  Either way we have
to find new accommodation for him.  Then it's probably change course, maybe
decrease the course load, definitely notify lecturers because otherwise they
can get snarky about students who, in trying to make sure they've got
everything right, ask too many questions, and then if all else fails bring
him home.  And, of course, there's the problem of telling an intelligent
young man who's nearly 20 and quite proud of his masculine buffness that he
has this diagnosis that says he's impaired.  Aaah.  Geeze.  Maybe it's not
true.  But if not then I have not the slightest clue as to what's going on.