Messages By: beccasmom

Our son was considered to be a bully and a brat during his early elementary school years but I knew there was something else there.  He was diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome but it took several years more for school officials and relatives to accept this even after being diagnosed at three totally different clinics.  School peers and their parents still think of him that way but it gets tiresome to try to explain his situation to everyone he comes into contact with.  Counseling, knowledge, and medication has proven extremely valuable. 
     My point is to please not judge kids so harshly and quickly because there may be underlying causes.  If this child's parents even have a bit of a gut feeling that it may be something more than him being a brat to please seek medical advise.

My son is 16 and has Asperger's Syndrome.  His obsession is video games.  He is an excellent student with mostly A's but spends hours on the computer mostly playing video games. He plays a variety of different games and  World of Warcraft is not one of them.  It's video games in general.  When he is online, he is an equal and noone knows he has Asperger's. He follows all the rules about not telling too much about himself to strangers, etc.  He is a junior in high school and wants to go to college to major in video game design and programming.  When we lock him out of the computer due to not getting off when we tell him to he has a meltdown and we all suffer.  He was really starting to listen to us and try to meet us halfway but since really getting interested in colleges here in Ohio for his major interest, he seems more "addicted" than before.  In spite of him being careful we still know he is on there too much.  We know turning off the computer is the most obvious solution but we would like to have some other ideas as to how we can solve this problem.  I know this sounds pretty pathetic on our part but sometimes we walk a fine line in our household to maintain peace.