Re: Put Up Or Shut Up!!!

Molly --

p.s. I just read through all of the above posts. I still think that an apology for your son's behavior will help him, and your husband and you. The best way we can be parents is to give our children tools they can and will use, and an Asperger's kid needs to know clearly what the rules of engagement with the world around them are. Asperger's can mean that I do not know (as an Asperger's patient, hypothetically) that what I have said to someone else can or did harm their feelings. (I suggest, separately, that you talk to your child's doctor about the diagnosis itself -- it has been more common in the last several years, therefore a good tool in someways but overused in others, and my gut feeling about a child who reacts strongly to something and is hurt by something is that he has definite emotional capacity -- I've known a few people with Asperger's and the one I think of right now would be really baffled by that whole exchange in many ways, except for what she had "learned" (as opposed to what she innately felt).

With Aspergers you have an even more important responsibility, which essentially is to explain the world of complex emotions to your child and to (again) give him tools to handle that world. I appreciate what others have said, but I also know for a fact that an honest self-appraisal in terms of one's own wrongdoings, followed by a sincere apology and offer to make things right, is ALWAYS proper and appropriate. You and your husband and your son can have all the feelings you want to have around this other kid's nastiness, but taking proper action will give you and your husband something to be proud of and a real sense of accomplishment and pride, and your child a huge sense of "I did the right thing, EVEN IF IT WAS NOT WHAT I FELT LIKE DOING." A hellofadeal.

That's growing up, plain and simple. It is providing sensible, responsible, loving and admirable guidance to one's child -- fat or thin, mentally ill or not, ugly or pretty -- i.e. nobody who is walking and not institutionalized should be exempt! -- which is always our first priority as parents (rather than our child's "feelings" for instance). I am pretty clear on this, I have given this advice to the young and old and well and unwell, and followed it myself, and I guarantee there is no mental greater way to get along with people than to be able to learn how to cooperate with them and admit when we are wrong around them.

Love,

Laura