The OP’s situation is like learning to send one’s son out to cross the street by himself when he is blind or deaf. He can and ought to learn to be independent, but he cannot be expected to navigate with the same cues and the same level of outside support as everyone else. He lacks some of the natural senses that other people have. His brain does not get the same information the same way. He needs strategies and skill-building that other people do not need. He would be foolish to try to find these himself via trial and error. This is one wheel that he and his parents will NOT want to re-invent themselves!!!
The situation with serving for the confirmation Mass is an entirely typical issue between an altar serve and his mom
exacerbated by the issue of Asperger’s.
I’m not discounting that Asperger’s is part of the issue, here. All I’m trying to point out is that there is almost as surely the issue of typical adolescence kicking in here, issues that can come up as soon as 10 or 11 years old but sometimes delay until 17 or 18 or even later. You’re also going to have the typical issues that can rear their head when a homeschooled student transitions to a different school model.
The son has reached the point where he wants independence. If he is typical, he wants more than he can handle and he is not going to be very mindful of his parents’ feelings as he tries to get it. The work of parents, regardless of whether their child’s neurological challenge is Asperger’s or the natural unwiring of the brain that goes along with a more run-of-the-mill adolescence, is to figure out how to guide and release the child to an independent life without erring too much either on the side of caution or the side of permissiveness.
There is no “right” balance of caution and permissiveness, because no one including the adolescent can predict how much of either they will need in a given situation. There will be days–in the most difficult cases, years!–when too much caution will still not keep the pre-teen, teen or young adult safe and too much permissiveness will still leave him or her feeling confined and oppressed. In other words, we’re not looking for a perfect trip. We’re looking to keep the vehicle out of the body shop as much as possible. OP, promise yourself that you will not beat yourself up because something very hard turns out to be hard for you, too. These painful trials are part of the process, not anything you did wrong. If you blame yourself for complaining or hurting, you may as well have blamed yourself for crying out when you gave birth in the first place, too.
Most parents need some support through this, either from books or from their children’s teachers or from parents of young adults who have made the transition and walked away from it without too many crashes. Double that for parents whose child can be expected to take this neurological transition even harder, and someone with Asperger’s will meet that condition.
OP, get your situation-specific support group in place. Make it bigger than you think you will need it to be. I would think this would involve finding someone who has gone through this with as many of your particular extra complication added in as possible. No one else can provide the reassurance, insights learned, and mercy that those folks can. Find them, as many as you can, enlist their aid, promise yourself to ignore what anyone else has to say if it doesn’t help you, and hang on tight. Again: It’s like giving birth. You are in charge, and if you come out with a healthy child at the end, don’t* ever* beat yourself up or cast blame because neither of you found the process of getting their a comfortable experience at the time.
I wish there were an epidural for this. There’s not. Hang in there!
