Responsibility

I always thought that taking responsibility was a learned skill. I didn't think it was something people did automatically and without life lessons. Or at least not without a lot of nagging.  Mostly from their mom. I have had to remind my kids many many times that X, Y or Z didn't "make them do it" that "doing it" was their action alone and  that is why they were the one being punished.

However, sometimes Joe surprises me. Sometimes he will come right our and accept responsibility for something he has done. He 'confesses'. I sometimes wonder if he is being super-smart and he knows the best way to defuse the mom-bomb is to disarm her first by admitting to the mayhem before she discovers it for herself. But although I would love to think that, I honestly don't reckon his social skills are up to that level.

I think he just can't help himself.  That he just blurts it out. Maybe the guilt of keeping a secret is too much for him?  Or maybe he can't stand the suspense involved in waiting for his "crime" to be discovered?  I don't fully understand the mechanics of this process with Joe, but I do know that he often takes responsibility for stuff; and way more than he should. He has apologized when I slept in and made him late for school.  "I'm sorry Mom. I should have woken up."

"But I'm the one with the alarm clock!"

My notion of reresponsibility and what it entails has been challenged to the extreme in the past few weeks by a small electronic device:

Joe's cellphone.

It became apparent after a few weeks of middle school that if we wanted to prolong my life, we would need to get Joe a cellphone. The point was that he could contact me if he got lost (which had happened several times). I decided to go with a pay-as-you go unit, so he had minute counts and other stuff to monitor, to remind him to be responsible and not go nuts texting everyone in the directory. This is quite an affluent town, and a lot of kids have fancy hardware and unlimited plans. However, I wanted to teach him the value of a minute, if not a dollar.  You know, to be responsible.  And we are not affluent, anyway.

Joe liked the phone, but not the responsibility of owning it.  (I didn't realize just how much responsibility owning a cellphone entails.)  Although I had assured him that the phone is insured, and no real harm will be done if anything happens to it, he is ridiculously protective of it. He keeps it switched off to preserve minutes and battery life, despite my telling him several times that this defeats a lot of the purpose of having it, as I cannot call him if I am running late, because then we have conversations like this:

Joe: "Mom, where are you? I've been waiting..."

Me: "You only just turned your phone on now so you could call me, right?

Joe: "yes"

Me: "Well, I have been trying to call you for the past 10 minutes to tell you I am stuck in traffic and to catch a ride with Mrs S."

Joe: "But Mrs S. left already..."

Me: ...(who knows that Mrs S only just left and am therefore too busy biting the inside of my cheek to utter anything intelligible, much less printable)

Me: (takes a deep breath)

Me: "I'm on my way. DON'T turn your phone off after you hang up." (because if I forget to tell him that, he will turn it off)

Suffice to say, we have had a few Issues around the damn phone. It is about the responsibility of owning a phone. He hates having to remember to take it places, not lose it, turn it on, keep it charged, track his minutes, not get it lost/broken and generally take care of it.  It is a lot of stress for him.

This leads to me trying to pro-actively anticipate everything that might go wrong the the fecking thing and try to prepare him for it.

On the night we had the biggest 'phone' Issue (to date), it occurred to me that I had forgotten to show Joe how to put the battery back in. We have all dropped our phones and had the battery go flying across the room/ restaurant/ airport/ train station, right?  I figured (rightly) that if this happened to Joe he would freak out.

So I started to take out the battery.

Joe: "what are you doing, mom?"

Me: "I need to show you something"

Joe: "It looks like you are taking my phone apart"

Me: "well actually, I'm trying to"

Joe got very upset and walked into the adjoining room, out of my field of vision. I continued to remove the battery, struggling a little with bad fingers and a tight casing. When I finally got it open, I looked over my shoulder for Joe,  only to see him standing right behind me with a heavy musical toy held aloft in two hands, about to smash it down hard.

On my head.

It is really hard to explain the emotions you feel when you realize your beloved firstborn child was about to smash your head in over a mobile phone.  I was absolutely crushed.  I wanted to scream my head off and smash the fuckin phone against the wall.  But I didn't.  I got cold and stern and told him to Put. That. Down. Right. Now.  And he was in deep trouble.  Then I told him to finish his homework while I went into another room to cry and try and figure out what I had done that was so wrong.

I'm still not 100% sure. I know that in Joe's mind, the phone was considered the most important thing at that time. There were Rules about the phone, first of which was don't lose or destroy it. I had put the fear of God into him about keeping it safe. When he saw me taking it apart, he didn't know what else to do, but attack me to "save" it. (no it didn't occur to him to ASK me why I was doing what I was doing. He is after all, autistic).

You can fool most of the people most of the time.

You can even fool your mother part of the time

But underneath it all you are still Autistic.

I'm so lucky he hesitated. I was home alone with the kids at the time. He probably would have knocked me out (at least) if he had followed through with his plan.

Later, after we had both calmed down, and I had demonstrated how to replace the battery ("Ohhhh!"), I spoke with Joe about the incident, starting with the question that was foremost in my mind:

"Were you really going to smash that thing down on my head, or was it just a threat?"

"No. I was really going to smash in down"

(oh.)

(sometimes Aspie honesty isn't all it's cracked up to be)

I then tried to explain to him that mobile phones are ten a penny, but his mother only has one head, which is unique and irreplaceable, but he didn't get it. He kept saying stuff like "But you told me to protect the phone. I didn't know what else to do!"  Then I gently explained that he could have ASKED me what I was doing, instead of jumping to conclusions which could have led to pretty serious consequences.

"Oh." 

(my thoughts exactly)

We talked some more, but the upshot is this: Joe still doesn't fully get where he was wrong. He is hyper-responsible in some areas, but oblivious in others. He doesn't have the ability (yet) to prioritize life over possessions, or that it is sometimes appropriate to break Rules.  

I am hoping he will gain these skills in time, and without anyone getting seriously hurt.

ahhhh... Parenting is such fun!

Comments

[yanub]

Um. Why didn't you tell him to start with that you were going to show him how the batteries can be taken out and put back in? I mean, if I, say, was talking to my dad about how my car is a lot of stress, and he went over to it and started removing the perfectly good tires without telling me why, I would be freaked out. I wouldn't hit him over the head, but I'd probably start hollering at him. And wouldn't be all that impressed if his answer at long last was that he was going to show me how to change a tire.

I wonder if it would help if he had a rule that he is to call as soon as he needs to be picked up, and not to turn off the phone until he is picked up? What kind of phone-use rule have you already suggested to him?

[One Sick Mother]

Yes Yanub, you are right. I should have said something. That is what I meant when I said you can fool your mother part of the time. Because Joe has made such remarkable progress, I sometimes forget how autistic his thinking still is.

One slip could have been all it took...

The rule is that he turns on the phone when school is out, and leaves it on until he is home (at least until he is home). For some reason, he thinks he knows better and that some unknown criterion that *he* has set is more important than that particular Rule.

[fridawrites]

Can he think of rules in categories, such as the biggest rule is that you can't harm someone else, no matter what's going on? That that is something that can't be undone? I would have been very unnerved!

[David Byrden]

OSM, I have never dropped my mobile. I got a neck strap (from STRAPYA.COM).
Well actually, I have dropped it, but it's never got past my waist. I tend to dial, drop, and retrieve after 30 seconds.

Regarding Joe, have you ever had pets? The soft skills could be somewhere in his head, awaiting a trigger.

[elizabeth]

Hey, I just revived, at an odd time. I can understand Joe - and my suggestion is go older tech, get him a pager, that sings. The pager tells him when to turn on the phone. The phone gets turned into a routine (when home put phone in recharger, when leaving put phone in backpack, put pager on belt).

This is my interpretation, which, not being around Joe can be wildly wrong. But if not, then it may help.

Sometimes there are no shades of grey.

a) Joe loves you
b) Joe trusts you unconditionally
c) If you say something is important, then it is important. Every time you emphasis the importance, you indicate this is very important, this is tied to your love. That if this is messed up, you will be disappointed.
d) Joe does not want to disappoint you (which is why he tells you the truth - he realizes he HAS disappointed you and to decieve you would only make the disappointment/failure to uphold the Rules worse.
e) If in doubt, do what is least likely to disappoint.

Joe is responsible for the phone, Joe is responsible to have it on him, Joe is responsible to make sure it is charged, if it is NOT charged, then you can NEVER contact him or vice versa. This would be the ultimate failure. Joe is responsible for the minutes on the phone.

If he does not turn on the phone until needed you should be happier than if his phone dies.

The phone is directly tied to you, and if ANYONE, ANYONE destroys the phone and he lets them, then he has failed...you. He has failed.

You start destroying the phone.

Joe reviews: What is the most important thing? Protect the phone. What is the most important thing to my mother? Protect the phone. I asked if she was taking it apart and she said she was. I must protect the phone. Maybe this is a test, maybe she is insane, but one thing I know - I am responsible to stop ANYONE from taking the phone apart, if I allow anyone to take phone apart I have failed OSM. ergo - stop the person taking the phone apart.

Okay, it happened that OSM mother was the person taking the phone apart. But you talked about protecting and keeping phones safe and not your head (You might want to talk about when to walk away during a mugging, if this thought process is correct). Joe obeyed you. He was totally loyal to you. A person larger than him was taking the phone apart, how to stop them...? A plan, implimented. He was being GOOD. He did exactly what you told him to do, protect the phone.

He wasn't hitting his mother or hating his mother, he was loving and obeying his mother - protect the phone. It just happened you were the person who was doing it.

Growing up in a cult where you hear a lot about father's going to cut the sons throat and burn the body because of obedience and love - and being told that total and absolute obedience was needed at all times, well that is the filter (by the way, the one where the father kills his first born daughter becuase he told God he would kill whatever came though the doorway first out of love of God was another popular one).

Did that help, or was that obvious already, or am I in a different boat?