I do not know the reason. It is my experience that boys tend to be more obsessed with video games. Girls do play video games but they tend to play less varieties of video games only.
Since my child was not into sport, robbing him of video game playing would actually interfere with his social activities at school at a certain age. It helps the boys of that age to bond with his peers. Its usefulness in his elementary or middle school years is almost like that of his hobby in playing music in his later (esp. college) years; both could help him to socialize with his peers. With anti-social parents like us, this is especially important for him, I think.
This is just my subjective opinions, of course.
Even in college, I heard his suitemate brought his game console (and a TV with a quite large screen – those “spoiled” kids!) to their suites and they played video games with each other. (I heard DS’s skill in that area is heads-and-shoulder above his suitenates – especially any Tetris-like games. He polished his skills with this particular game by playing it with his mom since early childhood. My wife was obsessed with that kind of games.)
DS noticed that his friends at a public college (he has many high school friends who went to that flagship college and he visited them at their college occasionally (due to a different schedule in their breaks) and even sat in their class once while visiting them during his break) played video games more often than his friends at his private college. The private school kids (especially those from the $$$ private prep schools) tend to have more varieties of interests while growing up, likely because of the apparent disparity of their family background. Most kids with that kind of background would most likely choose to live among themselves starting after the end of freshman year when they are allowed to choose who are their suitemates. The life style (e.g., can or can not afford to go to an expensive restaurant) is just very different between the students from a prep school and those from a public high school. You may say that those with the privileged background need their “safe space” too. LOL. Achieving a true diversity is not easy. They are together but, to a certain extent, are still separate. The club activities could help them to mingle with each other. This may be why the colleges prefer to recruit students who are more likely to be active in participating a variety of clubs.)
So the reason why DS is better at playing video games could be that he was from a public high school!
Video gaming was so closely associated with a group of neighborhood kids in my old '80s era NYC neighborhood who would skip school, commit burglary/muggings to maintain their video gaming fix*, get arrested/sent to juvie, and eventually end up in prison/dropping out of HS at 15-16 that most parents of kids with even a smidgen of a chance at graduating HS strongly discouraged us from picking up this hobby so we don’t hang out with the “criminal elements”. They were regarded by such parents just as negatively as the local drug dealers and addicts who would commit similar crimes for their next fix.
While the stereotype wasn’t as negative in my public magnet, there was the prevailing stereotype among a critical mass of the student body perceiving video gamers as slacker ne’er do wells who “don’t have their priorities in order**”.
This was still in the days of folks feeding quarters to play a round of games like Pac-Man/Woman and video gaming consoles were expensive...especially for most kids/teens in that old neighborhood and if one adjusted the prices for inflation.
I would not call myself a perfectionist but I am committed to helping S1 achieve his oft-stated goal of becoming an inventor. I support his goal by:
taking him to used bookstores and allowing him to get books that strike his interest (usually about space, engineering, energy, environment but also action-adventure sci-fi and I note with not a little bit of pride that he gravitates towards female lead characters (Zita the Spacegirl, Cleopatra in Space).
taking him to science museums/reading the exhibit's blurbs as well as allowing him to 'free range' in designated kid areas
ensuring his academics are on-track (90% of my parenting effort)
giving him a junk drawer, a set of small-sized tools and supplies from Home Depot and allowing some trash-picking (upcycling) for pure playing around/mucking
giving him good quality paper and pencils
sweating social skills because I know that much R&D is team-based and 'selling' your ideas takes social skills (reading audiences, keeping cool when challenged).
I think the primary parent is sometimes the more “effective” parent only because they have “found 10,000 ways that don’t work” (to paraphrase that famous quote about failure). Primary parents have better kid hacking skills, and this becomes especially pronounced with respect to tricky kids (aka kids on the spectrum) who require a lot of hacking.
If I suddenly died it would be very, very hard for H to step into my shoes. (Nor could I earn what he earns to be fair.)
" I am committed to helping S1 achieve his oft-stated goal of becoming an inventor. I support his goal by:"
I say this with love: Ease up on the goals.
S1 is 7, right? He may want to be an inventor today, an astronaut next month, a fireman the month after that, an archaeologist the month after that, and a doctor the month after that. Like any 7 yo, he hasn’t a darn clue what “being an inventor” means or encompasses other than it sounds cool.
Please do not treat this as a “serious” goal. Your parenting goal should be in imbuing the love of learning and exploration – not going overboard on a 7 yo’s random comments as if they are his stated future. And your goal to get him to be able to interact with others socially shouldn’t be because it will “help him sell his inventions,” but because it’s just a good life skill for him to work on given his circumstances.
“If I suddenly died it would be very, very hard for H to step into my shoes.”
Plenty of inventors become inventors without having had a parent explicitly “pave the way” starting at age 7.
Your son is not a computer program; no kid, autistic or not, is. You just can’t work on this mode that if only you do A-B-and-C, that D-E-and-F will result - this is why I continue to wonder if you, yourself, might be on the spectrum somehow.
This is waaaaaay too early to think about career goals. Way. Let’s get this kid to a place of being able to interact with others socially, and perform at or near grade level academically. You’ve got miles to go before you need to worry about career goals.
The video games: my kids (boys) were also intensely interested in them for awhile. We held off on buying them gaming systems for a long time, but they would play at other kids’ houses. At a certain point, kids didn’t want to come to our house because we didn’t have gaming systems! It was such a part of boy culture we did get some games. (Collecting those cards, Magic and Pokemon, was also big back then. I remember being fascinated by how cross cultural Pokemon was. We could go abroad and the boys would strike up friendships with other boys who spoke no English but also loved Pokemon cards and games.)
It is a balance. The boys played video games, but also played outside and played sports.
Public high school. Mix of public and private college.
To make this related to OP, we wanted the kids to fit in, to have the same activities and interests as other boys their ages, but also had to draw some lines.
He is SEVEN. My kids had never heard of the jobs they aspire to today as young adults when they were that age. He can invent in a lot of ways – he can be an engineer, he can work in computer science, he can be a chemist or a physicist or work in robotics. Chill out – just make sure he gets some exposure to STEM-related activities of some kind so he can see the paths available. Maybe science museum camp, LEGO league or FIRST robotics when he is old enough, an engineering camp in high school to explore the disciplines and see if he likes it. You are WAY WAY over thinking this at this point.
Again… I have a kid on the spectrum. And I agree, that if I had been hit by a bus when she was in her formative years, it would have been very, very tough for her dad, as he wasn’t as adept at parenting her as I was. My other kid would have sailed thru life, everyone likes her and wants to help her. But not so much with my younger one. But you know what? I couldn’t stuff all the years of parenting she needed from me into a really short space when she was in elementary and middle school just in case something happened to me. It wouldn’t have worked. My kid is currently a college physics major with an interest in solid state physics research. But she didn’t really figure that out until she got to college, although high school physics certainly helped point her in that direction. You are just making yourself and everyone around you crazy with this kind of attitude. CHILL. Keep him safe and let him try stuff to develop his interests. But this hyperfocus on molding him is not helping anyone.
I am going to be honest, you need therapy to figure out how to unwind a little on all this. You can’t help your kid effectively if you are this terrified and anxious about his future.
DS was into Magic as well for many years. Some of those $$$ and “powerful” cards are getting dust in our storage room now and he still does not allow us to get rid of them (sentimental value for his childhood or "teen"hood?). I remember that we took him to many stores in town to search for one of those “powerful” cards which could cost us an arm and we had to wait patiently there pretty often while he flipped through a thick deck of cards in order to hunt down his favorite cards.
OP, I know it is not easy to “relax” yourself when your loved one’s future is at stake. But some “downtime” could be beneficial. (We were accused by some other parents as being too “uptight” as well. LOL.)
re:
Do I have a right to suggest how my husband parents?
YES
Is it unfair of me to want H to do more ‘dad’ stuff (or frankly ‘good parenting’ stuff) with our sons
NO
Is this ‘micromanaging’?
YES, but so what? You’re a parent & a spouse.
Regardless - good luck! Wifey & I are always working on parenting. Still easier than doing it alone, I imagine.
I agree that talking about helping a 7 year old achieve a career-type goal is over the top.
None of the things you say you are doing are a problem in and of themselves. Encouraging him to get books that interest him, having stuff he can use to make things, going to science museums–those are all Good things. But they’re good whether he ever becomes an inventor or not. And IMO framing them as helping him achieve his goals is not helpful.
If he wakes up tomorrow and says he wants to be a fireman, or an astronaut, or a singer, the activitues you describe wound still be good things to do with him.
Parenting is tough–even more so when you are the parent who has most of the day-to-day responsibilities. You need to have more confidence in your H–sounds like he is doing the best he can. Instead of complaining, try offering him thanks and then make suggestions if you feel he could have handled something differently. Certainly don’t comment in front of your children. It sounds like you could use some outside help. Any chance you could fine someone to be a mother’s helper? Any younger teens in your neighborhood?
You might also look for advice on sites dedicated to parenting young kids or parenting kids on the spectrum. Most of us here have older children. You’ll get through it! Good luck.
@dstark, her social skills are a lot better at age 20 than they were in childhood. Her school offered something called “friendship club” for kids who struggled socially, which she did in elementary school. She went to a private independent school (K-12) with small class sizes, and where kids with differences were more accepted than they probably would be in a large school. It took quite a bit of coaching socially – I try to remember that things that seem really obvious to neuro typical people about how to interact with others are not at all obvious to her. So I would point things out and explain things to her that my other kid never needed to be told. She didn’t have many friends until around 4th grade, but gradually built a group of other bright, somewhat quirky kids as a group. She didn’t try things like overnight camp until around 7th grade, not ready socially until then, and even then it was a bit touch and go for a couple of years. In middle school she undertook a project on her own that I did not hear about until years later where she studied YouTube videos of people showing different emotions so she could learn to recognize them better and express them herself in a more neuro typical way.
She still has what I call “cat behind the couch” tendencies – quite introverted and will observe before joining in, or retreat physically in a very stressful situation. She attends a well known STEM college, and has found friends pretty easily there. I think there are a lot of students like her there. She is still pretty socially awkward and quiet, but she gets along okay. Things like interviews are tough for her still, though. She is very bright, but also has a learning disability (non-verbal learning disability). With accommodations for that, she does well in college, but not top of the heap at her school academically. But not at the bottom, either.
There certainly were times when I despaired about whether she would ever get to the point she is at now, and I don’t dispute that it took more “parenting” than my other kid for sure. She hit and bit in pre-school, and I was worried they were going to kick her out of Kindergarten – I still think only a very patient teacher and our existing relationship with the school due to having an older kid there got her through her first two years without getting kicked out. But being 20 years into this process also gives me some insight that the OP doesn’t have – you can’t rush their development, force them into a mold, and make every interaction and every minute about trying to help them develop social and academic skills. If your kid (and partner) get resentful of your actions, you are going to lose the battle over what in the long term is a minor skirmish.
@intparent I trust and very much value your insights. Just wanted to be clear about that. S1 did get kicked out of school at a very young age and it deeply impacted my sense of confidence as a parent.
We just came from an IEP meeting at S1’s school and DOE has officially signed off on providing S1 a paraprofessional (basically a 1:1 aid to work with him throughout the school day). This is no magic bullet to be sure, but I’m hopeful that it will help him have more better days and I’ll get fewer ‘can you come to school…’ calls.
Getting kicked out of elementary school…especially at the early stage isn’t necessarily an indictment of the kid concerned nor an indication said kid’s future is permanently ruined.
An older neighborhood kid 8 years older than me and I were both kicked out of one particular Catholic School as 5-6 year old first graders because the overly strict principal felt we were “too rambunctious” for the school’s behavioral standards. Even my extended family which leaned more towards believing the teachers/schools over kids felt this particular principal was being ridiculous with expelling me and moreso…the older kid who according to his parents and several former classmates in that school…had just fidgeted in his seat.
Both of us moved on to attend the same academically competitive STEM-centered public magnet and subsequently went onto some fine respectable higher ed institutions and careers.
I attended a respectable LAC on a near-full ride which meant with some part-time/summer work my parents never had to pay one red cent for my undergrad expenses and and the older kid turned down a full FA package to MIT to attend Annapolis to his father’s chagrin* because he was passionate about his dreams of becoming a submarine officer**.
If said older kid is still in the Navy today…he should be coming up for promotion to rear or possibly even vice-admiral right about now.
Father was not only unhappy he turned down MIT for prestige grounds. He was also worried about the risks/dangers of a Naval officer career, especially on nuclear powered submarines. Granted, my father and some neighbors also mused it didn't help son was so obsessed with becoming a submarine officer and desiring to prepare himself well that he dragged his poor father along to accompany him on his rigorous physical conditioning runs. Son did end up getting his first choice upon graduation.
** Being a submarine officer back then was so competitive due to high demand from Annapolis and NROTC graduates that attending Annapolis meant one’s chances of getting that occupation specialty was much greater than if one graduated as one of the top NROTC cadets from MIT.
You’ve described in detail what you do with your son to encourage academics… but is there a time in your life or his for relaxation and unstructured time? I understand that the idea of “relaxing”, taking it easy, and having fun might be a lot tougher with a kid on the spectrum … but it is important for everyone, especially as setting a foundation for those social skills that are so hard for an Asperger’s kid to develop.
It is wonderful that you foster your son’s interests through supportive educational toys and books – but you don’t want to go overboard. It’s easy for a kid on the spectrum to develop intense, narrow interests and devote of his time on those-- but that’s one of the trait that creates social awkwardness – the situations where the kid isn’t able to function unless he is engaged and focused on his own particular interests.
One of the benefits of having two parents can be the different parenting styles – two different models, two different personalities. So I do think that it’s a mistake to criticize the other parent simply because style and approach is different - the net result is simply that you will drive the other parent farther away. If he can’t be himself, but has to try to either be you, or be whatever you think he ought to be – it’s a no-win situation for him.
