Autism and Just Being a Teenager

The title has two meanings because sometimes my child has autism and other times, well, he’s just being a rather typical teenager.

How so?

Testing and pushing boundaries is one way. With attitude. It’s a lot of fun for parents!

Another way is when he recently changed from headphones to earbuds. My son has always had an affinity for listening to stuff on his iPad with headphones (encouraged, of course, by his parents so that it’s less noisy, especially in the car)

Earbuds are “cooler.” So, the headphones are out and the earbuds are in.

A third way is with clothes.

How did he change his clothes?

My kid used to be a shorts wearing kid. The times I could get him into pants were rare. Even in the winter, he just wanted to wear shorts.

And, now he wants to wear pants.

All the time. (Yes, luckily, he still is okay with wearing shorts for P.E. class.)

The cool thing about the switch to pants was that my son wanted to come with me to he could pick out the pants for himself. (Since he never used to be interested in his clothes, I would just get stuff for him.)

I was okay with that.

I took him to Kohls and showed him how to choose his size (which number is the waist size and which is the length size). He took some pants into the fitting room and tried them on. They weren’t the right size, so we tried a few others. He came back and said he liked three pairs.

Being now wearing pants, he’s also now into wearing a coat.

All the time. Inside, outside. All the time. (Again, not during P.E.)

He comes home from school (he walks home) and sometimes tells me that he’s a bit warm. He stands under the ceiling fan to cool down.

Instead of…removing the coat!

What’s happening here?

My son is being a teenager. And, a quite typical one at that.

These things aren’t about autism.

They’re about a teenager finding some his independence.

What am I going to do?

Nothing, really.

The coat he wears (all the time) is small on him, but he’s requested a new one for Christmas.

So, the coat will get an upgrade very soon.