u/Alisome44

My son is in therapy for social skills with a formal ADHD diagnosis since the end of kindergarten and on a long-term medication for this since first grade that he takes only on school days. His therapist recommended going down to bi-weekly several months back because from a therapy perspective she feels he is no longer benefiting from weekly sessions. About a year ago she recommended additional neuropsych testing for additional insight into his treatment and issues and after being in denial for a while this is now finally scheduled. I feel fairly confident he will have an Autism diagnosis: he struggles with textures, coordination, and fine motor skills but was extremely verbal and outgoing as a child. He is still very talkative but prefers adults over kids and cannot grasp social cues, he also reuminates and gets very interested in a specific toy and that is his obsession (Pokemon cards-ordering them, learning them, etc for the most recent years), he cannot make or keep friends and he hasn’t been invited to a birthday party since 1st grade….thats the rant here’s my issue: every day he feels “bullied” and picked on by someone and it’s all he can focus on. I’m not minimizing that bullying happens but he will also scream that his 3 year old sister bullies him so it is hard to know how accurate he is in his account. It is impossible to help him to feel happy or find natural gratitude towards anything because he will find something that went wrong in every situation and cannot get past it. At school it’s difficult because (observed behavior) he straight up ignores kids if they say hi to him or invite him to do things. My husband and I work so hard to make him happy: my husband learned how to play Pokemon with him and weekly they do dinner and go to a game shop and play, every Friday I let him stay up late and we have a “sleepover” night and watch tv together and hang out until bedtime, when we aren’t at work we dedicate almost all of our attention to our kids. I’ve completely lost it the last 2 days because of his miserable attitude and inability to find anything good in his days and constant long-winded complaining about the day’s new bully and terrible unfair situation…in spite of this he consistently appears to be a happy kid, you would think he’s miserable but he’s not.