Personal hygiene has never been my boys’ strong suit. For one thing, they have yet to accept the premise that “wet” does not mean “clean.” If I want them to wash their faces, I have to specifically mention a cloth, warm water and soap, and even then they might wipe only the parts they think are dirty. Many times, my kids claim to have washed despite never having turned the tap on.

Kids with Asperger’s really struggle in this area, as it’s just not something they care about. If you can get Justin into a routine, he’s generally good. But it has to be repeated enough that he does it by rote, cause he certainly doesn’t stop to think about why he needs to brush his teeth or wash his hair. It’s not about getting things clean; it’s about getting me off his case.

In that way, he’s not much different from his father. In our pre-kid days, Chris and I would eat our meals in the dining room, and he would wipe the table as part of the clean-up process. Once we had babies, we started eating in the kitchen —  but Chris continued to wipe the table in the dining room, cause that was his routine. He wasn’t focused on cleaning anything; he was just wiping cause he’d been told to wipe. Argh.

When Justin first went to summer camp at age seven, the camp gave us a list with all the items he’d need. I diligently packed it all. I even threw in a facecloth, despite the fact that Justin had never used a facecloth and would be hard pressed to identify what it was for. I figured the counselors, who were used to dealing with kids with disabilities, would have some magical way of getting him to stay clean.

I’ve been sending the exact same bottles of soap and shampoo every year since. He’s now 11 and those bottles have never been refilled. I’m thinking of having them bronzed.

I sent those same bottles on his school camping trip a few weeks ago, except this time we forgot to pack his toothbrush. He never noticed, because he never took his toiletries out of his bag. He did manage to lose his towel, though.

Sigh.

We have frequent fashion fights in our household. Justin will generally insist on wearing whatever happens to be on top when he opens his dresser drawers. He will insist on wearing that outfit even if the pants are black and green, the shirt is orange and the socks are blue. When I suggest that he try to find clothes that match, he claims it doesn’t matter.

“You’re the only one who cares, Mom,” he’ll tell me.

Mismatched colors aren’t even the worst of it. My boys frequently end up with their shirt and/or pants on backwards and don’t even notice. (I can see getting a shirt turned around, but pants? Seriously?) After swimming lessons the other day, Justin came out of the change room with his track pants on inside out. Somehow he didn’t notice that the pockets were flapping around on the outside. Huh.

I realize that the total lack of fashion sense is a hallmark of Asperger’s. To Aspies, clothes are literally just fabric on a hanger. Their purpose is to keep us warm and keep our private parts covered. That’s it.

If he’s just hanging around the house all day, I let it go. But if he’s going out in public, I tell him he has to change. I try to explain that while he doesn’t care, other people will judge him based on how he looks. Even while I’m saying the words I know it’s ridiculous–why can’t he wear whatever he likes, fashion be damned?–but I also know I have a responsibility to help him adapt to societal norms. He won’t figure this out on his own; I have to show him how it works.

Which is hilarious, because I’m hardly one to follow fashion trends. I’ve been known to keep the same clothes for 20 consecutive years. I despise shoe shopping and never notice what people have on their feet. I own no makeup and wear no jewellery. I am the last person who should be giving fashion advice.

But even I have standards, and those standards include not wearing striped shirts with plaid pants. Or anything inside out. Or backwards.

Set the bar low…

What’s the right time to give a kid their own cell phone? When they start going places independently? When they reach a certain age? When they’re capable of paying for it?

More to the point: can there ever be a right time to entrust a $500 device to a guy who can’t even keep track of his water bottle/gym clothes/day planner?

I realize Justin’s organizational challenges are more than a character flaw; they’re part and parcel of having Asperger’s. His brain tends to misfire when it comes to managing resources in order to achieve a goal. (The irony is that he spends much of his free time making lists. Go figure.)

That doesn’t mean he’s completely irresponsible. I trust him to walk to and from school, to stay home alone, even to cook a simple meal. But I’m not sure I could ever trust him not to lose an item in his possession.

To be fair, it’s not just him. My older brother never leaves the house without coming back at least once for something he forgot, routinely buys two pairs of glasses at a time because he knows he’ll lose them, and cannot use his Apple TV device because he can’t find the remote. Yet he somehow became the director of supply chain management for a multinational company. So there is hope.

But back to the phone issue. Brayden recently mentioned some of the older kids at school have phones, and I said getting a phone depends on a combination of being old enough and being responsible enough. He thought about that for a second, then announced, “I’ll probably be less responsible when I get older, so you better give it to me now.”

Right.

We’ve always been up front with the kids about Justin having Asperger’s. Justin knows he’s wired differently. He has even accepted that Asperger’s is considered a disability.

Early on, when Justin was in a special program to help him learn social skills, Brayden wondered why he didn’t have to go to the same program. We explained that Justin needed extra help to learn some things that Brayden already knew how to do (talk to people, make friends), just like Brayden went to speech therapy to get extra help with some things that Justin already knew how to do.

Later, Justin would say something brutally honest, not out of spite, but because it simply didn’t occur to him that someone would take offence. (“Not every honest thought needs to be expressed” was a tough lesson to teach.) So we’d have to explain to Justin that the words we say actually do affect other people, and then we’d have to explain to Brayden that his brother’s brain just works differently.

Sometimes that means cutting him a little extra slack. Like the time we were in a restaurant in Disneyland and a guy was going around making amazing balloon animals for the kids. Brayden LOVES balloon animals, but balloons make Justin anxious, so Brayden knew he wasn’t getting one. Them’s the breaks.

But there’s more to a person than some label. Just because Justin has Asperger’s doesn’t mean he never behaves like a typical kid. He’s perfectly capable of pushing Brayden’s buttons and acting like the big brother he is.

Brayden explained his perspective to his teacher the other day:

BRAYDEN: Did you know my brother is really annoying?
TEACHER: (amused) No, I didn’t know that.
BRAYDEN: He has Asperger’s. That’s a form of autism.
TEACHER: So what does that mean?
BRAYDEN: It means he’s more annoying than most people.

Because he has Asperger’s? Or because he’s your brother?

As if it matters.