Putting Things in Perspective

I spend the evenings with the kids, fixing dinner, going to Tae Kwon Do (on Mondays), bathing, sometimes doing homework, sometimes out shopping.  We spend the weekends together going to places, parties, movies, parks, etc. These past 2 weeks, I have been paying more attention to how Jonathan interacts with others, how he talks to others and me, etc.  And I have to say that I give thanks to God because he is a very engaging kid, with a strong personality, intelligent and sweet.  We argue and after a bit I actually laugh internally thinking that I am happy I am arguing with my son.  Today for instance, we were in the car coming back from Tae Kwon Do, and I heard him playing with his DS. We told him no DS during the week, but he sneaks it from time to time.  I told him "Jonathan, please turn off your DS".  After a very brief pause, he said "no DS for the rest of the day?" and I said "that's right.  You know we don't want you to play with electronics until the weekends".  He pauses and says "ok mom, what about I play with it until we get home and then I turn it off?"  Clever I thought, but I didn't want him to win this, so I said "if you do that, I won't pay you for today's homework".  He said "Oh no mom, here, it is off".  I pay him $2 a day if he completes his homework before I get home. This interaction was not there last year.  He speaks more fluently.  But he still has a strange tone, and he doesn't have a large variety of topics to discuss.  So that prevents him from fitting in with other kids his age. 

So if I have to put things in perspective, he is not regressing to where he was before.  But because of his limitations, his social skills are not developing as fast as he is growing and I can't help but feel worried that he is going to suffer in life because people are cruel.  The other physical regressions are starting to settle a bit.  I started him back on the homeopathic drops and he is not scratching his throat as much anymore.  I heard him humming today, but it has actually gotten better.  He is more alert, perhaps because of the gluten free diet.  So I see a bit of progress.

Dilemma: He is not severe enough to be in the world of autism alone, and he is not fully recovered to be in the mainstreamed world alone.  Therefore, he is the middle which is starting to make things hard for him.  He is starting to get teased and he gets very offended.  He is very sensitive.  I want to protect him, but there is so much I can do.  I talk to him and tell him to defend himself, but defending from being teased is hard to teach, if not impossible.  It should be an innate reaction, a "reflex" which he might be lacking or having trouble using.  But understanding what the core issues are helps me focus on what I need to seek to help me improve.