Thank you for your post Zerk. I can seriously see where your coming from with your brother. Hopefully the High School will have the right support for your brother or if not then i would advise going to see the education board where you live and demand the extra support your brother needs.
I extremly respect you for your ability to understand your brother and what he is going through and am happy that you are learning as you go along. I am sure that with your support and also your parents support your brother can go on to achieve anything he puts his mind to. He might need support along the way with his work but if you support him, then that is all you can do.
With the OCD thing, i do get the feeling that your brother has a form of OCD in the compulsive section which would be the "Washers" section, this is an overwhelming desire to be clean, he might not wash his hands till their red raw but to him seeing a spec of dirt could trigger certain reactions in his brain that makes him have an uncontrollable urge to clean.
Yeah I am certain he has either a mild form of OCD itself, otherwise just certain qualities of the illness. This is what is so bizarre about my brother's situation though, he has not been diagnosed with any specific disorder just yet, but we know for sure he is "borderline" or right on the cusp of several. He has qualities of autism, aspergers, OCD, anxiety, and other disorders that have to do with social anxiety or social awkwardness, including the "immaturity" I spoke of before.
He would not be immature at all if he was about 6-7 years younger, but he is 13 now and doesn't seem to have emotionally matured much at all since his younger years. He has a very hard time recognizing social cues, interacting with other people, knowing what kind of things are socially acceptable and what kind of things aren't, and he is also very dependent on my parents to do everything for him - cook his meals, wash his clothes, even do the tiniest of chores like clip his own fingernails. A common phrase I hear from him is "I just don't know how to do that", and sometimes it is very hard for me to deal with when he is unable to complete a simple task like make a piece of toast or wash a dish in the sink, so it has been hard for me to adjust to his needs and most of all, to UNDERSTAND what he is going through and how monstrous these menial tasks seem to him.
I don't think high school is going to have the proper support for him next year. I've been there myself, and pretty much the only kids who receive special care around the clock, are the handicapped kids who have severe mental disabilities. My brother is "right on the cusp" like I said before, which falls into a grey area where the school will stick him in regular classrooms with regular kids, and he just won't get that 1 on 1 attention he needs with a teacher, and he will be lost in the crowd as he struggles with things his peers will find incredibly simple. I also worry about the independence high school requires - I don't think he is going to adjust to that very well.
My parents are trying and fighting to get him the help he needs, but we will just have to see. It is going to be a very stressful year next year I suspect
I hope my brother can get as far as you have!
