Autism + Puberty = Hell

Call it ... the New Math. It is where I'm living today ... and most days recently. But today is especially bad. Like, I want to run screaming and yelling, sell all the kids and sail to a deserted island bad. One of the things I've accomplished over the last year is getting Red diagnosed. It was a long and arduous process, but it finally happened. [Not like it really matters now, because our health insurance got messed up and we'll have to start from scratch to get him back into services, but whatever] ... Red has Asperger's Syndrome, and his primary issues revolve around ADHD, SPD, and ODD. For those of you not well-versed in the language of random initial, all of that basically means that he's going to be defiant no matter how hard you try, and he isn't going to concentrate long even if you do, and don't touch him or play loud music because he'll freak. A few months ago, I decided I was tired of the struggle and decided I was going to put him on meds. A chance encounter with an autism specialist changed my plans, though. She told me that as autistic children, especially boys, start to reach puberty, meds can make them go completely wonky. It has to do with the change of hormones and the effects that it has mingling with the chemicals in the meds. She told me that as bad as it is, we just need to hold on until after he's gone through puberty, and then start him on something. Ugh - that's like THREE YEARS AWAY. Every single day is a fight and a struggle. He can go from unintentionally sarcastic to blatantly disrespectful in the blink of an eye. He's become a bully to the others, and he has no sense of respecting our rules at all - even though, our rules are fairly standard and not difficult to follow. His behavior is escalating every single day. He lies all the time about everything all the time. Last week, he started burning things - no actual fires, but burning plastic and stuff. Today .... well .... today was really bad. I'm just so very tired. I don't know how to fight him anymore.