Life with Aspergers

Names never seem to come easy to aspies. We're often introduced to someone and lose their name in less than five mintues. Often we don't feel comfortable using names and sometimes even hearing our own name in conversation makes us cringe. On the flip side, I'm sure that our friends, relatives and spouses are tired of being referenced using nicknames or being addressed simply as "hey you". Short Term Memory I think that part of the problem is the awful short term memory capabilities of the aspie. If we need a name to stick, we either have to repeat it a lot in the first few seconds or find a good association (eg: same name as my sister). Unfortunately, such associations are rare and most social situations don't allow for name repetition. The aspie is left in a position where forgetting is inevitable. Confusion over Names Aspies quickly get used to other people joking about names but often, although we know that something is funny, we don't always know why...

I've had this trailer pointed out to me. The film looks interesting but even the trailer itself makes a lot of good points and gives good examples of aspergers.

There seems to be a bit of a misconception that all aspies are, by definition, geniuses and that all autistic children are "rain-man" style mathematical prodigies. While there's no doubt that a lot of people with aspergers/autism display remarkable talents unfortunately, you can't necessarily generalize that to the entire of the aspergers population. Why do people think that Autistic People are automatically geniuses? There are two main sources of this misconception; The first is the popular media, such as TV, movies, newspapers and magazines which often confine themselves to the most spectacular cases of the condition citing famous historical figures like Einstein and Michelangelo while investigating only the most severe cases of modern autism. The second cause is the "serious" media, such as medical books and how-to's about aspergers children which persist in using the "little professor" description. Sure, some little aspies do sound like pr...

I'm always pushing the RDOS aspie quiz because I think that it's the most accurate one out there but I've just been referred to another one - which has similar questions and which uses the Baron-Cohen criteria. So here's the URL ( http://aq.server8.org/ ). There's 50 questions and you should answer them fairly quickly so that first impressions count. My score was 40. To put this in perspective; 0-10 low 11-22 average (women=15, men=17) 23-31 above Average 32-50 very high (average Aspergers & HFA score is 35)

This take on those motivational posters is too good not to post. It's obviously not my work though so go to the Flikr page if you want to print out a good quality version.

Recently I've been blogging quite a bit about the Individual Education Plan (IEP) and I've gone over some of the better approaches. I had been thinking that it was high time I provided a decent example; Then I noticed that Smelena's Aspergers Site ( http://www.smelena.com/ ) has a copy of Daniel's IEP on it. This is a particularly good IEP and is probably better than any examples I could provide because it's being used today. In fact, Smelena's whole site is brilliant, so make sure that you check it out.

I've just had my attention drawn to an article on famous people with Aspergers. It's old, but I hadn't read it before. In case you missed it, it's a BBC News Article from 2nd June 2004 entitled " What Asperger's Syndrome has done for us " It's well worth a read, especially if you're feeling down about the whole aspergers thing. In particular, the article points to the following people; Michelangelo Albert Einstein Socrates Jane Austen Charles Darwin Isaac Newton Marie Curie Eamon de Valera WB Yeats Andy Warhol The article talks about workaholics and attention to detail and is generally quite fair although it dips into stereotypes in a few places. Not all aspies are intellectuals, for example.

This is the third post in my series on the Individual Education Plan (IEP) and if you've been following, we now have a list of strengths and weaknesses for our child. The list of strengths may fall into broad categories such as; favourite/best subjects specific special abilities aspergers abilities working learning patterns specific interests While the weaknesses will probably fall into the following categories; subject areas social skills issues with children taking things literally emotive concerns muscular issues memory and concentration issues comorbid conditions medication routine fixations meltdowns The next task is to walk through the list of weaknesses and allocate each one; a specific (and achievable goal a strategy to attain that goal one or more owners an evaluation or monitoring strategy to ascertain progress The Goal The fact that the goal needs to be achievable can't be stressed enough. More is accomplished in little steps which succeed than giant strides which f...

I found this article today. It's on ADHD but is equally applicable to Aspergers. In fact, personally, I think it suits Aspergers better than ADHD. The article gives tips on travelling to family gatherings and helps you to avoid a common problem... Relatives trying to pin the condition on your parenting flaws. If you've ever been told; “You really let her get away with a lot” or “If I had him for a week, he’d learn to obey.” , then this one is for you. "You Just Need to be Firmer with Him" by Carol Brady Ph.D. The article comes from additudemag.com . If you find it interesting, you can subscribe (it's free) and receive daily/weekly emailed articles from them.

Sorry to interrupt the whole IEP discussion thing but I just wanted to post this link to a great article I was sent today. It's a case study on AspergerManagement on how Aspies can cope with Anxiety in the Workplace. The URL to the particular article is as follows; http://www.aspergermanagement.com/anxiety-coping-workplace