Life with Aspergers

Please Note: This post may contain material which could be considered offensive. If you are squemish? Please do not read further. This topic was suggested by one of my readers and given that it's not only frequently a source of parental concern but can also cause major social issues, I thought it was well worth covering. The Extremes Like all aspie traits, the ones described here don't necessarily apply to everyone. People with aspergers are individuals too and there's no reason to expect that any generalisations hold true. One thing that I've noticed with many aspies that I've come into contact with is that they tend to cling to the extremes of permissiveness more than their neurotypical counterparts. For example; most NTs learn that nudity isn't socially acceptable from an early age and will generally avoid it. By their mid to late teens however, many NTs push at the boundaries of social acceptance without crossing them in any major way. In this situation, th...

If my posts have been a little sporadic of late, it's because I'm in the midst of moving house. We've just done a knockdown and rebuild. A project which has taken almost two years from concept to completion. Well, partial completion at least, there's still the gardens, blinds, driveway, pool etc to do yet. During that time, I've learned a lot about myself and my reactions to stress and change as well as lots about how my kids handle change. Non-Verbal Resistance to Change When we first started the project, my youngest was three. He was quite a late talker and not particularly verbal at the time. We tried as best we could to explain the situation to him and he'd talked about it back to us, so we figured that he'd gotten the message. As the moving out date approached however his behavior became more and more destructive. When you're a busy parent, you're often too overwhelmed by the current day-to-day situations to pull back and look at the big pict...

I discovered this post via RSS today. It's probably the best post I've ever read on aspie parenting and it needs to be read. Reflections on Being an Aspie Parent http://www.aspergerjourneys.com/2009/03/16/reflections-on-being-an-aspie-parent/ So often, I find people asking on forums whether people with Aspergers should be able to have children. I hear questions about the worthiness of aspie traits in today's society and worst of all, I hear these questions coming from Aspies themselves. In this particular article, Rachel talks about the strengths that she, as an aspie brings to parenting using real life examples. It's one of the most comprehensive and uplifting articles on Aspergers that I've read in a long time. Well done Rachel!

Good Morning For me, mornings at work are the worst. It seems like everyone wants to indulge in some meaningless, idle chatter. Everyone I walk past says "good morning" in some falsetto cheerful voice when, to be quite honest, it's too early to tell exactly how the morning will turn out. Perhaps the server will crash and I'll have to spend the entire day fixing it. There have been days like that. Perhaps the "good morning" is an echo of hope? Maybe people think that by saying the phrase, they'll stave off some unwelcoming morning news. Regardless of the reason, I've quickly learned that to say nothing in reply is considered the height of rudeness. My hearing problem doesn't help either. Sometimes I'm not sure if someone has spoken or not, or even if they were talking to me. I'm not certain how often I miss their greeting entirely but I'm sure that it happens quite frequently. So I mentally fumble out my pseudo-happy mimicry of ...