Life with Aspergers

I want to draw your attention to a great post written by Matt Friedman. Matt is an aspie cartoonist and his cartoons have caught my attention many times before. You can see a lot of his cartoons by browsing his blog; Dude, I'm an Aspie http://www.dudeimanaspie.com/ The post I'd particularly like to draw your attention to though is called; Aspergers Advantages in the Workplace http://www.dudeimanaspie.com/2011/05/aspergers-advantages-in-workplace.html In this post, Matt puts his finger on some of the most important reasons why having people with aspergers in the workplace is beneficial. In particular, he cites; logical thinking, originality in problem-solving, attention to detail, technical ability, accuracy, tolerance of repetition and honesty. He provides some well illustrated examples of each. I urge you to have a read. While you're there, you might also want to have a look at some of his other amazing posts. One of my favourites is Aspergers and Evolution; http://www.

Children with sensory needs tend to have two reactions to stimuli. Either they can't get enough of a particular form of stimuli or even the slightest form of stimuli causes them to scream on contact. Often children with sensory issues have both reactions - and often to similar types of stimuli. For example, a child who can't stand the touch of a certain type of fabric may excessively crave the touch of a teddy bear made from a different fabric. Sensory exercises play a critical role in helping these children adjust to stimulii and can usually reduce or even remove sensory issues. From the outside, "Starting Sensory Therapy" looks like a textbook on the subject. It's not. The cover and title of this book are very misleading. This book is a collection of over a hundred different activities to stimulate the senses of children with sensory difficulties. The activities are loosely grouped by the sense they stimulate; for example there are sections on visual, auditory,

Anxiety in children is a topic which is very close to my heart at the moment. It's not that my children are particularly anxious at the moment although we've certainly had our issues with anxiety in the past. This time it's the fact that that my wife and I are both scout leaders (she does Joeys and I do cubs) and we both have some anxiety issues within our groups. It's quite different when it's not your child. When you're outside of the day-to-day life of the family (scouts is mostly once per week). This time, instead of being the parents, we're the "professionals". Being on the other side of the fence is giving us a whole different point of view. Immediacy of Results The parents of our anxious children are coming up to us and talking about how "they can't see their children settling" and about how they feel like "maybe they need to take their children out of scouts". We understand their position - after all, we used to be t