Life with Aspergers

You'll often hear that people on the spectrum have problems with "executive functioning" but what does it mean and how does it manifest in young adults?   In this post, I hope to give you some answers. Image by 11066063 from Pixabay What are Executive Functions? Put simply, executive functions are higher level functions such as planning, reasoning, problem solving, multi-tasking, attention span, inhibition, flexibility, self monitoring, self-initiation and self guidance.  Executive functions are important but in an animal sense, a lack of them is usually not life threatening. Eating, sleeping, moving and toileting for example, aren't classed as "executive functions".   While executive functioning provides many advantages, it's not so critical in the pure "animal" sense. It's people and society that has made executive functioning critical in humans. An Example: Get Ready for School The remainder of this post will focus on an example, in thi...

There's been a lot of discussion in the blogsphere recently culmulating in this interesting and insightful post  about drawing lines in the sand.  The ideals expressed were admirable but I could see several places where the author of the post hadn't actually met them (based on things said in comments and earlier posts). Like a true aspie champion of logic, I was about to point them out when I realised two things; It's not very nice  My slate isn't exactly clean either It got me thinking about the bigger picture and inspired me to take a look at advocacy and different points of view. In particular, I was wondering how I personally would go accepting all of these conflicting points of view. The Indivisible Point of View We're advocates right? We have to have a point of view. In my case, I'm advocating for my children's right to be accepted as part of normal society. For their right to do things that others do and for their right to live without ...

I just finished reading an Aspergers Relationship book today (it's excellent by the way and a review is coming shortly). The book had a great quote from Tony Attwood near the end and it's such a great quote that I've been  mulling it over all day long. I thought it was worth repeating here; Clinical and counselling experience suggests that there are three requisites for a successful relationship. The first is that both partners acknowledge the diagnosis. The second requisite is motivation for both partners to change and learn. The third is access to relationship counselling modified to accommodate the profile of abilities and experiences of the partner with Aspergers Syndrome. - Dr. Tony Attwood, "The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome" Let's look at Tony's three requirements in more detail; 1. Both partners acknowledge the diagnosis I know that I'm often saying that "it's just a label" and "it doesn't ...

If you're new to the world of special needs, you'll quickly become acquianted with a list of "hot topics" ranging from debate about the use of jigsaw logos, to the words aspie, aspergian, autie and others. Of course, the biggest debate of all has always been - should we or shouldn't we medicate our children?  It's a good question and there's no easy answer.  Image by Ewa Urban from Pixabay Protest Groups You really can't discuss this topic without talking about protest groups. There are protest groups everywhere and they all have different motivations. Some of them are against any kind of medication - including aspirin, some are based on "knee-jerk" reactions to incorrect research and some are simply reacting to "bad events" or bad press. Of course, there are some good protest groups around too but they're usually drowned out by their noisier counterparts. Most of the protest groups seem to have ulterior motivations. They'r...