Life with Aspergers

My latest post on Special-ism is now available. Helping Your Special Needs Child to See Past their Own Point of View http://special-ism.com/helping-your-special-needs-child-to-see-past-their-own-point-of-view/ It covers the need to understand the concept of individuality and the way this and other factors can lead us to have different values and expectations. I look at the problems of "invisible" values and the difficulty in understanding how different people have different sensitivities. Hop on over to have a read .

Sometimes it seems as if humanity is doomed to argue with itself over specifics forever, whether they be Star Wars vs Star Trek, Windows vs Mac or Islam vs Christianity. The truth is that although we're all thinking about similar concepts; science fiction, computers and religion, there is no one "correct" answer - just our own personal opinion. Yet we spend so much energy fighting the battle that we have little left to spend furthering our own causes.  That's how I feel about the whole "autism speaks" debate. Everyone will believe what they want to believe and it's not up to us to change the opinions of those who already believe. Instead, we need to move forward with our beliefs and our agenda and male sure that ours is compelling enough to catch the attention of the undecided. Why we feel that message of Autism Speaks is not the best one So, why all the antagonism towards "Autism Speaks", an agency which is raising money for "Auti...

I had a fascinating conversation with a work colleague yesterday about why we keep breaking records in the Olympics. I said that surely we've reached the pinnacle of our human abilities and that any improvements have more to do with better timing mechanisms, technology and drugs. He disagreed and cited the case of Australian, Jessica Fox whose parents were both medalists at earlier Olympics.  Surely that combination of genes gave her a distinct advantage over her competitors. He also talked about a hurdlist who due to some difference was able to bend her foot slightly differently to cut off a few centimetres with each jump. Sadly I can't remember who it was.  I joked with my colleague and suggested that maybe there's a gene for all of this and jokingly suggested that his parents might have worked in the same field as him, in this case finance.  Amusingly, he said that they had. So how does this all tie back to Asperger's Syndrome? We all carry...