Life with Aspergers

Ever since I was a little kid, I have had problems distinguishing left from right. I always assumed that it was “just me” but recently I've found that a lot of people with Asperger’s have the same problem.   It might be an Asperger’s thing. It might be an “everyone” thing … or it might be a “nerd thing”. Who knows? All I know is that although I never actually get my left and right mixed up these days,  if someone asks me to raise my left hand,  there's a noticeable delay between the instruction and my compliance. In fact,  I usually have to mimic writing  (I'm left handed), in order to identify the correct hand. It's been that way for as long as I can remember. Growing Up As a child, I was always the first one to get out in games like “Simon says” but I had always thought that it was something to do with being deaf.  Even when I could hear the teachers perfectly well I still had to look at the other students before I could make a ...

Living, Loving and Laughing with Asperger's: 52 tips, stories and inspirational ideas for parents of children with Asperger's (Volume 1) by Dave Angel is a free ebook which is well worth reading. At 134 pages, it's fairly light reading and since most articles run for 1 and a half pages, it's very easy to pick up and put down. It makes great reading while You're waiting for someone or using public transport. The book itself is divided into three sections, the first and in my opinion, the best, section contains 26 tips from Dave. The second section contains another 19 reader-submitted tips and the last section, which is thankfully short contains 7 real life stories. I can't say that I liked the last section which felt “braggy”, with parents and grandparents basically saying how great their kids are. As a parent of two boys who struggle both socially and academically, I don't really enjoy hearing how great other kids are. The first two sections of the ...

Anxiety is a constant companion in our family. Both of my kids suffer badly from anxiety and it affects many aspects of their lives. As parents, we do our best to spot potential anxiety-inducing events ahead of time and either avoid them altogether or at least adjust our kids’ perceptions of those events to reduce the impact. The anxiety that my eldest son reacts most to comes from direct environmental factors which impact his senses. For example, some sounds, sights, smells, touch, taste, texture and spacial awareness.  In particular, anything that could cause pain is a high anxiety event, even if it doesn't actually cause any pain. As a result, many things are a nightmare, mealtimes for example, where the merest differences in texture (or sign, smell or God forbid, taste) will render even the tastiest of meals inedible. My son loves McDonalds but is yet to eat a hamburger, he lives off chicken nuggets and fries. Similarly, when it comes to pizza, we're still tr...