Life with Aspergers

It seems strange to say it but I’d never heard of Katy Perry until she hit the headlines for dressing “inappropriately” on Sesame Street back in 2010. Even then it was at least a couple of years before I listened to her music properly.  Apart from her music, which I now love, I’ve also got another reason to really like her as an artist. She’s always defending those who are different and in 2012, she did an awesome duet of Firework (an amazing and empowering song in its own right) with Jodi DiPiazza a young girl with autism. I tried to find this on youtube again but sadly the full version isn’t available now.  Rest assured, it was incredibly moving. Lyrics with Meaning One of the great things about Katy’s songs is that a lot of them, though obviously not all, have deep meanings. I was listening to the song, “it takes two” recently and I was thinking about the message within it and how it applies a lot of common sense to couples in relationships. I was also thinking th...

In movies and television shows, characters with Asperger’s syndrome are often portrayed as feeling very little emotionally or physically. It’s also quite common people to suggest that a character who shows little emotion or sensitivity to have “Asperger’s-like” traits.  In Star Trek, there are characters like Spock, Data, Seven Of Nine and the Doctor who, while not "Asperger's" as such are often referred to as "Asperger-like" in their behaviour.   In the big bang theory, Sheldon has the most “Asperger’s-like” qualities and of  course, there’s Doc Martin. While for the most part, these characters aren't immune to physical pain, they're shown to have increased levels of tolerance -- and when it comes to mental pain, they're often depicted as "unaffected". There’s clearly a perception out there that people with Asperger’s often feel “no pain” or “reduced pain” but how accurate is this? Nobody feels “No Pain” To be clear, nobody f...

Kids with Asperger's work best with rules and lists to follow. This applies in more or less every aspect of their lives. It's major part of their development and as a parent, it's up to you to help your kids to learn how to make rules and lists for themselves.  I've spoken about lists before, particularly in an article over at Special-Ism  and of course, I've talked about rules here on LWA before. Today I want to talk about more general rules that you can use to help your kids get more out of life.  Life Rules To be effective, life rules need to be general. For example, "Always look both ways before you cross the street" is a great life rule, while "Remember to look both ways before you cross from the bus to school" is not. It's too specific. Life rules also need to be concise because even with repeated drilling, your kids aren't going to remember long and convoluted rules. Finally, life rules need to be self-explanatory --...