Life with Aspergers

One of the frustrating things about the fathers, particularly fathers of kids on the spectrum is that for various reasons, they're not always "engaged" in the family. Fathers are often used as the "bad cop" in parenting but many fathers go completely in the other direction, permitting anything and ultimately disengaging from their child's development.  In this post, I want to look at the reasons why fathers don't engage, how you, the dad, can parent on your own terms and how to become an important part of your child's life.  Why aren't fathers engaged? Fatherhood today is very different to what it was like in the previous generation. As GenX, our parents were likely baby boomers or traditionalists. Fathers in our day didn't spend a lot of time on things like child-rearing. They were always too busy with work and chores. More importantly, fathers in previous generations were encouraged to bury their feelings and to toughen up. This ha...

In the lead up to Christmas this year, there were a lot of blog posts about coping with Christmas and helping your children cope with Christmas. It was interesting to see how those blog posts covered all manner of topics dealing with; Crowds and over-stimulation Relatives who couldn't (or didn't want to) understand your child's issues "Surprise" Management Junk food issues Travel difficulties Gift-Reaction Management General change management (because Christmas throws every routine out) There were all kinds of discussions about preparing your child and family for Christmas. Some of them, if read by the wrong people would have made the children seem like "spoiled brats" and some were against the very nature of Christmas (in my opinion only). An Example from our household I'm quite big on "surprises", so I don't generally like surprise management tactics where you let your child know what to expect as a gift. This year, our kids got a n...

School I can remember taking my wife home from the school in tears because one mother had told us that she was in a panic about her son and thinking of pulling him out because he was only a level 12 reader. Our son was in his class too, but at the time, he was only on level 2. It's not that the other parent was insensitive. She probably didn't know what level our son was on. The real issue is that parents of children with academic special needs shouldn't discuss their children's progress with other parents. There really is no comparison and it will only get you upset. Given time and resources your child will flourish. In fact, five years later, our son is just finishing up the diary of a wimpy kid - and he enjoyed it! Unfortunately, academic talk is common at school while waiting to pick your child up. Sometimes it's better to stay in the car. Some parents delight in telling you all about their child's achievements and eagerly ask about your child's wo...

It's a well known fact that people on the spectrum often have sensory issues but it's probably less well known that these sensory issues can trigger both positive and negative feelings. Sensory issues are one of the major reasons why many aspies find it difficult to work. They are also a major contributor to shutdowns, and to a lesser extent, meltdowns. In this two part series, I'll be looking at the five classic senses, (ignoring for the moment vestibular and proprioception) and talking about how they can bring on a meltdown situation.  Image by  Gerd Altmann  from  Pixabay The Sense of Hearing I think that one of the main reasons why I've been successful in the workplace is because my own susceptibility to sensory issues is reduced by comparison with others on the spectrum. Being deaf has certainly given me much greater tolerance for the sorts of sounds which irritate my peers. I've been reading Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg 's recent series of articles with gre...

Following on from Part One , I'm giving a potted outline of my life with particular relvance to aspergers. Sadly, since I can't directly refer to aspergers in them, I'm leaving out many of my more exciting and creative adventures; such as the time I built a bomb (aged 11) and nearly wiped out myself and my neighbour, being hit by a motorbike and some interesting adventures with Sharks... I didn't drop those hints simply to whet your appetite. I wanted to point out that a child's life can be quite dangerous and an aspie's even more so. Often we take more reckless risks, are alone (and unsupervised). We also tend to be be resourceful enough to get ourselves into a lot of trouble. Moving My life changed aged about twelve when I changed schools and my parents moved house. I started secondary school with a bunch of boys from my previous school but by the end of the year, I'd lost all my friends - and my faith in humanity. The reasons for this are already do...

I joined a newAspergers forum recently and decided to write an introduction - It's rare that I bother introducing myself in forums. Usually, I just jump right in and start asking/answering questions. Since I've not really done a proper introduction here, I figured it's probably a good topic for the next few posts. I grew up in Australia in the seventies when Aspergers wasn't really a well known condition. Fortunately, I also had a hearing problem, I lost most of my hearing in both ears as part of an out of control ear infection aged about two. I say "fortunately" here because it was my hearing loss which enabled me to cope almost invisibly with the, then mostly unknown, symptoms of Aspergers. If any photo screams out "Ear Infection", then I suppose it would be this one. Here, I'm on a tricycle with my older sister in our backyard. Strangely, my next door neighbour was the same age and also deaf, though his deafness was considerably worse tha...

Image by Sherilyn Hawley from Pixabay This article follows on from parts 1-3 which deal with when parents, children and peers begin to recognise that there are differences.  (see: Should you tell your child ). There are at least three levels of recognition involved with the discovery that a child is different. Adult Awareness This invariably seems to come first - from parents, teachers, relatives, other parents and doctors. Usually these adults have enough discretion to avoid talking about the differences in front of the child - particularly if the child is unaware of the problem. The Child's Personal Awareness I hope that this series of posts has served to highlight an important truth - that the aspie becomes self-aware at a fairly early age. They won't know anything about aspergers itself but they will at least sense that they are different. Peer Awareness It also doesn't take long for a child's peer group at school to begin recognising the differences and, depen...

Last time, we looked at the influence of parental perception on the child's "view of themselves" and established that normal parent reactions are often enough to let the child know that they are different. In today's post, I'll be looking at the primary school years and how interactions between children make these differences obvious. Deaf but Still Different When I was in preschool, it was discovered that I was very deaf - the result of an uncontained ear infection. It would have been easy for me to wrongly attribute my differences to this problem (as I did with many of my social issues in secondary school). In primary school however, I was fortunate because our next door neighbour had a son the same age as me, who went to the same primary school and who was also deaf - albeit a much worse case. This gave me a benchmark for my social performance and it was obvious from day one of kindergarten, where he made instant and lasting friendships while I made...

The Aim of this Series I'm often asked by other parents for my thoughts on telling children about their aspergers. Will knowlege of the condition help or hinder them? In fact, taking things one step further... will the knowledge of aspie characteristics actually cause the differences between the aspergers and neurotypical children to become exagerated? To know the answer to this, we must first examine adults who were diagnosed with aspergers late in their lives to determine whether they felt "different" as children. Having been diagnosed at 37, I guess I'm as good a subject as any. Parental Perception There's no doubt that my parents knew that I was different from a very early age and there were lots of things that I did which were considerably different to other children. One of the most obvious differences was that I formed an unnatural bond with a blanket which lasted far longer than it should have. My mother still tells stories about how she couldn't t...