Life with Aspergers

My Parents; Bill and Doris holding me at Hornsby Heights, NSW 1969 Today is Mother's Day in Australia and apart from presents and food, one of the traditions I have is to put a bit of effort into the card that I give my mother. Often they're hand-made but even when they're not, they usually have a poem inside. They're always intended to be funny because my mother has the best laugh in the world.  I'm not a brilliant poet and like my blog posts, I don't spend much time editing my work. I prefer things to be original.  As such, there's probably only 10 minutes of work in here - so don't expect Shakespeare. My mother and I with my sister Maree. A Mother's Day Poem Thank you for being there for me, T'was not an easy thing to be. When to the shops you would go, My eiderdown would be in tow My hands would wander to every shelf Especially glass - I couldn't help myself And when I sneeze everything was game. My sleeves would ...

You've been hounding your kid for a week to clean up his room and you finally go in because you need to pick up his washing or he'll have nothing to wear to school next week. You're shocked to find a little pile of candy wrappers, often crawling with ants. The carpet is a mess and the bin is only an arm's length away.  Yes, you've got a food wrapper mess kid. I'm not sure if this is a  Asperger’s thing or just a normal teenager thing but I suspect that the problem is a little worse with kids on the spectrum. Junk Food is Harmful. Right? There's no denying that junk food isn't a healthy option or that in large quantities it will create obesity issues. It's important to try to impose some limits on your children’s eating habits. What you don't want to do is get so hung up on the idea of cutting out sugar that you drive these behaviours underground.  After all, your kids will eventually be in a position where they have their own money...

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...