Life with Aspergers

In my first post on this subject, I introduced eight steps to financial independence and began working through them, explaining what they were and how some autistic people may experience difficulty with them. That first post covers: Developing the right mindset, Budgeting and tracking expenses, Saving, and Debt management. In my second post , I covered the next two topics: Generating Income and Making Your Money Work for You (i.e., Investments). In this final post, I will cover Building Good Credit and How to Review and Adjust Your Plans for the Future . But first, I want to clarify a point raised by one of my readers . Why Do I think Autistic People are "Bad with Money"? It's a good question, especially since I'm writing a series aimed at helping people do better in this area. The answer is simple: I don't. I have met many autistic people who are absolute wizards with financials , particularly if they have finance as a special interest. Unfortunately, not every...

In my last post , I covered the first four of eight steps to financial independence while looking at the key issues that specifically affect autistic people. This time, I want to cover the next two crucial steps; Generating Income and Making Good Investments .  Step 5 Generating Income The foundation of financial independence is generating income, and for most, this means securing a job. While jobs are generally accessible to young people, gaining a foothold in the workforce can be challenging, often requiring prior experience or qualifications. Don't be discouraged if your first job isn't glamorous – sometimes, it's just about getting a foot in the door. My own first job involved making dog food! The key is to commit fully to your current role while always striving for something better. Autism and Job-Seeking Autistic individuals often face unique hurdles in the job market, particularly during the initial recruitment phase. Many of these issues center around the interview ...

Mother's day has just passed and I was thinking about how great my own mother is and about how many amazing mothers, particularly of kids on the spectrum, that I've known over the years including my cousin, several friends. and the many mothers on forums and on Life-with-Aspergers  with whom I've interacted over the years.  To celebrate the day, I wanted to write a post about the qualities of those amazing mothers. I'm sure that many of you will recognise yourselves in this post.  Image by edsavi30 from Pixabay Loving The greatest mothers are loving, caring and kind. They are always ready to provide comfort and hugs when their children need it. They know that most kids on the spectrum love tight hugs and they're always ready to oblige. Their love is also a shield for the times when the mother/child relationship is tested and harsh words are exchanged. It protects them anything their kids say in anger and it ensures that their response always comes from a place of l...

People with Autism and Asperger's syndrome may experience a variety of different executive functioning issues. These include issues with; organisation skills, self regulation, the ability to process tasks sequentially and remembering instructions, multi-tasking, filtering distractions, setting priorities, planning and attention focusing.  In this post, I want to focus on "time-blindness" and look at some of the causes and the ways in which this obstacle can be reduced. What is Time-Blindness? Time blindness is when an individual becomes somewhat unaware of the passage of time. Like most executive functions, the ability to measure and manage time is part innate and part learned. It needs to be practiced and honed in order to keep it sharp and functional but it comes more naturally to some people than to others. People on the autism spectrum and people with related issues, such as OCD and ADHD can have particular difficulty in this area. Time-blindness can impact...

One of the things that people on the spectrum do really poorly is manage their own time. This is because people with autism often suffer from poor executive functioning.  They have difficulty planning out their day or estimating how long a task will take. They're also very easily distracted.  Time management is a critical skill, particularly after your child had left school and is expected to take charge of their own day. In this post, I want to look at some of the reasons why time management fails and some of the changes we can make to train ourselves to be better at it. Who Manages Your Time? In your formative years, you do very little time management and it's usually your parents who set alarms and cajole you out of bed, harass you into getting dressed, slog through the breakfast routine, push you into the car and drop you off at school. Once at school, you're at the mercy of the timetable but apart from getting the right books to the right classes on time,...

Earlier this week in Sydney, our police fatally shot a woman who was wielding a knife . It later transpired that she had Asperger's syndrome. I didn't comment on it at the time as I was quite busy at work -- and I was also awaiting the backlash of comments to the effect that;  "the police could have shot her in the leg or tasered or tackled her rather than shooting to kill, therefore ALL police are bad" or  "all people with Asperger's syndrome can become knife wielding maniacs" To my surprise and delight, those responses weren't forthcoming.   Instead our media mainly discussed the difficulties that police face in situations like this and the problems that people with Asperger's syndrome have when it comes to understanding police direction. It was a very mature response from our media. I'm not going to go over things here because I didn't know Courtney, suffice to say that my heart goes out to  Courtney Topic's family . ...

This post follows on from my earlier post " Young Teens and Eecutive Functioning Issues " If you haven't read that post, you might want to read it before continuing here as it provides a useful introduction to the topic. In my earlier post I defined lack of executive function and talked about the problems it can cause in day-to-day scenarios involving simple tasks, like getting dressed.  As children get older however, executive functioning difficulties become more pronounced because they're expected to be able to take responsibility for more far-reaching decisions. Decisions made by older teens can affect lives and can result in legal action, injury and even death. An Example; Take, as an example, the problem of driving home after a night out. The simplified executive functioning would probably flow as follows but each component would have a myriad of ordered sub-tasks as well; Decide - Am I ok to drive home?   This would require both a knowledge of the d...

You'll often hear that people on the spectrum have problems with "executive functioning" but what does it mean and how does it manifest in young adults?   In this post, I hope to give you some answers. Image by 11066063 from Pixabay What are Executive Functions? Put simply, executive functions are higher level functions such as planning, reasoning, problem solving, multi-tasking, attention span, inhibition, flexibility, self monitoring, self-initiation and self guidance.  Executive functions are important but in an animal sense, a lack of them is usually not life threatening. Eating, sleeping, moving and toileting for example, aren't classed as "executive functions".   While executive functioning provides many advantages, it's not so critical in the pure "animal" sense. It's people and society that has made executive functioning critical in humans. An Example: Get Ready for School The remainder of this post will focus on an example, in thi...