Life with Aspergers

For many people, particularly teachers, the first real experience with autism comes as part of an intervention in a "situation". After all, aside from odd mannerisms and odd comments, many autistic children can appear quiet and non-participative - this can easily be mistaken for shyness. The real problems begin to surface when an extraordinary event, such as a meltdown or shutdown occurs. Even if no such event occurs, a simple friendly intervention from a teacher can sometimes result in a unexpected response. When such events do occur, they can "sour" the relationship between teacher and child - and sometimes between the parents and school too. Recovery is a long process of "walking on eggshells" for which most teachers don't have the time or patience, In this post. I want to look at some of the ways that you can modify your approach to children with aspergers syndrome to reduce those ill effects. I'll be concentrating on an approach under no...

John Elder Robison (author of "Look me in the Eye") has I've already covered part one and the first half of part two of this article but my OCD dictates that I need to finish the rest. If you haven't read it, the article is on John Elder Robison's excellent blog; Part II of the Female’s View of Asperger’s guest post http://jerobison.blogspot.com/2009/09/part-ii-of-females-view-of-aspergers.html Since this post, like the previous two, is a reaction to the article, you probably should have read the originals first. Continuing on from Part 1 and Part 2a . Expression I love the term "hunted animal expression". I've often had people come up to me and ask "are you alright" when I've been perfectly alright and just thinking. I guess that when I'm deep-thinking, my facial muscles relax into whatever is my normal aspie expression - it must be scary. Deborah, the writer, talks about a difference between the male and female expression sug...

As usual, this follows on from Part One , Two and Three . If you haven't read these, you really should go back and read them before moving forward - otherwise it might not make sense. At the end of the last marriage encounters session, we'd listened to a couple who talked about their recent past experiences bringing up small children. We were then given a bunch of questions to choose from which got us to talk to our partners about our feeling with negative emotions. It was time for the next couple to take the stage. Middle Age The next couple was a bit older, though not by much. They talked about how whenever the conditions around them change, their marriage must change too in order to survive. Their discussions picked up when, after years of supporting their children, the kids were beginning to need them less often. For years, they had lived almost separate weekends organised around their children's sporting events. Now finally, those sports were beginning to finish...

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay This post is quite a long and rambling one... my apologies. I haven't been the most supportive husband of late due mainly to two separate incidents, both of which are worth blogging about. I'll cover one incident in this post and hopefully by the time I do my next post, I'll have my head around the second. Talk is Difficult If you read most articles which cover aspie diagnostic criteria, you'll find mention of the difficulties of smalltalk. You could be forgiven for thinking that this means that aspies are hopeless at discussing off-topic things like the weather (except for the surprisingly large number for whom this is a special interest). You might also assume that aspies would be fine when talking on the job or about their special interests. That a computer aspie like myself could talk to lots of people for hours about computers - so long as nobody mentions "the weather". Similarly, you could assume that discussions with ...

The BBC has a really interesting test on its web site at the moment. It's all about whether or not people can spot fake smiles versus real ones. I figured that since it's part of the diagnostic criteria for aspergers that we have problems reading non-verbal cues, it would provide some insightful results. Real versus Fake Smile Test http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles/index.shtml The test shows you 20 videos of people smiling either real or fake smiles. You can't replay the smiles until you've finished voting but you can spend as long as you like thinking about them before you choose your answer. I expected to do badly but in fact, I did really well. I got 19 out of 20 correct. You'll need a flash enabled browser/computer to do the test. My Secret (Don't read this until you've done the test yourself) At the end of the test, it asks you to indicate what clued you in. In my case it was not the smiles at all. It was other head movemen...

Stimming is a repetitive behaviour performed by aspergers and autistic children because it "feels good" or calms them. I've covered stimming before (see: What is Stimming and what does it feel like ). In today's post, I'm going to cover a very specific type of stimming - visual stimming. Visual stimming can often confuse parents and lead them in the wrong direction - to optometrists for eye examinations or to other specialists to discuss facial tics. Instead, a few well aimed questions at your child may put the record straight. My History When I was a child, I used to engage in visual stimming quite a bit. It wasn't until much later, after I had been doing it increasingly for years, that my mother asked me what was going on. Until that time, I was not aware that when engaging in the activity, I presented anything at all to the outside world. In reality however, my visual Stimming made me look like I had a very bad squint or like my eyesight was very poor....

Today, I'm returning to the subject of Empathy because it's a very important part of the Aspergers condition. We lack empathy, but we're not incapable of it. It's just a lot of hard work for us. My previous post on Empathy is linked here I've just answered a fascinating question on WrongPlanet about the difference between Empathy and Emotion. It took a fair amount of thinking but I feel that I've captured the basics -though, as usual, I'm quite happy to be corrected. I was so happy with my thinking that I've expanded the whole thing here to become my topic of the day. The Difference between Empathy and Emotion Empathy deals with understanding (and in some cases, replication) of someone else's emotions or state of mind while emotions are focussed solely upon your own feelings. As a result; You can be empathetic without showing emotions. You can show emotion without being empathetic. Example 1: Empathy without showing Emotion A neighbour loses ...

Just thought I'd post a couple of great Aspie links; Napoleon Dynamite (defining Aspergers) I recently watched this film which others have said is an aspie film. It is. It's funny but also very real. Anyway, someone has gotten clips from this film and put them together in a "Definition of Aspergers video". It's well worth a watch. Don't forget though, Napoleon seems to be a bit extreme; The Good Side of Aspergers Ok, now the video above mostly points out the bad things about Aspergers, so I figured I'd put a link to a recent article on known aspie geniuses that was in the UK Telegraph yesterday. Albert Einstein 'found genius through autism' By Nic Fleming, Science Correspondent Last Updated: 4:01pm GMT 21/02/2008