Life with Aspergers

Catchy title aside, I'm not about to suggest that you need to kick all your autistic kids out of home. I want to cover one specific recent instance for us and I want to look at the reasons why we believed that it would work while others thought it might fail. Why we did it anyway and why we feel it is succeeding. Image by Jose Antonio Alba from Pixabay Kids who Stall We have a lot of friends and relatives who have kids on and off the spectrum who have "stalled". By stalling, I mean that they've become; Permanently at home Often Unemployed Caught in unproductive routines (TV, Gaming, Extra Sleeping, Overuse of Routine) Often stalling is linked to other obsessions, such as computer gaming but it also appears in non-gamers and active kids. People can get into a stall pattern simply by filling their entire lives up with chores and leaving no room for themselves to forge ahead.  There are a lot of reasons why stalling has become common in the last couple of generations in...

So, you've got a twenty-something year old with Asperger's syndrome and they're more or less, living on the couch, or on the computer or games console. Over my last couple of posts, I've covered some of the reasons why adults with Asperger's syndrome choose to stay at home rather than enter the workforce. I've also covered some of the skills which need to be taught and practised before they're ready for work. In this post, I want to cover the act of "taking flight"... but first, I just want to go over a couple of points; Education & Work Together can become “Overload” If your young adult (YA) is engaged in tertiary study, for example at a University or College, you probably can't expect them to hold down a job as well. Remember that people with Asperger's usually need time away from others, particularly after a very "social" day. It's not impossible but I'd advise against it, especially in the first year....

Last time, I looked at adults with Asperger’s syndrome who had trouble leaving the house, and who were more often than not, video-game addicted.  In particular, I looked at the possible reasons that they could have for such behaviour. The aim of this series of posts is not to force people with Asperger’s syndrome into jobs but to enable them to live a more rewarding and fulfilling life. At best, this means becoming financially independent but in some cases, simply feeling “brave enough” to leave the house on their own is a big accomplishment. Taking a step back from my last post,  this time I want to look at some of the ways we can prepare our kids for adulthood in modern society. Horror Stories of Our Generation Every generation wants to ensure that their children grow up with less hardship than they did. When I was a child, my parents took great delight in telling me about the things they had to do as children. I was horrified to learn that things that I took for...