Life with Aspergers

I'd just like to draw your attention to an interesting article about aspies in the workplace. Urgency Addiction - Getting things Done by Malcolm Johnson http://www.aspergermanagement.com/urgency-addiction-getting-things-done Malcolm has a unique website which looks at how Aspergers presents in the world of business. In this article he looks at the forces which cause aspies to procrastinate and to postpone work until the last minute. He also looks at techniques for getting around the problem. If you're an aspie in the workforce or later years of school or if you're the parent of a teenage aspie, this is a very good read. You might find it very familiar. My Take Strangely, the urgency addiction that Malcolm describes has almost the opposite effect to what I experience although the driving force is the same. In my case, I don't procrastinate but rather tend to do work as early and as quickly as possible. I could however relate very well to his comments about losing i...

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 ...

I've already discussed perfection in a previous post . This post is intended to provide a bit more background. We already know that aspies can be obsessed with patterns. In many cases, particularly school work, patterns only make sense when something is perfect and/or complete. It therefore follows that aspies often have major hang-ups about perfection and completeness at school and at work. This obsession with impossible levels of perfection and completion can cause a lot of stress, particularly in young aspies at school and particularly where other factors, such as learning difficulties, writing problems or other forms of work-impairment are present. For example; An aspie with poor writing skills may find that he is constantly crossing out and redoing entire paragraphs of work because it doesn't meet his or her standards. Often they will tear out a page in their exercise books rather than leave imperfect work on the page. This isn't limited to writing and can happen d...

There are a few things about the Asperger's condition which can seriously affect the health of the individuals concerned. This obviously won't be an exhaustive list, but it's a few things to consider. Undereating in Children While it is true to say that no child has ever starved itself willingly with food in easy reach, it is probably also true to say that no Aspie child has eaten healthy food when there are unhealthy alternatives available. Aspies have a lot of problems with the texture of food as well as the taste. For some reason, the junk food manufacturers seem to have figured out a way of giving their foods fairly good textures since junk foods, such as lollies and ice cream rarely pose a problem to the aspie. Aspie adults can take responsibility for their own healthy eating habits however aspie children need to be carefully monitored. The other eating problem that aspie children have is that they seem to be much slower at eating than other children. This is probabl...

Aspies are often their own worst enemies in the area of self worth. They often set themselves unattainable or inappropriate levels of perfection. It is not uncommon for an aspie to consider a B- mark, or anything below it to be a failure. They will often berate themselves severely after such a "failure", usually calling themselves failures etc, and sometimes resorting to self-harm. On the positive side, this means that aspies are very hard workers who strive not only to do impossible amouints of work but also to do it perfecly. The downsides of employing an aspie are that; Sometimes they introduce so many steps into a process (striving for perfection), that the process ends up being overly long and complicated. They will work themselves into the ground. Personally, I tend to clock 9 to 10 hours per day and have tripped off overuse injuries on more than one occasion. They find it impossibly hard to delegate work because although they generally don't apply the same perfect...