Life with Aspergers

Masking in terms of autism and Asperger's syndrome is a way of hiding your true self from others as a means of fitting in and avoiding harm. It can best be summed up as "pretending to be normal". In this post, I want to talk about some of the ways that we mask, why it is necessary sometimes and why ultimately you need to minimize masking in your life. How do we mask? It's often said that people with Asperger's syndrome are great actors because they spend so much of their lives pretending to be someone that they are not.  Masking is a very normal activity and everyone masks in some form or other. The teen who loves classical music but listens to rock in front of their school friends is masking their musical taste. The guy who eats all his vegetables at his girlfriends place but never at home is masking for her parents, so that they will like him more. We mask whenever we put on clothing that is not us, wear makeup that we don't like or put effort into making ou...

Last week, I had some tips for  single-parenting very young autistic children . This time I want to give you some tips for single parents of school aged children. As before, I want to start off with a disclaimer that I'm not a single parent. The ideas here are some of the more popular ones from discussions with single parents over the years.  Image by sarahbernier3140 from Pixabay Address the Problems, not the Diagnosis Failure to accept the diagnosis seems to be the single biggest gripe among single parents of kids on the spectrum. It's quite common for one parent, usually the one who has the kids the least, does not accept the diagnosis. They often insist that their child is "normal" and try to blame their child's differences on the other parent.  It's a big problem and it can make it very difficult for parents to get access to appropriate funding, medication and services. This problem rears its head even in dual parent relationships and even when both pare...

  It seems an odd question but it's one that crops up with alarming regularity on autism forums with older members.  It's also a loaded question because the literal answer is clearly, "No, there is no charge in the level of autism in us as we age. The subjective answer however is quite different. Image by Cheryl Holt from Pixabay What does it mean? When we ask whether we become more autistic,  what we're really trying to ask is whether our autistic traits become more pronounced over time. It's an interesting question. The visibility of our autistic traits waxes and wanes throughout our lives based on personal and environmental circumstances. To answer this, we need to take a look at how autistic traits manifest in different age groups.  Babies When we start out in life,  the expectations on us are fairly simple.  We are expected to sleep, cry and drink milk. Any differences that we may have will usually have little effect on our ability to deliver in th...

With Lockdown still in effect in lots of places, I wanted to share some of the experiences I had with my son and his inability to self-manage when it came to working on school projects by himself.  My youngest has a lot of potential but also tends to be lazy or easily distracted by video games. Lockdown seems to have "changed the game" and he feels like he can get away without putting the effort in.  There's no easy answer but this is our journey. Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay The Problems Before we get into solutions, I wanted to look at some of the problems we were experiencing.  First of all, my son had been a reasonable student before lockdown. Not brilliant but middling. He was putting in a reasonable amount of effort and was getting work done more or less on time. The only thing that was a bit of a problem for him was assignments that he had to do out of class.  That should have been a warning sign for us. When lockdown started, the kids were off school be...

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...

There's no doubt about it, mathematics is a very important skill. It's a skill that you will use throughout  your entire life whether it's for checking your expenditure and change, doing quotations for work or simply measuring up the garden in order to buy supplies for home. Math is critical.  The media would have us believe that mathematics is an automatic "savant skill" for people with autism and that kids with autism, even non-verbal ones, are all capable of amazing feats of mathematics. If only this were true.  Unfortunately, this is yet another area where autistic people are just the same as everyone else. Some people are very good at math but most are not.  Russell Crowe in "A Beautiful Mind" - A great film but not one that helps the wrong perception of Savant skills Sometimes it's all about practice Math teachers often suggest that the best way to learn mathematics is to keep doing math problems over and over. There's certainly ...

Like many bloggers I have a stash of topics that I keep for later because they're too raw, too "popular" or too difficult to think about at the time. I often look back at these to see if they gel with my experiences of the week. In this case, I looked back over an article about the bullying and savage attack of a boy with Asperger's Syndrome in Melbourne, Australia. This struck a chord with me because this week, I responded to a post from a mother who was talking about moving to a different city because her son was being bullied.  I've talked about bullying quite a bit on this blog before but this time I want to talk about why running from the problem is counter-productive and go over some options for dealing with bullies in their own environment. Why Running is Futile Short term running is fine. If your life actually is in danger, or if you're about to be physically assaulted, then by all means, run away from that current situation. The best pla...

A few months ago, my youngest (15) went on a school camp. There was an incident at the camp which occurred because of his differences. It wasn't handled very well and it spiralled out of control. We finally got a resolution this week and I feel that now is the time to look at the bigger picture and talk about how things could have been handled better.  I would expect this post to be useful for all teachers who have kids on the spectrum in their classes, camp "controllers" and parents in general.  What Happened As a boy with autism, my son is always nervous about trying new things. New places and disruptions to his normal routine, such as camps can really mess with his head. He works hard to push himself to try things, even if he's a little afraid of them. This particular camp had a high ropes experience and he was quite nervous about it but once he saw the ropes he decided that he would be able to do it. He did very well on the course until he reached a par...

School is a very difficult proposition for kids on the spectrum and your first choice of school isn't always going to be the right one. Sometimes you'll need to change schools as personnel change, as bullies come and go or as the general "fit" between the school and your child ceases to work. In this post, I want to look at different school scenarios and try to give guidance on three issues; Private versus State-Funded Special versus Mainstream Homeschooling versus Institutionalised  Private versus State-Funded Schools Understanding Public and Private Schools While these two major types of schools appear all around the world,  they're called different things in different countries. In the UK, the word "public school" actually means "independent" (essentially what a "private school" in Australia and the United States means). They use the words "state-funded" to describe what we call public. As an aid to under...

He doesn't look autistic to me...  It's a phrase that every parent of a child on the autism spectrum dreads. Apparently it's meant as a compliment but in reality it's a fairly impressive bit of “multiple insulting“. Disclaimer: Nick Cage doesn't necessarily have autism but I used this photo because it has the right kind of "weird face" required to match the offending phrase. Why is this so insulting? On the one hand,  it's insulting to all people with autism because it suggests that all children with autism can be identified by presumably defective physical traits making them “inferior” to their neurotypical counterparts in yet another way. On the other hand, it's insulting to the person who has autism and their carers because it belittles their struggle and challenges the idea that they have anything to complain about. People often use the offending phrase to suggest that a child or adult doesn't need special treatment or support ...