Life with Aspergers

Part one of this two part series Autism & Travel, a series about traveling as an Autistic Adult, will focus on what happens before you travel. Preparation, Planning and Safety. Part two will focus on the actual trip, Group Dynamics, Self-Regulation, and Unmasking. There can be no underestimating the value of travel in shaping our minds and experiences. Just as young children benefit greatly from interacting with the world around them in the form of local shopping centers and schools, adults benefit from being taken out of their day-to-day local community and spending time in a much larger world.  Travelling gives you a unique opportunity to see the world around you from a different perspective, to experience different cultures, how different people live and communicate, what they eat, what they value and how they celebrate life. It also gives you an opportunity to delve into history and to understand your own place in the world.  Sure, the prospect of travel can be dauntin...

There's no doubt about it, autism, Asperger's syndrome and all of the associated co-conditions including ADHD/ADD, anxiety, OCD, ODD, Bi-Polar disorder and BPD can really make it difficult to live "normally". People seem to be obsessed with living a "normal" life instead of trying to live a happy one. Sometimes these things can co-exist but most of the time they do not. In this post, I want to go over some of the ways you can adjust your life goals to find happiness. The Trouble with being "Normal" Unless you fit a certain restricted set of cultural, racial, sexual, economic and medical criteria, you're not "normal". This is a sad fact of life and one that's usually beyond our control to change. I'm not here to talk about most of these restrictions. I acknowledge that they're important but I'm just here to talk about the neurological part of being "normal". These neurological differences make it diff...

I've been watching a TV series on Netflix recently called Atypical . It's about Sam, a young man with autism and the way in which his family, school, work and relationships interact and grow.  It's a very good series and I'd highly recommend it.  I expect that I'll review it at some point.  Like all media about autism, it gets a few things wrong and exaggerates others. That's okay. It's fiction and it's taking a little poetic licence. At the same time though, it raises a lot of interesting points. One of the most interesting aspects of the show is the behaviour of Sam's mother, played brilliantly by Jennifer Jason Leigh. It shows an over-parenting (and in this case, over-mothering) instinct that is all too familiar with kids on the spectrum. In this post, I want to look at a how over-parenting happens and why it's harmful. What is Over-Parenting? Over-parenting tends to happen much more frequently on the mother's side of paren...

In some of my other posts, I've talked about meltdowns , which are when people on the autism spectrum lose control. I've also talked about the quieter form of meltdown; the " shutdown " where an individual is unable to connect with the outside world.  Meltdowns and shutdowns are transitory things, they happen and they pass. They're also usually quite short, lasting at most, for a few hours. When a person with autism experiences a condition similar to a shutdown that lasts for days or even for the rest of their life, it's something else.  It's called autistic burnout.  The symptoms The symptoms of autistic burnout will vary significantly from person to person but there are a few common signs; Inability to cope with daily life Autistic burnout is often compared with a mental breakdown for good reason. They're very similar. A person may be coping well with the pressures of family or working life and then may suddenly become incapable of co...

As we wind down April, the month of "light it up blue", "autism awareness" and "autism acceptance", I wanted to ponder the other side of the equation. At the beginning of the month, I talked about how those of us on the spectrum needed to represent ourselves . Now I want to look at what we really need from people who aren't on the spectrum.  As usual, the best way to answer that question is to pick a group which already has good accommodations and look at how this could apply to autism. Beyond Acceptance, the example of the blind.  My comparison point this time is blind people. I'm not suggesting that nothing more can be done for them but rather that their needs are understood and catered for well beyond simple "acceptance". Our social care of visually impaired people is impressive and something that other groups should strive to match. So, how are the visually impaired being looked after by society? Braille: It's not jus...

I love Christmas. I love all the flashing lights, the familiar Christmas carols and the decorations. I didn't really enjoy visiting relatives when I was little but now I really love the opportunity to catch up with people I haven't seen for a long time. Unfortunately, my view isn't the most common view among people with Asperger's syndrome and many people find Christmas to be a special kind of torture.  In this post, I'll be addressing some of the ways that you can prepare for common sensory issues which affect adults and children during Christmas and similar festivities.  Establishing Safety Establishing safety wherever you go is probably the most important advice I can give anyone with sensory issues. Sometimes pushing the boundaries on your sensory issues can backfire and particularly in children, can lead them to run straight into dangerous areas.  Giving them safe places to go and safe people to go to will greatly alleviate the strain.  Choose a Safe Ar...

It seems strange to say it but I’d never heard of Katy Perry until she hit the headlines for dressing “inappropriately” on Sesame Street back in 2010. Even then it was at least a couple of years before I listened to her music properly.  Apart from her music, which I now love, I’ve also got another reason to really like her as an artist. She’s always defending those who are different and in 2012, she did an awesome duet of Firework (an amazing and empowering song in its own right) with Jodi DiPiazza a young girl with autism. I tried to find this on youtube again but sadly the full version isn’t available now.  Rest assured, it was incredibly moving. Lyrics with Meaning One of the great things about Katy’s songs is that a lot of them, though obviously not all, have deep meanings. I was listening to the song, “it takes two” recently and I was thinking about the message within it and how it applies a lot of common sense to couples in relationships. I was also thinking th...

The Littlest Inventor by Mandi C Mathis (Illustrated by Danielle Ragogna) The Littlest Inventor is a children's picture book which tells a story about adjusting to sensory difficulties with some very sensible "inventions". These days, I'm finding myself reading a lot of really thick textbooks on the subject of autism and sensory processing disorder.  As a children's book with limited text and some gorgeous illustrations, this was an absolute breeze to read.  I really enjoyed it. At around 30 pages with one or two lines of rhyming text every couple of pages, it's the perfect size for a bedtime story or to read in the classroom. The story is about a boy who goes shopping with his parents and experiences a sensory overload. (Mild spoilers follow) The senses covered include sight, flickering lights, sounds in the form of chatter and smell. The ordeal in the shopping centre leads to a meltdown. When the boy gets home after the experience, he heads...

Self Reg: How to Help your Child  (and you) Break the Stress Cycle and Successfully Engage with Life by Stuart Shanker Self reg is more of a textbook aimed at professionals than a book aimed at parents. It contains a lot of general theories and a whole lot more specific real-life examples but it doesn't have step by step problem solving procedures. It acknowledges that all problems are different and it’s trying to teach parents and professionals to “problem solve” using the Self Reg framework. The book starts off with some theory exploring the various systems at work in a growing person’ body.  There's a lot of detail on various social experiments, marshmallow theory and various experiments aimed at exploring the relationship between parent-child interaction. It's all quite fascinating and there’s more than a few “ah-ha” moments as Stuart points out the flaws in these experiments. From here, the book talks about change but what makes it radically different from mo...

These days, Autism Spectrum Disorders aren't uncommon.  In fact, it’s pretty clear that there's a strong genetic link.  People with ASDs Collect Together  If you have autism in one form or another (or if you have a sibling on the autism spectrum), there's a better than average chance that you will have at least one child on the spectrum. It's not vaccines, it's not head trauma or defective parenting. It's genetics, pure and simple. The apple really doesn't fall too far from the tree. What's less well documented is that people with autism seem to prefer the company of others on the spectrum. In fact, it seems that we have an arguably better sense for detecting individuals like ourselves in social situations than regular people. The odds of a person on the autism spectrum partnering with another person on the autism spectrum seem to be higher than most. The upshot of this is that there are many families out there which contain more than one p...