Life with Aspergers

One of the key goals of adulthood is to seek financial independence from our parents. It's all very well to be living off "the bank of mom and dad", but parents will not be there forever and financial independence is a major stepping stone to being able to do your own thing without the controlling influence of others.  In this three-part series, I want to look at eight steps towards financial independence and the way in which our autistic traits can make this difficult. I want to suggest some ways that autistic individuals can mitigate some of these problems. The chart below covers the eight steps. Step 1 Developing the right mindset There are three critical parts to developing a good "financial literacy" mindset.  Educate Yourself  on personal finance terms; budgeting, saving, investing, debt and credit.  Avoid the biggest money pitfalls  - Bad investments, bad debt and scams. Develop a healthy money mindset -  Financial Independence is a journey...

Following some recent issues with an  adult-aged autistic , I wanted to talk a little about social media and autism. Social media can be a great thing for autistic adults. It will enable them to contact others with, in most cases, fewer risks than real-life interactions. It can give them a chance to connect with others on the spectrum and/or with similar interests, and a chance to be heard. Unfortunately, social media has a dark side too.  Social Media can help people follow their special interests Social Media is Pervasive I've heard from a lot of parents that they don't allow their kids onto social media. This works very well when they are children and when you have total control over their devices. It didn't work for my kids because they were far too tech savvy and could find a way to connect with any kind of device and could get through any firewall security we put in place. Unfortunately, children grow into adults - and social media is everywhere. If your child has a n...

 Last time I talked about some of the reasons that autistic burnout occurs . I covered five of the more common ones.  In this post, I want to look at how you can identify the signs of stress and anxiety which lead to burnout and how can you stop the burnout before it happens. Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay Throughout this post, I'm going to use the word "stress" but stress and anxiety are almost interchangeable terms. The key difference between them is that stress usually has an external trigger while anxiety tends to be purely internal.  Recognizing Stress and Anxiety in Ourselves Stressed Body Flags Your body knows when it is under too much stress and will usually try to let you know. Sometimes stress appears as itching or as a rash. Sometimes it will appear as various other aches and pains including chest pains and headaches.  You should always get these pains looked into but sometimes if there's no other obvious cause, it can be down to stress.  T...

Computer addiction is not an exclusively Asperger's or Autism condition. Not all autistics develop it and not all people with computer addiction issues have autism. One of the key issues is that when autistic people have a special interest in any subject, they tend to give that subject their entire focus. In cases where those subjects are computer-based, this can lead to addiction. Image by Alexandr Podvalny from Pixabay What is Computer Addiction? Internet or computer addiction is a very real problem. It especially affects young people, particularly children and there are studies suggesting that it is widespread enough to affect one in four children.  Computer addiction is so widely recognised that it has been included in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V).  The most common ways that computer addiction affects individuals are: Information Overload:  Where people become involved in internet research that it impacts thei...

I've just finished reading the 2016 biography of Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance. It's a great read and I'd highly recommend it but this post is not a book review - and it's not a person review either. I'm not being judgemental.  Elon Musk has many traits which identify him as having Asperger's syndrome and I wanted to discuss how these traits help and hinder him because I see some of these traits in myself and others. Having a very visible and imperfect role model is a great thing and Asperger's and autistic kids in upcoming generations will benefit greatly from an understanding of Elon.  About the Book Since the book is the primary reason for my interest and it's such a great read, I want to start with a recommendation. I initially bought it for my dad but he convinced me to read it too. I'm a busy guy, so I got the audio book version. My kids are reading it now.  The Book is: Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future ...

I was reading an article a few weeks back on the psychological reasons why some marriages last the distance when so many others fail.  It was a brilliant article and it suggested that there were two key traits that successful married couples display; 1. Both partners stay cool calm and collected during conversations 2. Both partners respond to their partner's bids for emotional connection I was thinking about how good this advice was for couples in Asperger's relationships when I suddenly realised that those traits need to operate on a wider scale than simply relationships. These are key traits that affect our interactions with everyone on a day-to-day basis.  Marriage Failures The statistics tell an alarming story on the increasing number of failing marriages. These days, we don't seem to have enough time to even listen to each other properly, let alone work on relationship building. In terms of global statistics, couples in Rome are most likely to stay to...

It's a phrase which seems to really infuriate a lot of members of the autism community, "we're all a little bit autistic" and yet, there's perhaps some truth to it.  In this post, we look at what it really means, where the dividing lines are and why it can be considered offensive.  The Autism Diagnosis Autism is diagnosed based on a specific set of criteria from the DSM, currently version 5. You can read this criteria in its correct form all over the web and you really should follow this. In fact, you should be diagnosed by an expert. In a "nutshell" though, autism is defined by the following; A Communications issues; Reductions in; back & forth conversation, eye contact, emotional communication, non-verbal communication, understanding of relationships, capability to make friends. B Behavioural issues; Stimming movements, echolia, resistance to change, fixed all-consuming special interests, sensory issues. C Removing Misdiagnosis To...

One of the things that people on the spectrum do really poorly is manage their own time. This is because people with autism often suffer from poor executive functioning.  They have difficulty planning out their day or estimating how long a task will take. They're also very easily distracted.  Time management is a critical skill, particularly after your child had left school and is expected to take charge of their own day. In this post, I want to look at some of the reasons why time management fails and some of the changes we can make to train ourselves to be better at it. Who Manages Your Time? In your formative years, you do very little time management and it's usually your parents who set alarms and cajole you out of bed, harass you into getting dressed, slog through the breakfast routine, push you into the car and drop you off at school. Once at school, you're at the mercy of the timetable but apart from getting the right books to the right classes on time,...