Life with Aspergers

Hot on the heels of my recent articles comes Dave Angel's take on the subject; When should I tell my son about his diagnosis of Aspergers? by Dave Angel http://parentingaspergers.com/blog/when-should-i-tell-my-son-about-his-diagnosis-of-aspergers/ I get the feeling that Dave supports the idea of telling children in an age-appropriate manner. He also cautions against the self-image issues which can arise from allowing a child to think that they are "defective". It's critical that if and when you do tell your child, that you make the experience a positive one.

This topic was suggested in a recent comment and I figured it was something I haven't covered properly in the past - so here goes... Defining Social Anxiety Social Anxiety isn't something that only affects people with aspergers, it affects people with all kinds of mental conditions as well as those with physical issues, weight issues and other differences that mentally or physically distinguish them from the general populace. The distinction may not necessarily be a real one but could, and often does, only exist in the subject's mind. Social Anxiety is so great an issue, that it's considered to be the third largest psychological problem in the world today. Social anxiety isn't limited to difficulty meeting people in face to face conversation but also includes; Telephone Conversations Social Occasions Simply Going Outdoors in Public Places Being Watched Recording (video and photo Cameras, Microphones etc) Instant Messaging, Chats, Facebook and other Web 2.0 Systems...

Image by Sherilyn Hawley from Pixabay This article follows on from parts 1-3 which deal with when parents, children and peers begin to recognise that there are differences.  (see: Should you tell your child ). There are at least three levels of recognition involved with the discovery that a child is different. Adult Awareness This invariably seems to come first - from parents, teachers, relatives, other parents and doctors. Usually these adults have enough discretion to avoid talking about the differences in front of the child - particularly if the child is unaware of the problem. The Child's Personal Awareness I hope that this series of posts has served to highlight an important truth - that the aspie becomes self-aware at a fairly early age. They won't know anything about aspergers itself but they will at least sense that they are different. Peer Awareness It also doesn't take long for a child's peer group at school to begin recognising the differences and, depen...

It seems that aspie children are well aware of their differences from an early age and that at the very least, this has significant impact on their ability to make and retain lasting friendships. So far however, the long term negative impact has been minimal but during the teenage years, this will begin to change. When I first started at my new "secondary school", quite a large number of my primary school classmates came with me. Unfortunately, since my only friends by that stage were girls and since I was starting at a (then) all boys school, I started off with a lot of familiar names and faces but no friends. The Comedy Act My earliest forays with my classmates were in the form of comedy routines. I had no fear of acting stupid in front of others (aspie naievity) and I would be constantly harrased to perform my "invisible flea circus" act for others. I did this instead of conversation and I quickly earned a reputation for being weird. My new classmates had quickly...

Last time, we looked at the influence of parental perception on the child's "view of themselves" and established that normal parent reactions are often enough to let the child know that they are different. In today's post, I'll be looking at the primary school years and how interactions between children make these differences obvious. Deaf but Still Different When I was in preschool, it was discovered that I was very deaf - the result of an uncontained ear infection. It would have been easy for me to wrongly attribute my differences to this problem (as I did with many of my social issues in secondary school). In primary school however, I was fortunate because our next door neighbour had a son the same age as me, who went to the same primary school and who was also deaf - albeit a much worse case. This gave me a benchmark for my social performance and it was obvious from day one of kindergarten, where he made instant and lasting friendships while I made...

The Aim of this Series I'm often asked by other parents for my thoughts on telling children about their aspergers. Will knowlege of the condition help or hinder them? In fact, taking things one step further... will the knowledge of aspie characteristics actually cause the differences between the aspergers and neurotypical children to become exagerated? To know the answer to this, we must first examine adults who were diagnosed with aspergers late in their lives to determine whether they felt "different" as children. Having been diagnosed at 37, I guess I'm as good a subject as any. Parental Perception There's no doubt that my parents knew that I was different from a very early age and there were lots of things that I did which were considerably different to other children. One of the most obvious differences was that I formed an unnatural bond with a blanket which lasted far longer than it should have. My mother still tells stories about how she couldn't t...

I'd like to draw your attention to a good article on Hyperfocus on Additude, an ADHD site. Hyperfocus does come into play in ADD/ADHD but I think it's even more applicable to Aspergers. The article is: Learn About ADHD: Focus on Hyperfocus Information about ADHD symptom of hyperfocus -- a common symptom that explains why many attention deficit children and adults can concentrate so intently at times. by Royce Flippin http://www.additudemag.com/adhd/article/612.html The article covers the good parts of hyperfocus, which is something I've already done but it then goes into detail on the negative points too. Relating to the Article I can certainly relate to a number of points in the article, having had to be fetched from my office on various occasions when alarms have sounded without my noticing them. It might be possible to write some of these down to my deafness, but not the problems where we've lost lighting power (without wall outlet power), o...