Life with Aspergers

I just want to draw your attention to what is quite simply the best article I've ever read on Low Muscle Tone in Aspergers Children; It's called; Low Muscle Tone and Motor Clumsiness in Aspergers Children http://www.myaspergerschild.com/2010/11/low-muscle-tone-and-motor-clumsiness-in.html The article covers detection of low muscle tone (or hypotonia to give its "proper" name), how it presents, exercises that you can do with babies and age-specific exercises you can do with older children. It covers a wide range of topics from motor clumsiness to handwriting, grasp and balance problems. It even looks at the social implications. It's well worth a read.

I apologise for the excessive "male-orientated" viewpoint in this post. I tried to keep it neutral but somehow, it just works better when explained from a male viewpoint. Here's a phrase that I've seen repeated throughout the comments on this blog on several occasions; "I know that he won't miss me when I'm gone because he's aspie" Today, we're going to (try to) bust that myth; Individuals I'll start off with a reminder that everyone is an individual. If all aspies were completely alike and predictible, they'd be a stereotype but they're not. Each is shaped by their background, their upbringing, their beliefs and their local customs. An aspie who grew up with loud abusive parents has a reasonable chance of becoming loud and abusive themselves because in some cases, that's all they know. That's how they think adults are supposed to behave. In other cases, aspies who grew up in those circumstances do a complete about-fa...

Acting is a gift which seems to come naturally to many people with autism and Asperger's syndrome yet only a select few follow it as a career.  Dan Ackroyd and Daryl Hannah are some of the most obvious and vocal examples but there are plenty of others.  Dan Ackroyd, on the extreme right has Asperger's Syndrome We are always acting I have a theory that people on the spectrum tend to be good at acting because they spend so much of their daily lives acting - and from a very early age. For example, it's true that autistic people often don't get jokes (although you rarely hear us complaining when neurotypicals don't get ours).  Young people quickly learn that it's easier to "act like you got the joke" than it is to take the brunt and embarrassment of being the only one who didn't. We are quite often called upon to "act amused". Then there are those sad and solemn occasions where sometimes we feel intense waves of emotion - and sometimes we don...

Today (Yesterday for people who live in my timezone) was supposed to be a day of silence on the web. It was supposed to mark (or model?) the concept of people on the spectrum having communication difficulties. It's not working. There's quite a lot of opposition to this idea - here are my thoughts... People with autism are not silent. We do have communication challenges but we overcome them. In fact, computers are one of the best tools for overcoming these challenges and it's amazing how much has been said recently by so many people whom others believed couldn't communicate at all. Why would we want to be silent? Isn't silence a mark of respect for someone who has died? We haven't died. In fact the new-found freedom of the technological age has given us new life. The rapid shift from slow letter writing, to email and then to instant messaging has had the effect of making us louder and giving us a chance to be heard. Not that we couldn't always be heard....

I've referred to this book several times on this blog but I've never actually done a review. This post aims to change that. When we were initially struggling with the Aspergers diagnosis for my eldest son, we jumped into a whole heap of complicated books. They were generally a good read but most of them were way too clinical. Then I heard about this book and I decided to buy it off amazon without having even looked inside. I couldn't find it in any Australian bookstores though funnily enough, now that I know what I'm looking for, I've seen it lots of times. First Impressions I suspect that had I seen inside the book before I bought it, I might have had second thoughts about buying it but then, I would have been wrong. It's not just the covers that you shouldn't use to judge books by - sometimes you really do need to read them first. At first glance, the book looks quite shallow. It's sort of like the famous "blue day book" except that all of t...

I just want to draw your attention to a very good article The article is called; Best and Worst Jobs for Aspergers Adults http://www.myaspergerschild.com/2010/10/best-and-worst-jobs-for-aspergers.html and it was published on the My Aspergers Child blog. The article gives tips for aspie jobseekers and tips for parents with aspie children in the latter stages of school. It also contains a few good lists of the best and worst types of jobs for aspies. It's well worth a read.

School I can remember taking my wife home from the school in tears because one mother had told us that she was in a panic about her son and thinking of pulling him out because he was only a level 12 reader. Our son was in his class too, but at the time, he was only on level 2. It's not that the other parent was insensitive. She probably didn't know what level our son was on. The real issue is that parents of children with academic special needs shouldn't discuss their children's progress with other parents. There really is no comparison and it will only get you upset. Given time and resources your child will flourish. In fact, five years later, our son is just finishing up the diary of a wimpy kid - and he enjoyed it! Unfortunately, academic talk is common at school while waiting to pick your child up. Sometimes it's better to stay in the car. Some parents delight in telling you all about their child's achievements and eagerly ask about your child's wo...