Life with Aspergers

Today is April 2nd. It's the international "Autism Awareness Day". People are encouraged to wear blue to show their support of this "awareness" and many bloggers will post every single day throughout the month to raise "awareness". I'm not one of those bloggers. My posts will come out as and when I have relevant and useful material to contribute.   It's rare that I interrupt a series of  posts for a specific event but I thought I should talk about the whole Autism Awareness thing. I'm all for the world understanding and accepting and loving people with autism - in fact, I'd extend the whole courtesy to people without autism too. To cats, dogs, mice, lizards and plants.  I suppose that it's a nice gesture but to me, the whole blue thing is as irritating as those "baby on board" signs. You know the signs on cars that make you wonder what you're supposed to do?  Cooo as you go past? Offer milk? ...

I grew up in a household where we were encouraged to keep ourselves to ourselves. If someone asked for help and we could give it, then we would - except if that help was deemed "too much work" or if that person was considered a "crazy person".  We would never offer help though - not without being asked because it was the job of the "helpless" to ask for support. "Crazy people" were drunks, "druggies" and older, senile people. We never helped them unless we were cornered into it - and even then, the help that was given was only ever a means of escape.  These days of course, I recognize that these are terrible and callous attitudes to have but suppose I hadn't been taught that. Would I be the same today? I remember my mother picking up an old woman in the car. She made it clear to us before picking the woman up that she was a "mad woman" and my sister and I sat in the back seat fearing for our lives.  We later asked h...

The concept of empathy is a much discussed topic in Asperger's circles but I'm starting to wonder what all the fuss is about. You see, I feel that empathy has little to do with Asperger's syndrome.  So why continue to write about it? I guess I just want the myths understood and "busted". Our family has just been through twenty-one days of hell and while the worst is clearly over, there's still a quite bit to come.  It has been a tense emotional and very very painful situation in which we needed all of the help and empathy we could find.   It's hard For me to take a step back from the situation and look at things objectively but the situation revealed some surprising insights into empathy and asperger's syndrome which I feel need to be shared. Particular insights include; There is a huge learned component to empathy. In order to receive empathy, we must first teach it. Neurotypcials can be far less empathetic than people with aspergers syndro...

This new series will look at a range of jobs which may be suitable for people with Asperger's Syndrome and will discuss the positive qualities they could bring and the challenges they could face. Project Management is a field which requires both good time management and meticulous attention to detail. These are qualities that some people with Asperger's syndrome possess in abundance. Of course, if you have an ADHD co-condition, then project management is not going to be a suitable career choice because good organisation is critical. There are many different types of project management roles and many of these are in common "special interest areas" such as computing, engineering, transport, law and even simply in documentation such as standards and compliance. Provided that you join a project management team in an area close to your special interests, you should have no difficulty maintaining attention to detail. Most project management roles will require...

I just wanted to spend a few minutes discussing the Autism Devotion project and highlighting some of the fantastic posts we've had so far; The aims of the project To highlight concrete examples of situations where people with Autism, including Aspergers syndrome, have demonstrated emotion or empathy with particular focus on situations in which those emotions may not have been recognised. It is hoped that parents, siblings, family, friends and co-workers of people on the autism spectrum will be able to use some of these examples to better understand the emotional communication that is taking place in their everyday lives. The Posts so far Please have a look at these amazing posts, leave comments, like, Google+, tweet and share around. We want to reach as many people as possible.  Also; if I've missed anyone, please let me know. On "This is not what I signed up for" Autism Devotion: Helping On "Unstrange Mind" Autism Devotion: Adult Advocat...

My wife and I went out to dinner last weekend, to celebrate her birthday. My eldest finished his dinner quickly and didn't want any more to eat.  My youngest however was still keen to eat and had a couple of portions of mine. The eldest wandered over to the restaurant's fish tank, stayed for a second or two and then came running back to tell us, particularly his brother, about the fish.  At our urging, he went off again (he was very loud) and spent a few more seconds with the fish before coming back to explain their toileting habits to his brother. The pattern repeated over and over again and I could see that his brother was a little miffed by the constant banter and tugging.  He just wanted to finish his meal in peace. I watched the behaviour for quite a while and even though my wife and I said, on several occasions, "don't annoy your brother, can't you see he's eating", the "harassment" continued. I think we were all very grateful...

Hi and welcome to a new year.  This post marks the start of what will hopefully be an ongoing series showcasing the ways in which people with Autism express love and devotion.   Although they often write the words on cards, my children don't often directly tell my wife that they love her - at least, not without a lot of prompting or not without having some tempting candy either on offer or recently delivered.  They do love her though.  It's just sometimes a little hard to read the signs. "Come downstairs", she will often call, to silence.  Dragging them away from a video game is almost impossible - especially if it involves work of any kind.  It's one of the reasons that I always include the reason as part of my calls;  "Come downstairs, dinner is ready!" for example.  Of course, I have very little chance of getting the boys downstairs for anything that isn't to their advantage. I was sitting upstairs yesterday when my wife accidentally t...