Life with Aspergers

One of the things that my wife and I do is watch "expired" TV shows. We're not really fans of the "hanging on week-to-week" problem that accompanies regular TV. Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, Doctor Who and Big Bang Theory are exceptions but even then we sometimes don't watch anything until after the season has ended.  Our series at the moment is a Canadian TV show called Being Erica which ran from 2009 to 2011.  It's sort of like Bridget Jones with  a therapist and time travel (and sadly, a bit less humour). The lead character is sometimes likeable and sometimes unlikeable and she tends to make choices which more often than not, land her in one predicament or another.  In the episode we watched last night, (hopefully not a bad spoiler) she decided, after being fired from her job, to start a new company on her own.  Her boyfriend who is a rather more cautious fellow tried to talk her out of it because he felt it was too risky. She agreed, then chang...

So, you've been looking through the lists of aspie traits and you've found one called "taking things literally". You read about it and it says,  'The person may not understand jokes, sarcasm or figures of speech, such as, "It's raining cats and dogs."' They might look outside for falling animals.... Awwww.... How cute. So, you ignore it and move on to the  next symptom. My latest post over at Special-ism looks at an example of what taking things literally really means and why it's important to take this issue seriously; Hop over and read it; Taking Things Literally; An Issue that Matters by Gavin Bollard http://special-ism.com/why-taking-things-literally-is-an-issue-that-matters/

Well, it's December again and there's bound to be a lot of gifts and socialising, so it seems appropriate to talk about Aspergers and inappropriate gifts and comments... A lot of people think that those with Asperger's syndrome are insensitive when it comes to gifts. In truth, I think we're actually trying too hard. One of the things that is drummed into our heads from the time we first start giving and receiving gifts is that "it's the thought that counts".  Consequently, I try very hard when writing cards or choosing gifts, to put a whole lot of thought and personalisation into them. I consider giving soap or other "non-specific" items to be a failure on my part. It means that I haven't put adequate thought into the gift. Sadly, I think that while lots of people appreciate this level of thought, I end up offending many more people than I would if I just handed over a novelty soap. Have a look at this clip from the Big Bang Theo...

It’s taken me most of my adult life to really understand friendship. Even then, I don’t feel like I really understand more than the most basic of concepts. I'm sure it’s easy for other people but for me, the lines between friend, acquaintance, user and colleague are all very blurred and I often can’t tell one from the other.  In my early years, long before I understood what Asperger’s syndrome was, I used to think that my problems making friends were all down to my hearing loss. After all, I reasoned, If I couldn't hear people well enough to converse easily, then obviously my friend-making and friend-keeping skills would suffer.  This would have been a great theory if I hadn't lived next door to a very popular boy with a much worse hearing issue than I had. For the first ten years of my life, that boy next door was my only friend - except of course, for my dog. When he was on holidays, and that was quite often, I would simply play by myself.  I used to be a little jealous...

You could be forgiven for thinking that bullying is “something that happens to kids”. After all, that’s how the media portrays it.  The theory is that if bullying happens to adults, it’s rare, it’s obvious and it’s generally the work of “rednecks” or similar people who lack the education and/or social exposure to be more accepting of others.  In reality, bullying is as common, as pervasive and as destructive amongst adults as it is among kids. The difference is that the vast majority of adult bullying goes undetected - or at least unchallenged by most adult bystanders. We expect our children to report bullying and yet we fail to do it ourselves. In order to really understand bullying, you have to know what it means. Google defines bullying as to; “use superior strength or influence to intimidate (someone), typically to force them to do something”. Bullying is Intentional I think this is a very good definition. It makes it clear that there is an intended result to...

No More Victims Protecting those with Autism from Cyber Bullying, Internet Predators and Scams  by Dr Jed Baker Coming less than a week after a terribly mishandled bullying case which destroyed my five year career in scouting, I guess I had unrealistically high expectations for this book. While it didn't measure up to my expectations, it was nevertheless a useful and practical booklet covering the subject of Internet predators and scams.  There's a mention of autism but really, it's something that can be summed up in one or two sentences. People with autism spend a lot of time online, they are naive and are easily baited. I really wasn't happy with the bullying section of this book. The section didn't start with a definition of bullying but described cyber-bullying thus; " Cyber Bullying is a term typically used to describe emotional victimisation and abuse among school and college aged individuals ".  This is a terrible description which makes i...

I was reading an article about a boy with autism who was silenced at a school board meeting because the subject was approaching dangerous legal ground.  Big thanks to Caitlin for pointing this one out.  I don't have any problems with the silencing because I fully understand the reasons and I don't think it was discriminatory. What got my attention though was the boy's response to being silenced; Christian concluded his talk by telling the audience that his self-advocacy work had taught him, "Nothing for me, without me," and left the microphone. That's something for his parents to be really proud of. I started thinking about this in more detail, thinking about how my wife and I have been going to IEP meetings without our sons and how the things we've been doing for them have been "without them".  I think there's a big flaw in our plans. The Initial IEP Meetings There's no doubt that the initial IEP meetings need to be conducted...