Are teen-aged Asperger sufferers really as clueless & self-absorbed as Max on TV's "Parenthood"?

Factual Questions
1

So, I’m a pretty regular viewer of the TV show Parenthood. I sometimes find it’s a bit too emotionally manipulative, but, hey, what hour-long television drama these days isn’t? So I watch it.

Anyway, there is this character named Max, a high school freshman-aged boy with Asperger’s Syndrome. Years ago, when the boy was younger, I found his portrayal to be very believable and convincing. In fact, I recall seeing news stories and video segments about how true-to-reality the actor’s portrayal was, and families with Asperger’s children were grateful to see their world finally getting some public exposure. (It should be mentioned that the actor does not have the syndrome in real life.)

Lately, however, I am less won-over by Max. I know that a key trait of Asperger’s Syndrome is that sufferer’s are very non-empathetic, but teen-aged Max is utterly self-absorbed, and *intellectually clueless *about the other people in the world around him. He is, to coin a phrase, a total Asperger’s robot. Nothing else seems to have any control over him.

I mean, I would think that a boy of his age would begin to have the intellectual ability to figure out some social and familial interactions, even if he is emotionally numb to them. But every single unwelcome request or demand made of him is met with a “Why?” And even when he is told why, he resists. Everything is “unfair” to him – even though a child with minimum intellect should be able to grasp the “fairness” of what is asked of him, especially after it has been explained.

And I’m not just talking about petty kid stuff, like demands to clean up his room. In big crises, like in last night’s episode when his mother has collapsed onto the bathroom floor, he registers zero sense of urgency. Even if he can not feel for his parents’ distress, I would think his intellectual brain should tell him that there is a problem here.

So, I guess the question is this: Is the portrayal of Max reasonably accurate for a male Asperger’s sufferer of his age, or is it over the top, or flawed in some other way?

Thanks all, in advance.

2

It’s a spectrum. I expect Max is at the more severe end. I can only speak from experience but I was diagnosed with a Aspirer’s and I showed some of those characteristics but not to that extent.

Is it accurate? Can’t really say but it certainly doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility especially when you consider the behavior of people with more extreme types of autism.

3

Is that the high-functioning kind? :wink:

4

Well, he wanted it to be.

5

Another feature of Aspergers in an inability to cope with things outside their experience and influence. They could run from the event or have a screaming tantrum or any other mechanism to express their frustration at not knowing how to deal with it.

6

I used to have panic attacks when changing grades. New rooms, new teachers, new books, often new kids. I did not like it one bit.

7

LOL - good catch :smiley:

8

Which describes my daughter. Though she is high functioning and these episodes are becoming much less frequent as we teach her better coping mechanisms.

9

I actually know ( you’ll notice I don’t say “am friends with”) a few adults who are like this (although as far as I know they have not been diagnosed with Asperger’s). It’s not intellectual ability that matters in a lot of these interactions - it really is empathy, in the sense of the ability to put oneself in the other’s place. For example, one of these acquaintances (M) has a job requiring staffing 24/7. It’s fairly common in his job to switch shifts, either to change the day off or to get three or four days in a row off. M realized at some point that if he refused to switch and the other person called in sick, M would be called in on overtime and get time and a half. He was quite surprised when he wanted a week off, and couldn’t get anyone to take his Wednesday shift. Intellectually, he was capable of understanding that if people were mad at him they wouldn’t help him out. But he doesn’t have the ability to put himself in their place and realize that they would get mad if he wouldn’t switch and forced them to use a sick day so he could get time and a half. That’s very different from realizing they will get mad and just not caring.

10

I know myself, when I am in pressure situations - like the cashier standing there waiting for me to find change to pay - I start to get confused and feel “closed in”, and can’t think as straight. Unfamiliar human interactions do that. Often my wife has to “interpret” questions I did not anticipate; she claims I’m deaf, but usually it’s a matter of not translating sound to comprehension if a sentence is not what I’m expecting, if it’s not part of a familiar script. OTOH, if you read a lot of pilot crash reports, for example, it’s amazing how often though processes get short-circuited under stress.

My wife once gave me heck because it didn’t occur to me to stand around and say goodbye to our friend at the airport, instead I just lined up to get through security. My wife also complains occasionally about coworkers who don’t even look at her when she’s talking, don’t make eye contact. She said that at least I do. I had to correct her - no, I look at people’s mouths, because that’s where sound comes from. it just looks like eye contact. I once tried to train myself to look into people’s eyes, I found that intensely uncomfortable and gave up, it was like doing a staring contest or something.

I remember at one meeting, we were explaining a new computerized bookkeeping system. One fellow (among many) asked a number of questions. Afterwards, a co-worker said something like “Did you see Bob getting all worried there that this program will completely change the way he does his job, he won’t be able to BS management any more?” That whole dynamic went right over my head, I had no clue. I thought the guy was just asking questions.

it’s not like “don’t care”, as Doreen points out, it’s more like “Huh? That never occurred to me…” or “this flusters me because it is totally outside my comfort zone”.

11

I’ve worked with a few teens with Asperger’s. Max Burkholder nails it. NAILS it. I truly have trouble remembering that Burkholder doesn’t have it himself.

Yes, there’s a spectrum of behavior, but for a certain point of that spectrum, he’s spot on. And I think episodes like last night’s really helps to communicate the stress that sort of behavior can put on a family.

Jason Katims, one of the producers of the show, has a son with Asperger’s just a couple of years older than Max. I suspect he’s in on a lot of those script development meetings.

12

We have a kid in our extended family (my second cousin or something) whose dad would show off how amazing he was at family reunions at at age 4 by knowing the capitols of all the states.

Wasn’t bragging too much when the kid started masturbating in class. I’d say that’s pretty clueless as to what normal behavior (even if you don’t understand it) should and shouldn’t be like.

Also, when I visit my friends who have an Asperger’s child, not a single visit goes by when the child doesn’t start a tantrum and needs at least 30 minutes to calm down. The last one was because he couldn’t find the DVD he wanted to watch.

13

[aside]

Actually I have had a speaking coach suggest exactly that in order to avoid accidentally creating a staring contest.

[/asode]

14

What you described pretty much sounds EXACTLY like me at that age.
My IQ, at that age, tested at 130.
I wasn’t stupid by any stretch, but figuring out how things I said was going to make people feel and act was very, very, very hard to me.
As in… impossible.
I spent a couple of years essentially NEVER talking to my family because the results of me saying what I was thinking could be horrific, or saddening.
Talking through my ‘filter’ to my mom or other family members was EXHAUSTING.
Much easier to just be quiet.

15

This is an interesting thread. I watched the show and have wondered the same thing. I only know one teen-aged Asperger kid and he is very high functioning now at age 16. He just has a few “quirks” like not knowing when a conversation has come to its natural end. He’ll just keep arguing his point. I can say something like, “Hey Daniel, I’m through talking about this now,” and he’s like, “Oh, ok.” The kid on this show is so different. Nothing stops him, not even his parents.

A follow up questions to anyone who is familiar with the show: The parents on the show are constantly pleading with Max to do his chores and participate in family activities, when he says no, they act like there is nothing they can do. Is it typical for families to just let the kid have his way? Are parents really that helpless or are the parents on this show pushovers?

16

Even non-asperger teens (or non-diagnosed) can be pretty clueless and self-centered.

17

I remember watching Fellini’s Amacord with a high school teacher. In one scene they take the crazy uncle out on a picnic. The guy fills his pockets with stones and climbs a tree; when family or attendants try to climb after him, he drops rocks on their heads. The teenage boy says “ha, ha, that was funny uncle, it’s me I’m coming up don’t drop a rock on me!” Of course, as he starts to climb, a rock drops on his head.

The teacher turns to me and she says “typical teenager. He knows the guy has rocks, he’s just seen them used, he knows the guy is irrational, yet somehow thinks that the same thing won’t happen to him…” Don’t need Aspergers to act like that.

18

Max’s parents are twits. They’re almost as bad as Julia and Joel. They let their guilt paralyze them and it makes them doormats.

That being said - in one sense, Max is right. You can’t *make *anyone do anything, short of brute force. But when one motivating force doesn’t work, it’s time to try something new. These guys are stuck on whine and sigh.
ETA: (Which, of course, makes them some more of the most realistic characters on television.)

19

And he was actually significantly better when he had a hot Asberger’s coach working with him and enforcing his point system, until Dax Shepard fucked her and she quit.

It’s been since they started a new business, had an infant and were diagnosed with cancer that they’ve really been doormats to his condition. Which also makes them fairly realistic.

20

LEaving aside for the moment the issue of autism spectrum disorders, bear in mind that as a television series progresses, the characters will often become more extreme in their primary characteristics. It may in fact be that Max is actually being written as more and more difficult because that’s what TV shows do.