Ask the Aspie

I saw a piece on TV (60 minutes, or something) on Temple Grandin and her work with cattle and slaughterhouses. She talked of the way cattle are calmed by using a squeeze cage for certain procedures. She had a small squeeze cage made for herself, and she uses it daily for her emotional well-being.

That got me to thinking. When I was a boy, I remember the very heavy comforters at Aunt Kathryn’s house. With one of those things weighing me down, I felt safe and happy. As an adult, I still prefer heavy blankets to light ones. Is that like a soft squeeze cage?

Nah, tis fine.

  1. It’s hard to explain. Sometimes I can understand things such as shrugs if they are particularly noticeable, but more often than not I can’t understand it or don’t notice it. A problem is that I don’t understand if my behavior is annoying someone until they mention it or 'really show it’ (not good at reading faces, but sometimes it’s a lot easier to tell), stuff like that. When they do become annoyed, it’s confusing to me. I only want/need [ ], what’s the big deal?

I do empathize if I know they are bothered. I try to not bug them, or do much anything except try to make them feel better. Since I don’t know how someone might react if I do , I’ll tend to not do anything like if they are already bothered.

  1. Even harder to explain. Sometimes Movies/TV and Books make me confused because I wonder if they are true representations (well, as true as someone could write) of how people might react to things, except for obvious over-the-top reactions (like in comedy movies). It’s easier for me to relate to characters that have had similar experiences to me, like in Spiderman where Peter Parker gets beat up in school, but I didn’t understand why Norman Osbourne would ignore his son, why he would favor Peter more. It didn’t make sense.

That is until I read a story about it, where they explained that Peter is more of a son that he would want then Harry; Harry didn’t live up to his expectations. However I don’t understand why he would force someone to live up to his expectations of a good son.

While I did enjoy Spiderman, some of the crucial elements were lost to me until I had them explained. When explained, with me thinking about it, it tends to make much more sense then by myself.

In Firestarter (Stephen King), John Rainbird’s actions did not make any sense at all. And the same for The Shop. Although I don’t understand why a government in fiction or reality would do something that is malicious that is not forced on them.

I emphasize with Roland from The Dark Tower (Stephen King). His actions mirror the way AS people tend to act on their desires, he needs to do something and he needs to do it now, or else his world will unravel (and all the other worlds, too). When I want something, I want to do something, I want to do it now, and sometimes it can feel like my world is unraveling (well, maybe not that bad ;)).

  1. I enjoyed games like Checkers or any other board game. With games like baseball or tag or anything else athletic, I was horrible. I’m very clumsy, bad motor control. And I sometimes don’t understand instructions or things that are obvious or in front of me, but I’m afraid to ask again because they just explained it to me or I’ll sound dumb.

With board games, the rules were layed out on paper, I could read the instructions and re-read them again without having to worry about having to ask what the rules again and sound like I wasn’t playing attention. They also didn’t require any athletic ability.

I found books that were way under my reading ability(read: books that were actually for kids my age :D) a lot more understandable, because the emotions were easy to understand because the writing tended to be simple.

I enjoyed C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia a lot. James and the Giant Peach was also a book I liked. I enjoyed reading mystery books where you’d guess the ending based on the clues, but I’d almost never get the correct answer.

AskNott, what exactly is a squeeze cage? And I too prefer heavy to lighter blankets.

Sometimes the lines seem so vague. Alot of that impulse control problem seems to be pressant in my daughter who is ADHD. She also has social difficulties, but mostly from being absolutely over affectionate. Unmedicated she doesn’t seem to recognise boundries for touching or hugging or personal space. It tends to make people uncomfortable. She will practicaly tackle hug people and be hurt when asked to back off. Medicated she is still affectionate but it doesn’t quite get to the uncomfortable stage. It almost seems kind of like the same but opposite problem, if anyone understands what I mean.

No, neither of my kids have reacted badly to meds which were the right meds. P the E is much more creative and functional when on the proper meds but he’s got a lot of comorbid conditions. P the Y recently began on dexamphetamine and is blossoming. He’s also been on a gluten free diet for the last 3 years and we’ve blown the bank on supplements as well.

However both kids are on small doses of the stimulant meds although P the E was on a high adult dose of tricyclics and of the SSRI.

There’s a lot of crossover between ADHD, ADD and ASD. Some people would argue that comorbidity doesn’t exist, that the symptoms of ADHD in a kid with ASD aren’t ADHD but are symptoms of ASD.

Compression is a technique used by OTs to help settle ASD kids. **furlibysea ** P the E unmedicated had a lot of issues with physical boundaries and pressure when he hugged people.

Thanks very much for your full reply. I just want to ask you one more thing about point 2 (in quote above)- then I’ll leave you in peace…

Would I be right in saying that in general you find books/films difficult or baffling if (a) the fictional character is in a situation you have never experienced or heard about before, and (b) when the character’s motives are not clear and are not explained by the narrator?

Thanks again

PS: one other thing - you say you’re not good at reading facial expressions - how do you get on with the emoticons (smilies)? Noticed you used them - personally I’m never confident about using them aptly! ;j - what’s this, for instance?!

I find that B. confuses me more, because while A. can make plenty of sense without having any experiences with it before(a master storyteller can illustrate a scene as well as one of the best visual artists), without a good amount of B. it’s hard to enjoy a story when you don’t understand the characters or what propels them to do things.

B is needed, a good description of A is enjoyable when it’s done right.

The emoticons make sense to me, because the are simply enough and exaggerated that the meaning is easy enough to understand. Plus, they have a color that either metaphorically(:frowning: blue for sadness) or physically(the :o smiley blushing, turning red as people do in RL) represents the emoticon.

That smiley is the Happy Smiling Jewish Man(?, I can’t acess those tags that come up when you hover them on the smileys that tell you exactly what they are).

This is because both Aspergers Syndrome and ADHD have executive functioning problems. It is also a factor with people with frontal lobe damage. With AS there are other things as well, that aren’t present in ADHD. There is certainly a degree of overlap though.

Now, I have a question for you guys. Before I was posting in this thread, did anybody find me ‘odd’ or though their was something strange about me?

I’m curious as to how I appear to others in a text enviroment such as this.

I’d like to know the same thing about me.

Nope, nothing seemed “odd” about either of you. One of the best things about a text environment is that it allows you to be evaluated by others based on what you write only, and both of you are quite articulate and intelligent, based on what I’ve read.

Temple Grandin, according to the show I mentioned, worked with the beef industry to make the animals’ last hours less fearful. Fear, you see, brings muscle tension and adrenalin. Tension makes for tough meat, and adrenalin gives the meat a slight off taste. She designed a curved passage to the killing floor (which she calls the Stairway To Heaven,) so the animals can’t see their brothers dying. For the final moment just before the pneumatic hammer puts the lights out, the steer is clamped in a squeeze cage. Up until her work, they were only used on farms. The cage looks to the steer like a wooden passageway, but once he’s inside, bars in front and back restrain him. Then one side of the chute is levered in tight, so the beast can’t move at all. You’d think they’d struggle, but the animal relaxes completely once the squeeze is on. On the farm, the cage is used for medical procedures. In the slaughterhouse, it assures that the animal dies relaxed.

Ms. Grandin, perhaps on a hunch, thought she, too, would find relaxed peace in a squeeze cage. She had one built to fit her, and at the end of a hard day of coping with the world as an Aspie/Autist, she gets into her squeezer to relax.

That’s why I drew a parallel between very heavy bed clothes and the squeeze cage.

I wanted to thank you for starting this thread and sharing valuable information with the rest of us. My husband’s step brother has Asperger’s. I have never heard anyone in the family use this term (I’m not sure they know about it), but he has all the characteristics. His parents get frustrated with his conversation style (tends to be somewhat self-centered and inappropriate at times), he’s a bit clumsy and completely unaware of concepts of such things as “fashion.” He is about 40 now, but has few close relationships. Has a great job, working with brain-damaged adults, which is great and lives independently. I feel bad that his family is frustrated with what they perceive as being “spoiled” or “insensitive” when in fact he’s compensating pretty well, to my mind.

I would think computer message boards like this would be a good way for people with AS to communicate with others. Certainly those of you who have it don’t seem any different from the rest of us in this realm.

I want to thank you guys for all the positive responses, all the questions, all the advice. I’m glad to help.

I will be away for a week, if you have any specific questions to me, I will answer them when I get back.

I hadn’t heard that, but one thought comes to mind: Given when my son’s issues started to become extreme (right about his second birthday), well, we’d been trying to “catch” with #2, and succeeded that very month. Papa Zappa and I frequently say to each other that if we hadn’t “caught” that month, Dweezil would have been an only child. His third year was nightmarish enough for us that we would have probably given up trying.

I wonder if something like that has happened in many cases where a single child has PDD?

Not sure you’d say it’s “treatable”, although there are certainly therapies that can help a child learn better social skills - my son attends a social skills group with a local social worker, and we’ve had family therapy for years that has helped us with parenting him better. A lot of the responses that a “normal” child would do instinctively (most kids want to please their parents… at least occasionally, until they become teenagers :D) ) have to be learned by rote.

There are obviously medications that have their part - the antidepressants such as Prozac can help with social anxiety etc. I know one child who is on Risperdal (sp?). But they don’t really treat the Asperger’s itself, but rather some of the side effects.

I’ve had to learn social skills by trial and error (many errors!!!), and often watch others’ interactions with utter bewilderment. And I’m not full-blown Aspie myself (just got lots of the tendencies). It’s gotta be even harder for someone who really falls solidly into that arena.

Cool? Of course we’re all cool :slight_smile:

But seriously, things like message boards, email, chatrooms etc. tend to be great places for people with difficulties in face-to-face communications. I manage to come across as a LOT more coherent in such arenas (or, at least I think I do) than in person :wink:

What are the differences between Asperger’s Syndrome and ordinary nerdiness?

This site may be relevant to my question: http://www.udel.edu/bkirby/asperger/putnampaper.html

Fellow Aspie here.

I was thinking about starting this thread during the (O_o) debacle, but I never got around to it. I remember Primaflora’s contributions in a couple of those threads, and I want to say thanks to both The Man and Aslan for starting this thread.

Bedtime now, but I’ll probably be by tomorrow to see if I can add anything here.

Compression therapy seems to help many PDD people. My son has both a vest and a blanket which are heavily weighted. When he becomes overstimulated, he can retreat and apply the weights, and it helps him to calm down and focus. The vest and blanket have soft external materials, calm colors, and heavy imbedded weights.

Bambi Hassenpfeffer, do you have any way in which I can contact you off-boards?

Thanks.