Ask the autistic person

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

Thats not too hard, so I will answer. This is also one of the misconceptions that the “self diagnosed” set have - they run with the social awkwardness issue and interpret that as Aspergers.

People with Aspergers syndrome have significantly more than “some nervous habits” They need to exhibit

" Restricted repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests, and activities, as manifested by at least one of the following:
(1) encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus
(2) apparently inflexible adherence to specific, nonfunctional routines or rituals
(3) stereotyped and repetitive motor mannerisms (e.g., hand or finger flapping or twisting, or complex whole-body movements)
(4) persistent preoccupation with parts of objects "

Which is a bit more than a nervous habit. In fact there is some contention as to where ritualised repetitive behaviours associated with ASDs stop and OCD takes over, they present very similarly, as do Tic Disorders

And

“The disturbance causes clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning”

So a socially awkward, shy kid with some nervous habits is not a kid with AS. Kids with AS are not necessarily shy either - it has been suggested that one of the differentiating factors between AS and HFA is that people with AS actually seek social interaction, particularly as kids, but do not have the social skills to successfully interact, hence the social problems.

It certainly isn’t shyness or an unwillingness to interact.

There are a number of other behaviours as well, such as sensory integration problems, motor clumsiness, and problems with handwriting are common.

Please don’t start me on the cognitve theories of what underpins ASDs, it’s one of my favourite subjects :slight_smile:

Ca3799, My son’s special interest is computing, operating systems and programming specifically. He lives breathes and sleeps computers. We have strict rules surrounding meal times etc, where no computerese is allowed to be spoken, otherwise I would end up a cot case! He is a true computer nerd at the age of not quite 11, and has been since he was 7, when he read DOS for Dummies and set up his first web page.

42

If you have autism, it always affects you to some degree. I rarely don’t feel ‘not autistic’ and it’s usually tied to isolation - like me walking in the woods behind my house.

I don’t know exactly what you mean by ‘drop in our out of by will’ but I’m going to probably go with no, if you mean it’s something that comes and goes by my will.

I’m not of legal drinking age…

I feel ‘disoriented’(best way to describe it) when I need to move quickly - I have the poor motor skills that sometimes comes with Autism/Asperger’s.

I am usually fine if it’s not forced on me. I’m part of a computer games club, and I’m perfectly fine with it because my interest in the topics(games and other nerdy stuff) help me with interacting with the other people.

What do you mean by the first question? Do you mean seeing someone saying hello and making small talk, and me finding that pointless? Clarification please. :slight_smile:

I do feel really uncomfortable. For example, If I have a problem and people ask me to tell them what’s wrong, I sometimes get very angry or frustrated - I can’t (emotionally) figure out why they wouldn’t know what’s wrong.

I tend to value solitude over connection when I want to achieve something, like school work. I enjoy working alone and I can do my best when I’m left alone with no noise at all. I value connection a lot more in general because I enjoy friendships and if I didn’t have those, I’d be very lonely all the time, and that would make my work suffer.

I am hypersensitive to sound, but I wouldn’t say I’m hypersentive to touch. I prefer to not be touched, but I wouldn’t say that it would have to do with being hypersenitive to it.

I’ve learned a lot of stuff that helps in socail ineraction by rote. I sometimes look at someone’s face instead of their eyes because it’s easier for me.

I am interested in comics, computers, and Stephen King.

Eye contact with people I’ve known for a long time and feel very comfortable with is a lot easier, although I’d prefer not to have to.

I prefer certain clothes. I have a couple of pairs of the same shirt/pants because I’d prefer to not get new ones. I pefer to not be touched - although I can usually stand it if someone does.

Special skills? Extremely high reading level, good memory for my interests(poor memory for everything else :(), being able to pick up things rather quickly.

I’ve heard people use that line a few times before - since it’s been online mostly I ignore the person or (depending on their level of “WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THE WORLD TO ALLOW THEM TO CLASSIFY THIS CRAP AS A DISORDER”) try to educate them.

43

In what way do you find eye contact uncomfortable? Is it too intense? Distracting?

44

It’s hard to focus on what the person is saying/doing if I do eye contact. I also get this general feeling of ‘look away’ that really bothers me.

45

Well, yeah, actually.

I always found it annoying to fill up my ears with bullshit talk just because it seemed better than silence.

Also, I’ve always tuned out whenever my Mom and Aunt would talk to each other on the phone about stuff…
…what stuff? I dunno…I tune it out! :wink:

46

I do find it rather pointless. Most people, it seems, talk about the most inane shit. “What happend on the Apprentice last night?” “Did you see American Idol last night?” “Did you hear _ was going out with _?” I don’t understand the point of that.

47

Could someone please further explain this to me giving descriptions and examples?

At work I tend to make repetitive movements i.e gaze at the computer screen for a while, cupping my chin in my hands, then I will rub my eyes and re-position myself in my chair by grabbing the arm rests then lifting my ass up in the air and setting myself back down again in a more straightened positon. Minutes later I might repeat the whole process as I have slumped again. I sometimes catch myself doing this and wonder if it looks weird to anyone watching.

I guess a lot of people at work might repeat a set movement over and over at work becuse they are employed at the same task basically for 8 hours a day.
Anyway further carification please.

Also in a busy pub it seems to me I can hear everyones conversations at the same time and understand none. I look around the room and everyone is talking excitedly obviously understanding one and other, to me it’s just a hubbub of words boiling down a river. When someone speaks to me I’m like “eh?, what? sorry?” shrug smile, look away and relax.

48

The first part means doing things like flapping your arms around or spinning yourself. What you described doesn’t sound to me like it would fit under what you described.

What you described in your second questions sounds quite similar to what happens to me in noisy classrooms - I can hear everything, and understand nothing. Autistics have trouble processing lots of sensory information, and they sometimes either ‘shutdown’ or have a meltdown.

49

At what age did you become aware you were “different”? And at what age did you know you’d been formally dx’ed as autistic? Are there things you wish your parents could have done different / better to help you through that? or to help you with things even since then?

Dweezil is AS/HFA as I mentioned in your other thread; he’s 9 (nearly 10) and has actually asked me what autism is, and whether he’s autistic. Not sure where he heard the term initially but we of course have answered him truthfully, and explained that autism is “your brain works differently, you have a hard time being friendly, you have a hard time showing how smart you are” or things to that effect. I think clearly he doesn’t dwell on it much of the time (we got a book that you’re supposed to go through with the child that talks about attributes, and how they apply to that child - fill-in-the-blanks - and he hasn’t displayed any real interest in it).

Did you have any friends in elementary / middle school? or were you a complete loner? If so, were you aware of that? If you had playmates, did they tend to be other “impaired” kids? or more mainstream kids? This is something that Dweezil has recently expressed - he hasn’t made any friends at his new school, and it’s upsetting. We have been reluctant to try to contact classmates’ parents to try to set up something because of concern over how it’ll work out (my son can be pretty peremptory and tends to think that others are treating him badly - e.g. if they win a race they’re “cheating”). Even with explanations to the parent or child, that might not go well and wind up doing more harm than good :frowning:

Is there anything you wish the schools could have done differently for you? And, were you in a self-contained classroom, or mainstreamed?

50

I alwats felt different, because I was always the odd one, even in kindergarten. Even though I was diagnosed around grade 3 or so(formerly a diagnosis of ADD), I only knew about around 7th grade(going from my memory, which sucks). I wish my parenst had told me earlier.

I have had a few friends in all my school years… About 2 or 3 good friends. Most of them for several years. When I was younger I was more of a loner, but I still needed friends. And none of my good friends were impaired in any way.

I wish my first school had not been so shitty. I hated it there, as I was heavily bullied and almost nothing was done about it. My second school, I wish there’d been a division for kids like me, not the classroom full of anger problem kids that I was put in. And for my HS, I wish that half the LD help staff weren’t losing their job, and kids with LDs getting screwed over because of budget cuts.

If I could suggest something to help, why not incorporate your sons interest(s) into friendships by joining something like a club or a group of people with similar interests? It helped me out.

51

I wish I could clone the unit my sons are in. It is amazing (and it won the district excellence in education award this week). We’ve done the mainstream without diagnosis, the mainstream with diagnosis and now it’s the unit for them. They are mainstreamed for academics unless the academics are a huge difficulty for them, they can retreat to the unit at any time and they spend a lot of time in the unit doing projects and learning life skills. My older kid is learning nothing academically at all (but he’d need radical acceleration for that in any case) but he is so freaking happy and having so much fun that it’s wonderful.

The other night, Primafloret the Elder came to me and said I’ve just figured out that all the kids in the unit are male except E and I’m not sure about her. I told him E is female and asked him if he wanted to know more about why there were so many boys in the unit and why he is in the unit.

He said no. I’m not pushing it mainly because I’m not all that convinced his diagnosis is 100% correct and also because I think when he’s ready to know, he will ask. He knows he’s not facing the challenges the other kids in the unit are. He’s very respectful of the other kids. When C gave him some empty tin cans to take home and take care of (C’s obsessed with buckets, tin cans and tyres), he brought them home and they sit on his dressingtable.

52

Primaflora, do you know of any tricks to decrease perseveration?

53

I am not Primaflora, but I personally haven’t found anything to stop my son perseverating on his special interest, other than to make boundaries about where he can and can’t talk about it. This of course doesn’t mean he doesn’t think about it. I think in the case of a special interest there isn’t much you can do other than realise you may be crossing other people boundaries by perseverating. I think this is the nature of Aspergers, if you could cure perseveration you would be half way to a cure for ASDs

When it comes to ritualist repetitive behaviours, of which my son has a number that fluctuate, depending on a number of not always identifiable factors, the best way to deal with them is behaviourally. Try to introduce a new behaviour that is socially acceptable and not going to draw the attention of others. Positively reinforce the use of the new behaviour while not giving the undesirable one any response. Use modelling if it is appropriate. All the old standard behavioural interventions. Some people like to say they don’t work, but research says they do. Also CBT is useful for AS people, prticularly for anxiety and depression, providing you go to a counsellor who understands ASD and can modify the standard programmes.

54

Aslan no I don’t know of any tricks to decrease perseveration. I know that with meds both my kids perseverate a lot less although P the Younger’s echolalia is still a big issue for him. Like auliya, I’ve put in place boundaries for my kids but at the same time I need to recognise that there are times they cannot respect the boundaries.

My paed talks about the purpose the perseveration is serving and suggests thinking very carefully before attempting to remediate it because you could end up with even more problematic behaviours. I’m thinking that would be less likely with an adult with ASD who is working on perserveration for their own reasons and more likely when an adult is attempting to ‘fix’ a child.

55

Aslan, I know you’re a few years away from this, but what are your plans concerning university? Do you think you will be living on-campus or commuting from home?

I ask because it seems that dorm life would be particularly unsuited for an autistic person, in that there would be no completely ‘safe place’ to go where one could be alone and not have to deal with noise, people wandering in and out, etc. I wonder if universities have any sort of recommendations in this type of situation?

Also, do you have anxieties severe enough to require medication? If you do take medication, do you notice any significant differences in your thoughts or reactions?

56

I plan on commuting. There’s a college or university being bulit a few miles away from both my parent’s house(separated, attempting divorce). It’s apparently going to be bulit around the time I graduate. What you said is accurate - I would either have to commute or rent an apartment off campus.

I don’t currently take any medication - but I’ll ask my Doctor what would merit requiring anxiety medication, as sometimes I think I need something like it, but most times I’m fine. Have taken medication for depression - kept me up all night with a dazed and confused feeling, and I’d end up sleeping the day away or being unable to do anything the entire day.

57

Aslan, Can I ask how old you are? I understand you are still in high school, but I didn’t realise you were a way off finishing.

58

I am 15.

59

The descriptions sound much like how I was as a child, and my son also. Neither of us was ever diagnosed with anything but depression, and I have seemed to get better at dealing with people as I got older, so I don’t know if it would even be useful to find out if the label should be applied to me, at least. I even managed to get married, though that ended up being a bad thing for me except for the birth of my son, which I don’t regret at all. The key thing for me was developing a sense of humor and learning to laugh at myself, but with a kinder eye than those who would pick on me. If I could beat them to it, I could disarm their barbs and make them laugh as well, but without the contemptuous notes they would get if they mistook my standoffishness because of feelings of awkwardness for being “stuck-up”.

My son still has no friends and no particular interest in making any. Your description of your school experience sounds very much like his, except that he dropped out of school because he wasn’t getting anything at all out of the class for “at-risk” kids they put him in. I have not been able to help him as much as someone else could because I’m not really good at people either. He is 27 years old, with a relatively mild case of cerebral palsy also, which made him even more different and more of a target. He is interested in computers and cameras and videogames and not a lot else. He doesn’t want to take pictures of people at all, just animals and scenic landscape shots. He is much better these days at talking to people than when he was younger, now he doesn’t go into monologues on his subjects of interest and completely ignore the entire conversation when his topics of interest aren’t on the table like he used to. His voice also has a lot more expression in the tones he uses, it used to be much more monotonous.

That brings me to a question. I have seen descriptions of Asperger’s syndrome that include problems with a voice that other’s find annoying, sometimes to the point that speech therapy is prescribed. Have you had that sort of problem?

I have had people make fun of my voice and my laugh all my life, and I just started telling them they weren’t doing it right, and laughing back at them, which sort of made it an in-joke and an okay thing, but I guess I still have an odd voice. The strange thing is that I have a very good ear for music and can sing passably well when the allergies don’t interfere.

60

Autistics tend to have a difficulty modulating their voice or controlling how it sounds. I recall having speech therapy - but I think it had to do with me having trouble saying words, not how I said them. I have been told by people I sound like their father :confused:

Perfect pitch is common for autistics, occurs in 1 in 20 autistics.