My daughter has a diagnosis of Asperger’s (though it’s often written as high-functioning autism, since many psychiatrists consider them not to be separate enough to merit a separate name) and it’s not easy to get here - it took 6 years of constant tests, psychiatrist visits, observations etc.
I’m not talking about someone who self-diagnosed via a test on OKCupid or something - those do annoy me.
Christ - when I say that my daughter has Asperger’s, some of you must think my daughter has no hope of ever having any friends, or adapting, or even having a wide range of feelings, going on MarkXX’s post. This doesn’t upset me or anything - it’s not like I know you - but it’s really weird. You’re supposed to be intelligent people.
Autism is a spectrum disorder, and it’s perfectly possible for someone at the higher end to do everything that a ‘neurotypical’ person does, just with more difficulty. Sheldon’s high intelligence and energy would help a lot with learning how to do things that come naturally to others.
Oh, another bit that does not fit - Sheldon is currently being written as being asexual (I am not sure about Amy, as she did participate in that sexual research project stimulating the brain pleasure centers …). That is not a feature of Asperger Syndrome. The social dysfunction gets in the way of their having a sexual life sometimes, and the fairly common hypersensitivity to various sensory modalities, such as light touch, may make them uncomfortable during some aspects of sex, but in general they have drives about the same as the general population.
Remember the flashback show? Sheldon was unable to maintain a roommate relationship. Leonard moved in, and apparently learned to tolerate and even help Sheldon (his mother the shrink is very similar to Sheldon). He ws the one who befriend Raj and Howard and they toleratred bringing Sheldon into the circle. He also befriended Penny, and she tolerates having Sheldon around.
No. Dwight doesn’t interact well with people because he loathes them and looks down on them as objects to be manipulated. It’s not that he can’t, he just chooses not to.
I personally find message boards a comforting place, since I don’t have to process all the non-verbal cues that a regular conversation entails and I don’t have to process other social cues immediately. I often compare processing social cues to trying to trying to catch a baseball by calculating a trajectory for it. It can be done, but it hard to do in real-time.
My dad teaches maths to special needs students, and he says that Sheldon is, in his (non-medical but experienced) opinion, somewhere on the autistic spectrum.
[Quote=Sheldon Cooper]
I grew up in Texas. Football is ubiquitous in Texas: pro football, college football, high school football, pee-wee football. In fact, every form of football except the original, European football, which most Texans believe to be a Commie plot.
[/quote]
This quote made TV Guide magazine’s best quote of the week.
I finally watched the flashback episode of Big Bang. I think Sheldon’s AS can be summed up by the line
“I’m still not comfortable…oh of course, there’s too many people here”
Agreed, it’s really more of a comedic exaggeration than a scientific portrayal of AS, but then again, isn’t that the point of sitcoms?
Minor nitpick - Howard’s room has a PS2 on top of his tv, but those are clearly Xbox games under the TV.
Maybe not, but you still have to always be prepared to be wooshed.
Testing for Asperger’s is actually a pretty long process. Taking a test on okcupid or doing Myers-Briggs is not a diagnosis, although getting ISTJ is what first gave my career counselor the hint that this may be something to look into. There are about 100 different tests, some written, some verbal, some hands-on, done under the proctor of a psychologist and then the conclusion is made not by a test score, but by human analysis of the trends. Since I was tested as an adult, it was probably a lot more simpler than trying to diagnose a child.
